What happens in the bedroom, doesn't stay in the bedroom.

image: Synching up with the time of day will illuminate the experience you are having especially when you discover your dosha and begin to design your life in harmony with your unique dosha.

Most of my life I have been, some may say, overly private.

To date, I can see - thanks to hindsight- that I have become increasingly selective with whom I share my personal struggles and triumphs even as I have extended my social range over time and become a bonafide ambivert (confusing many of my close friends.) All this to say, I stay private -less for the experience of shame- and more for the economy of sharing with people who I have at least a strong chance will understand and care. This year, I am resolving to change that habit to such a degree that I risk shocking people that feel they know me well.

Growth is my top value and that means a life of getting comfortable in the uncomfortable, yes? My choice to take a non-traditional path of an interdisciplinary approach to the health industry, (pulling from yoga, Ayurveda, astrology, Human Design, cultural anthropology, Gene Keys and more) is culminating this year into the most rewarding service I have been able to offer the world. Because of that non-traditional approach that resonated with my own navigation, and the lack of being able to look around and find similar examples, that reinforced a familiar feeling of being alienated from the tribe and feeling unsupported. With that familiar belief and feeling, the anxious inner critic turns up the volume and is only satisfied when I don't get my sleep and fall away from my physical rituals. Why? Because then everything stays the same, ego wins and status quo means I survive. Haha, but I am on to you, ego, we have danced before, and I have new moves!

According to Ayurveda, our thoughts are the waste product of our bodies, so when we are in mind-body harmony, our thoughts are as well. When we are discordant, our maintenance systems go out as well and our thoughts express that discord. It was this kind of cosmological mapping of the anatomy of the mind and body that initially deeply interested me in building rituals around sleep when I was 14 and intuitively found my first book on Ayurveda by Atreya Smith. I had poured all of my attention into the fascinating mystical insights of this living Indian wisdom tradition and healed myself of cysts on my ovaries by taking an honest look at my mind-body type, lifestyle and habit drivers at a young age. When I did consciously choose to go out of balance, I could always get back to center before anything shifted systemically in my body (because I had a map of the terrain and awareness of the traps) so I could have agency over my choices and my health. The agency was more empowering and attractive to me than any of the temporary imbalances I explored.

So, this year I am taking on the intention to set myself up to win bigger in 2022. I have a lot to offer this year and it is calling upon me to rise in so many areas. My inner dialogue has now evolved in the face of needing to rise to a new standard of operating in my life. It used to be “staying up all night to finish some external goal, aka “hustling” in order to win my own approval” narrative would win over reason. Now, rising to the new standard means increasing the priority to create deep rest and regular exercise to support more experiences of effortless, spontaneous flow and reliable emotional synchronicity with my intrinsic value (aka I feel less resistance as possible.) I move through challenges with an eagerness to grow with the core resilience mantra that I know “life is happening through me, for me and as me” such that all of life is my teacher, trainer and expressing through me clearly when I am an open, harmonious channel for it. If it's hard, I am being asked to level up, and for me specifically I am motivated most to level up with optimism when I realize it will make me of better service to others.

That reframe takes practice to become reflexive but it is very possible to shift the mental model of increased demand into equal and opposite priority for self care to support your success. You just need some proof of the benefit in order to believe and take critical steps and you need to learn who you are when you are harmonious with your mind-body and the predictable results of being disharmonious; you need your own map.

Where are you now, and where do you want to be?

Are you being kept up at night by your inner Romantic self, forgoing all cares of time as you open your heart to a rare connection? Or maybe the inner Maverick has you worrying about the viability of your world-shifting business; or the Nurturer noticing the dwindling time left to find your life partner before birthing a baby becomes too risky, I assure you, you will find more resilience and radiance in taking care of the single-most important aspect of healthy mind and body according to Ayurveda; your sleep. The secret is that sleep is the fruition of the rest of your life much like the orgasm for the woman is typically the result of a day-long culmination of turn ons and mental-emotional foreplay. To get the result, you have to embrace the bigger picture.

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you're not here, I can't go to sleep. Praise God for those two insomnias! And the difference between them.

- Rumi

Who are we and why does this matter when making a new ritual?

Who we are - to keep it super simple- is at least two levels of being;

• one is whole, complete and enough (our essence or soul/spirit)
• and the other, is our personality (the inherited and conditioned set of beliefs and behaviors that persist and seek to maintain the status quo according to our mental models in order to be ‘safe’ from threats of change)

The following is what I have learned about what you need to know and do to effectively change a habit like sleeping well and build a ritual (instead of routine) that flexes as you evolve over time.

But first, if you will, say this with me:

• I am much more than the two dimensional character the latest wellness guru needs me to be to sell me some quicker fix because it worked for them
• I am unique enough that I need to learn how to work WITH my neuroses in order to kickstart a habit that keeps me out of the end zone of disharmony so I avoid dis-ease
• I am a mindbody type or “dosha” (sanskrit for “that which will go out of balance”) that I can absolutely take ownership over and harmonize for optimal, radiant health

How do you kickstart any habit? Let’s use going to bed at the right time every night:

I could send you on a wild goose chase where you take a quiz about your personality and how the unique neuroses from this personality type will keep you up at night, but what good will that do for actual change? Turns out, not too much but those quizzes are fun, right?

Exercise: here are some personality archetypes (not an exhaustive list by any stretch) which can help you tune into the mindset and values that set us up to win or wane on our habits and intentions:

EGO IDENTITY - PERSONALITY

STEPS:

So, can we just simply jump from our reasons/excuses to our values-based intentions to change a habit?

In a word, no. It takes the art of integration, which you can curate with the following knowledge.

DOSHA

Your dosha is the culmination of opposing elements that express one way when in harmony and another predictable way when out of harmony.

Vata is made of air and ether composing itself as wind elementally speaking or circulation of all the processes in the body, bio-psychologically speaking. It is motion. Out of balance it is irregularity ungrounded anxiety, issues collect in the colon area and affect the body-mind through excessive dryness, erratic functioning, over talking, under sleeping, anxiety and if left imbalanced too long, even mental disorders and bone and joint degradation (osteoporosis)

Pitta is made of fire and water composing as steam elementally and the metabolic force bio-psychologically. It is transformation, ruling the small intestine, it is what breaks down complex potential life force or information and makes it useful to the body to assimilate. Some of its qualities are hot, sharp, quick, light, oily and sour. When in balance, provides luminosity in skin, balanced digestion, energy, direction, discernment and when out of balance creates burning, ulcers, inflammation and over time, rheumatoid arthritis and a sharp temperament.

Kapha is made of earth and water composing mud elementally and cohesion bio-psychologically. It rules the lungs, heart and stabilizes the body's structure with fat tissue to protect and store potential fuel. It is regulating and slow when in balance, causes stagnation and water retention when out of balance such as edema or various stored emotions in the body as kapha is more likely to retain personal feelings keeping them to themselves and bottling up what needs to be processed.

Finding your dosha in a simple test online will help you identify when you are in or out of balance. Of course, nothing beats a personal visit to a local Ayurvedic practitioner, but this will give you insight into your patterns at both a mental emotional and physical level. It will also identify sensitive areas throughout the day and night when your energy, metabolism, cognition and creative insight can be predictably harvested and cultivated or ill-attempted when out of synch with the time of day.

In essence, you don't have to be victim to your day, you can harmonize with your day and become a virtual alchemist to balance and rebalance your energy from any influence.

This means, you won't experience disrupted sleep or dysregulated states (unless you want to.)

SLEEP HABIT-BUILDING FOR THE WIN

The goals just give you a container to discover more of who you are in the process. Give yourself space to witness who you are becoming in the process.

“The journey is what brings us happiness… not the destination.” - Dan Millman

TIPS FOR SLEEPING WELL

Work with the personality archetypes to find resonance with your intention and then support your whole self with acts of self harmony. Together, you will see your new habits into fruition because you have found the way to not be in opposition to who you are but rather to harmonize at two levels.

What happens in the bedroom shows up everywhere you do.

Your sleep rituals set you up for deep rest which naturally translates into how you show up to the demands of your life. You can't rise when you have not sufficiently surrendered your consciousness to the replenishing experience of deep rest. The very act of prioritizing your rest spontaneously improves your productivity, creativity, memory, strength and digestive tract function, core influence on hormonal balance, and rediscovering a sense of synchronicity with your world and the characters in it.

Sleep well,

Aeryana

Aeryana is a creative entrepreneur with two decades in both holistic paradigm and archetypal mapping practices applying these principles toward purposeful, productive and empowered relationships both at work and in love. She loves to write, paint and teach with an intimate depth of self inquiry and is making more space for singing in her life.