Can you make up for lost sleep Meditation expert says yes

Can you make up for lost sleep Meditation expert says yesCan you make up for lost sleep Meditation expert says yesIn todays hustle culture time seems to be the most elusive commodity. Successful influencers, writers, and entrepreneurs alike inflate the importance of productive daily routines all for the sake of reaping mora time.One of the most obvious obstacles in our ongoing search for time is an unavoidable necessity of human nature our need for sleep. Foregoing a nights sleep would earn the average partie an extra eight hours of precious time. Unfortunately, if youre of human origin, a sleepless lifestyle is physically impossible to sustain.While waiting for a solution to our physiological reliance on sleep, meditation may just offer a solution. The alleged benefits of meditation are manifold. Celebrities including Twitters Jack Dorsey, and Oprah zu sichself has long talked up the advantages of meditation in promoting restfulness, mental acuity, and overall well being.Follow Ladd ers on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreBut in recent years, research has shed light on meditations ability to recoup the restlessness of sleep in mere minutes. In one 2010 study, researchers looked at the amount of sleep and mental acuity of experienced meditators compared to a group of non-meditators. They found that meditators who slept an average of 5.2 hours per night, tested equally as well on their mental performance as the non-meditator group who clocked in 7.8 hours of sleep.In another more recent study that considered overall mental wellbeing, just 15 minutes of meditation welches associated with similar effects as a day of vacation. Participants reported lower levels of negative thinking and higher levels of well-being. The researchers found similar associations on days the participants were on vacation, indicating meditations ability to compress the time it takes to reach a state of t otal relaxation.An expert weighs inAccording to meditation expert Julie Sacks, one 45 minute session of meditation packs in an astonishing four hours of sleep. But how is this restfulness qualified? Ladders caught up with Sacks at her flagship Vie Meditation center located on the rooftop of Hotel Rivington in downtown Manhattan to find out.Sacks is a Certified Vedic Meditation Teacher specializing in meditation practice Yoga Nidra, also known as Yogic Sleep. A one-hour session is said to induce total physical, mental, and emotional relaxation. One Yoga Nidra session gives you a huge amount of restfulness. Yogendra is the art of conscious relaxation. It allows your body to truly let go. Your mind is still at the point where its still awake, but your body is in a state of total relaxation, said Sacks.Before founding Vie Meditation, Sacks suffered from chronic stress working in a traditional corporate setting. As she wrote in a Huffington Post article, her life before discovering medit ation was dictated by panic attacks, occurring at the most inconvenient times such as company meetings.I went to a more traditional therapist who told me I should be on medication. I knew that decision was not for me. I realized that the only way out is through I flirted with meditation for a long time before I took it seriously. I didnt keep it as an ongoing practice until much later in my life.Life is moving so much faster than ever. We have so much information coming at us at every moment. Were evolving, but not fast enough to keep up that pace. Meditation really allows one to really let go.One of the greatest appeals of meditation is that it can be done virtually anywhere. So you cant use the excuse of not having enough free-time meditation can be practiced on your morning commute, at your desk at work, or in bed after a long day. It all comes down to consistency. According to Sacks, starting and ending the day with an intention is a key principle of meditation.The mind is a mus cle. The key to meditation is making it a habit or practice. Meditation is like an internal vision board. You can meditate anywhere. Its as simple as sitting up in bed in the morning and taking 5 10 really deep breaths. Start the day with a clear intention. Every day should be a clean slate. Your life experience is whatever you put out in these few minutes of intention setting. Its all about starting. Start small, and build upon it.A youthful brainIf regained restfulness and mental clarity arent enough to induce you to try meditation, you may find be compelled by its alleged anti-aging properties. Thats right, meditation may also work on a cellular level.A study by researchers at Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience found that deep breathing meditation techniques stimulated the release of noradrenaline, a brain chemical that both improves focus and helps the brain to stay youthful by stimulating connections between cells.According to Sacks, Yoga Nidra (sleep focused meditation ) works in the same way. Its my favorite anti-aging meditation. A single session is proven to relax you on a deep cellular level, mitigating the effects of the stress effects that coincide with aging. Its better than any anti-aging pill you could buy, said Sacks.While more research needs to be done to confirm the purported benefits of meditation, it definitely couldnt hurt to try. After all, allowing yourself a few minutes of silence a day is far less costly or risk-averse than other mental coping mechanisms.