Why We Don’t Sleep: War on Yin
Sleep is an irrefutable way in which we are deeply connected to the planet earth.
We literally need to be in rhythm with the cycles of our planet.
As night follows day, we sleep, we wake. If we don't, we feel it. Sleep is elemental, basic. Sleep is essential to our body, mind and spirit.
And yet, for some reason our society isn’t very friendly towards sleep.
In fact, I’d say that our society and culture is against sleep.
Sleep is generally seen as a waste of time.
Here is a list of examples that come to mind, of how our society is against sleep:
The pressure to sleep as little as possible
Work schedules that require long hours pushing into our evening and “down time"
The popular idea of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead"
People bragging about how little sleep they get as if that’s a good thing
Lighting that keeps us awake, especially blue light everywhere that interferes with our circadian rhythms (phone screens, LED lighting etc)
15-25% of the population are nightshift workers
The chronic stress many people experience in their lives
This attitude is exactly why sleep is such a problem for so many people. Up to 40% of people have trouble sleeping.
Not only sleep, but health in general is not promoted in our society.
What I mean by this is that if you are living according to how our society is structured, you will likely be unhealthy.
You will not move enough - you will be sitting at work all day and sitting in your car or on public transport to get there and back. And sitting on your couch when you get home.
You will be eating convenient but non-nourishing foods (or “food-like substances" as Michael Pollan calls what is expected to go into our mouths and stomachs).
You will be stressed - by work, by the news, by the impossible expectations of living alone or in a single nuclear family without much community support.
You will hardly go outside or spend time in nature.
You will not get adequate sleep.
The deeper reason why
Contemplating this, I started looking for the deeper reason why.
What is it about our society that makes basic health - including sleep, nourishment and exercise - so elusive? So low in our priorities? Why is health so easily impaired and not fundamental to how we structure our world?
Why have we created a society that is essentially inhospitable to human beings?
And not just inhospitable to humans, but to all life on earth.
We are polluting every corner of our planet, including our atmosphere and creating climate change. We are destroying habitats for other creatures on the planet. We are destroying ourselves in the process by mutilating our own and only home. Not to mention unethically destroying other lives, causing the 6th extinction, eroding the beauty and wonder of 3.5 billion years of the evolution of life.
Other things too.
Our society is antagonistic to the feminine. By that I mean to the feminine principle, but that does bleed over to women (no pun intended!) The feminine principle (which both men and women possess) includes receptivity, nurturing, stillness, intuition. Don’t get me wrong. I DO NOT MEAN that women are all of these things or even mostly these things. These are qualities that our culture doesn't acknowledge as equal to the masculine principles of action, assertiveness, and the rational mind. Just look at jobs that require nurturing compared to jobs that require dispassionate action and objectivity, and you will see what I mean.
Underpinning all this is a fear of “the other” a fear of death, darkness, mystery.
Yin and Yang
When I tally all these things up, they are all on the yin side of things.
Yin and yang is a fundamental principle of reality from ancient China. According to this view, all things are made up of of yin and yang qualities. These two qualities form a polarity of complementary opposites that make up everything in the universe. Each quality needs the other to exist; nothing exists without its opposite. For example yin is dark and yang is light. Without darkness, light cannot exist and without light, darkness cannot exist. Each quality is in dynamic balance with the other. In other words, everything is in constant change and flux, always seeking balance.
This underlying nature of reality has been discovered in western science. We refer to this as “positive and negative charges”. In quantum physics it has been discovered that all matter is made up of energy carrying these positive and negative charges in a constant dynamic flux.
From the ancient Chinese perspective this concept was applied holistically to not only the material world but to states of being and to qualities. A basic set of yin and yang polarities are:
Dark-Light
Night-Day
Sleep-Awake
Earth-Sky
Moon-Sun
Still-Moving
Rest-Action
Feminine-Masculine
Intuitive-Rational
Receptive - Forceful
These qualities are meant to be in balance. A constantly changing dynamic tension between the polarities of yin and yang are behind all change, all life, and all that exists. Lack of dynamic harmony between them is the source of destruction.
Our culture is yang-dominant.
It is aggressive, conquering, and antagonistic to rest, receptivity, stillness. The focus is all about achievement, progress, accomplishing, getting things done, being busy.
Our culture is antagonistic to yin.
Our culture is at war with yin. With all things yin. The feminine principle, receptivity, quiet, stillness. I am talking about the collective tone and what gets done, where the money goes. I’m not talking about individual orientations, which express the full spectrum.
Rest and relaxation is not acknowledged as an important rhythm to our day. It is common practice to work into the evening, and when we do “relax”, we might be watching the news or scrolling through our social media news feeds, activities that are stimulating and sometimes stress-inducing. Rest and relaxation may be commodified, (vacations, yoga courses) but is not generally acknowledged as valuable, as essential to well-being. You cannot tell your boss that you are taking a day off because you need it - you have to fake that you are sick. We tend to feel guilty about our down time and think we should be “doing something”.
So what does that do? It creates lack of balance. It creates illness and disease. It creates disharmony. It is not sustainable.
Yin and yang are no better or worse than the other. They simply need to be in balance for health and harmony.
We need yin and yang qualities for a healthy, sane world.
How have you unwittingly internalized the War on Yin?
As members our own culture, we have absorbed its tenants. We have unwittingly internalized war on yin in many different ways. Here are a few which may be true of you:
Not giving equal due to the masculine and feminine qualities within yourself
Not cultivating frequent experiences of awe in your life
Not allowing yourself to rest, to relax, to truly be (i.e., to not do stuff)
Not giving your spirit time to explore mystery and imagination
Not looking after the planet, or your environment, or your neighborhood
Not looking after your body
Feeling that everything must be fast, ready immediately, done yesterday
Perfectionism
Not getting enough sleep
This is the underlying reason why we don't sleep.
We live in a culture at war with yin. Antagonistic to rest, to sleep, to darkness, to surrender, to stillness, to nurturing our bodies.
So what are we to do? We know how important sleeps is to our overall health. We know how important it is to take time to rest, to replenish ourselves.
The first step to turning things around is to recognize the ways in which you are at war with yin in your own life.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
In what ways do you drive yourself forward without regard for what your body and spirit needs?
How do you distract yourself with things that you think are relaxing but, when it comes down to it, are actually stressful (watching the news at night comes to mind as an example).
How do you ignore or dismiss your need for sleep?