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Show Relaxation Key to Sleep A broker who claimed he bad not slept for many days journeyed 1,500 miles to consult a woman skilled in the treatment of nervous conditions. Upon arrival he was ushered into the woman's office and given a particularly par-ticularly easy chair to recline in. He told his long story to the patient healer -and when he had told his pathetic account of many sleepless nights, he was told that going without with-out sleep so long really did not matter mat-ter very much and that his health bad not suffered. The healer was summoned from the office for 10 minutes, and upon her return she found her patient wrapped in deep slumber, snoring so loudly that her office windows had to be shut He slept for many hours and awoke much refreshed." I am quoting from an article on sleep by Dr. Robert L. Pitfleld, Philadelphia, in Medical Record. Why did this broker go off to sleep so easily? It was because when told that loss of sleep had not affected his health, he stopped worrying about it. It is worrying over the effects of loss of sleep that actually prevents many individuals from going to sleep. It is allowing the mind and body to become limp or languid that brings on sleep. I know a physician who has overcome over-come his inability to sleep by just "going dead," mentally and physically phys-ically not a thought on his mind and every muscle relaxed. It has been found that if we lie at complete rest with nothing on our minds and with body completely relaxed, the temperature of the body, the heart rate, and the blood pressure pres-sure go down almost to the same extent as when we are asleep. Naturally, Nat-urally, knowing that relaxation of mind and body is 80 per cent as restful to the body as sleep itself, we are very apt to go off to sleep. |