It’s Stress Reduction Sunday. Read my weekly post in the Connecticut Watchdog, This week’s entry, Sleep-Deprived Society :: The Critical Importance for Sleep in Managing Stress
In previous entries we’ve explored the nature of stress and how paying attention to the present moment through mindfulness can be an effective antidote to stress. Today we’ll begin to explore how sleep plays a role in stress and what we can do to improve sleep quality and quantity. What I’d like to impress is how important sleep is.
Sleep is critical to well-being. It’s one of the “Big Three” of what I call “Exquisite Self-Care” along with exercise and nutrition. Yet sleep is pervasively undervalued. We are a sleep deprived society according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Surveys conducted by the NSF (1999-2004) reveal that at least 40 million Americans suffer from many different sleep disorders and 60 percent of adults report having sleep problems a few nights a week or more.