Ayurveda Suggests Waking Up At Brahma Muhurtha (Pre-Sunrise)

Ayurveda believes that an early start is best for your body. Called the “brahma muhurtha,” the time to set your alarm clock is exactly 1 hour and 36 minutes before sunrise.Rising a little before sunrise is considered optimal so that you can truly synchronize your energy levels with the sun. This time is calm and soothing and is also a good time to meditate.

If you wake up later than 6 am, it puts you squarely in what ayurveda calls the “kapha” phase of the day, characterized by heaviness and sluggishness. This will translate into your system wanting to slow down too.

A Regular Sleep Routine Is The Most Important Factor

From Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Thatcher, Anna Wintour, to Jack Dorsey, a lot of successful people down the ages have chosen to start their day at the crack of dawn – or even earlier in the case of Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who favors a 3.45 am start. What is emerging, however, is that while early starts have their benefits and staying up too late can be detrimental to mental health and affect you in other ways, even more important is ensuring regular sleep times and schedules.16 Which is why one study on sleep patterns of students found that those with irregular sleep schedules with different bedtime and waking times during the week did much worse on academic performance than their peers who stuck to a sleep routine.

Get Your 7–8 Hours Of Sleep Or Risk Fatigue, Concentration Issues, Or Health Problems

Besides having a fixed bedtime and wake time, regardless of what time you usually go to bed, there’s a minimum amount of sleep your system needs for it to cope with the stresses of daily life, process the day’s events, create memories, and revive and refresh itself to take on a new day. Like we said before, adults need an estimated 8 hours of sleep, but this number varies between individuals. Some can make do with 6 to 7 hours, while others don’t feel well-rested unless they’ve got at least 8 hours. Children should sleep for a little longer and about 9 or 10 hours will suffice depending on how old they are. The elderly tend to have one phase of deep sleep lasting around 3 to

4 hours, after which they rouse easily and dream less.

Skip your sleep and you could find yourself constantly tired, have trouble concentrating, feel drowsy during the day, and even have issues with decision making. Some people may even slip into depression or could develop an elevated risk of diabetes and high blood pressure.

Fix Sleep Deficits When You Can’t Help But Sleep Late

Sometimes circumstances make it impossible for you to sleep at what is considered a good bedtime. Shift work at the office, late night meetings, jobs where you work with people in a different time zone can all force you to keep late nights on a regular basis. Parents to young children too may find themselves awake at odd hours because of the baby’s erratic sleep schedule. If that’s the case, you’ll need to work out a sleep pattern that delivers the rest you need when you are home – even if it means catching short naps in between to overcome daytime drowsiness. Don’t worry yourself over early bedtimes. Remember, the duration of the sleep and the maintenance of a regular sleep schedule are just as important. And this you can control – even with your constraints.

What if at some point you can go back to night sleep at a proper time but aren’t able to fall asleep early? A good way to get back to normal is to wake up quite early at the same time every morning – no matter what time you fell asleep the night before. Use an alarm clock to help you. Make sure that you don’t go to bed again before about 10 pm that night. If you do this for a few nights, you should soon start to fall asleep naturally at the right time.

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