Day 127 of Your Year to Wellness; Toys in Bed

Last night's Supermoon

Get your Toys out of the Bed

A few days ago I was talking with one of my sister/friends. We discovered that we have suffered from the same problem; TMTIBS or too many toys in bed syndrome.

My friend's husband and my sister Chris have corrected us (individually) for going to bed with laptops, I Pads, cell phones, BlackBerrys and noise canceling devices.

To be honest, I’ve gotten much better; I’ve learned to remove the items a few hours before I go to sleep.

We both laughed about how in the past we were accused of having too many books in a bed, but now we’ve moved up.

When I first embarked on my journey of wellness, the electronics were among the first things I had to get rid of. Sleep is critical to your total wellness.

When you are truly out, as in REM, your mind and your body are doing the work necessary for healing itself. Your mind is downloading, storing and filing what you have learned during the day. Whether you remember or not, you are dreaming what you need to recall, see, and learn from. During REM you are literally practicing over and over again things that could, would and shouldn’t happen. Of course it’s all done in metaphors in the things we call nightmares, or weird dreams.

The need to sleep deeply is also critical to your body’s repair. Your cells rejuvenate and regenerate when you are deep in sleep.

So why do we watch TV, write emails and play with our electronic toys just before this critical stage? The answer is simple and therefore so is the solution; we do it because we have learned to.

We tell ourselves that there are not enough hours in the day, so we use the ones from our nights. We learn to allow the things that drive us nuts at the office to get between us and all of the good things we do in bed. (I was talking about sleep, but yeah, that too.)

Whatever is learned can be unlearned but it requires effort. Our scripts and patterns become a part of us, but we can learn something new.

Tonight, get your toys out of the bed. Read a book, or have one read to you. Call your parents and tell them you love them (but I have to warn you, us older folks go to bed early.) Call your children and have them tell you a story. Yes, they will think you are crazy, but you read to them.

Get your toys out of your bed and sleep like a baby---no wait, they wake up all through the night; sleep like an old hard working farmer.

Your bed is not an office. It’s time that we stop using it as one. Let’s put an end to TMTIBS; together, I know we can.

Be you, be free, rest well

Bertice Berry, PhD.

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