Tag: Bed

8 Tips to Become a Morning Person

8 Tips to Become a Morning Person

by Samantha, selected from DivineCaroline

You don’t have to naturally be an early bird to become one. Make the  following changes to your daily routine and environment and give  yourself a little time to adjust and you, too, can be one who effortlessly gets  the proverbial worm.

1. Go to bed early.

Yes, it’s a given, but it’s important enough to emphasize; in order  to wake  up early and feel refreshed, you must go to bed early enough to  get a full  night’s sleep. Additionally, you should make your bedtime  consistent every  night in order to create a pattern that you will  instinctively follow if  repeated long enough.

2. Wake up at the same time every day.

Just as too little sleep makes you tired, too much sleep does the  same  thing. Plus, if you don’t create a pattern for your body to follow,  it will  resist your early-bird intentions. Wake up at the same time  every day,  including weekends, until your body adjusts and ultimately,  you may not need a  wake-up call at all.

3. Get a relentless alarm clock.

The yin to the above tip’s yang, you aren’t likely to get up early  if you  can perpetually hit the snooze button. Find a fool-proof way to  make sure you  wake when you are supposed to—without delay—and you’re on  your way to morning  person status.

4. Don’t drink caffeine or excessive alcohol in the evening.

All your good intentions will be foiled if you drink the wrong  beverages.  Caffeine obviously keeps you perky, which is great up until  the time you’re  ready to go to sleep. Don’t drink any after noon,  especially when you’re  starting out your new routine, to give you better  snoozing odds. Alcohol, too,  can foil best-laid sleeping plans. It may help you get groggy,  but later it disrupts sleep, causing exhaustion that lingers into the next  day.

5.  Exercise in the early evening.

While exercise gets the heart rate going and boosts energy, it also  helps  you get seriously restful sleep—so long as you give yourself  enough winding-down time after your workout.  Break a sweat right after work and you’ll have plenty of  time to get groggy before bedtime. Bonus: It  helps eliminate the stress that  might keep your mind busy when it should  be snoozing.

6. Eat healthy early evening meals.

Food hangovers happen all the time. In fact, most of us are  suffering from  one at any given time. Unfortunately, the kind of foods  you eat can disrupt  sleep, too. While you’re not likely to change your  diet just to accommodate  sleep, you can and should eat on the early side  so your body isn’t overwhelmed  trying to digest and dream.

7. Prepare for your day the night before.

Being a morning person doesn’t have to mean you bound out of bed and  whiz  around. Any sleepy shortcomings you have can be overcome with some  advance  planning. Get your coffee at the ready, lay out your wardrobe  for the day, and  make your lunch the night before. Then you’ll have less  to do as you drowsily  get into your new routine.

8. Reconfigure your bedroom for optimal sleep.

Sleep experts everywhere recommend that you make your bedroom a  sleep  sanctuary. That means you should keep stimulating distractions,  such as the TV,  smartphone, or computer, out of the bedroom and focus solely on soothing things  that are conducive to getting your snooze on.

Slipping Off the Bed: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone!

Slipping Off the Bed: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone!

Author: Sage Runepaw

I’m looking out my window and there’s no air conditioner in it, having been taken down as of half an hour ago. I admire the amount of light in my room again, and gaze out at the big tall maple across the street, the quiet setting, my butterscotch-gold car sitting next to the walkway and blending in with the golden oak leaves over the carpet of dry olive-green grass that’s sticking its scraggly self out, and enjoying the airy, autumnal energy. I’ve been practicing at attuning to the Four Winds, and I’ve been enjoying the energy that the not-Mabon-anymore, not-yet-Samhain time brings. I always like the “in between” spaces- they fascinate me. Anywho…

My across-the-street neighbor’s son comes out from the driveway and comes with a ball. He kicks the ball. It goes away, rolls up his incline driveway, and rolls back to him. This got me thinking, as I’m watching him pick it up, kick at it, go after it to retrieve it in the ubercute manner tiny toddlers do this in.

We kick things we want to ‘go somewhere’, but they come back, or we retrieve them. Do we ever really let them go? Do we keep them solely because they are “ours”? Do they bring anything back with them that wasn’t originally there… just adding on and ‘snowballing’ back at us? This is much like the way of the universe, isn’t it? – Seeing our intent go “out there”, sending it out, then later on, it comes back to us in the form of karma, be it good, bad, or whatever shade of grey in between. I’m not even going into spellcraft here- I’m sure that if you take a couple minutes to think about it, you’ll find a proverbial or metaphorical ‘ball’ in your life somewhere.

For all intents and purposes, I got up this morning, got breakfast and plopped my butt down back in bed to enjoy it and to journal down some things I’ve been discovering through my 303 studies and recent dreamwork. So I sit there, turn on my beloved new Zune (I’m not one for new technological toys unless my current, older ones which did the job broke- about 5 discmen and 2 boomboxes breaking and I’m ready!) , and start writing.

My vision suddenly becoming lower and lower to the aqua bedsheets should have warned me, but as I’d been snapped out of my own personal world- that of The Word Being Written As I Think It and the Mystery of Ink Capturing It in Time, coupled with the Beauty of Ink Manifesting on Paper- I felt my butt slide, though I wore long jeans and a t-shirt.

Now normally butt-sliding is usually designated for the loose toilet seat in the bathroom that Mom and I have been too lazy to fix (which usually results on saying hello to the cold ceramic floor or the cold porcelain, whichever comes first, and at the risk of giving TMI for the readers of this article) , but this time it was a fabric, soft, warmer butt-slide thing going on. And in the meantime I’m too stunned to react (as well as being a zombie because come on, I got up at 9:00 am on a week-day after a late night of work, and caffeine doesn’t work on me) – and so the next thing I see is me sitting on the floor staring at my heap of Stuff (capitalized due to the nature of the random objects in question never quite leaving the floor, getting relocated every time I clean) next to the bed.

So I’m sitting here a little longer than others might normally do, or the “Durrrrh?” moment, which consisted of many more long moments. And I’m staring, wondering why on earth I’m on the floor. And it occurs to me, again belatedly, that my perspective is not of the journal page I was writing in. My train of thought was entirely derailed (and rightly so) when I fell on my butt.

Then the proverbial lightning bolt struck- and it occurred to me that “This is not the perspective you’re used to”. Of course not, on a mundane level- it’s been years since I fell on my butt on the floor from the bed, even though I sit in the same exact spot on the floor when I’m drawing. On a spiritual level- and a synchronicity in my life, as I’d just been journaling about perspective itself and new realizations in my life- falling on my butt reminded me of three important things.

1) It reinforced that (this is my own personal truth talking) perspective can be everything, and all we have to do is quit the mental yammering inside our heads, or the “us” factor, or stopping our emotions and/or thoughts cold-turkey, open our eyes, and really -see-. Sometimes, detachment is better than letting something ride itself out to the end with a healthy outlet, or refusing point-blank to deal with something (remember that ball? it’ll come back with crap all over it for you to wipe off!) , or worse, twisting it- among many other things people can do.

2) It doesn’t matter if you’ve fallen off your proverbial comfort zone- you can always choose to get right back up. How long it takes you or the manner in which you get back up, however, is up to you. It’s also up to you whether or not you want to go back to the comfortable position you were in before- but whether or not you can actually attain that (and whether or not you’re actually comfortable if you do attain said comfy position) is up to the Gods of Comfortable Positions.

3) No matter how well you think you made that bed, you can and probably will fall out of it from the sheets suddenly gaining a mind of their own and ejecting you forcibly from them.

So what do we -do- with that proverbial ball? No matter which angle we view it from, we’ll still have a ball. It is what it is. Its purpose is open for interpretation, but it’s that interpretation that will affect how we interact with it. And like the sphere that it is, it’ll roll into our lives some way or other.

For me, it rolled into my life by my decision to break with a slow-morning tradition of getting back in bed and parking my butt on the desk chair to look out the window and admire the autumn weather. If I tried to go back to my comfort zone, I’d have missed out.

And no matter how I look at it, something that’s round and rolls in any direction is pretty freaking cool. 🙂

What’s the ball like in your life? How are you interacting with it?

10 Feng Shui Tips for Increasing Love and Romance

10 Feng Shui Tips for Increasing Love and Romance

Prep your home for passion

by Stephanie Dempsey

Feng Shui practitioners believe that the best way to attract love is to adjust your environment accordingly. Dingy surroundings, piles of clutter, and self-absorbed artwork can actually drive Cupid from your door. Here, then, are 10 simple tips for finding your perfect mate… or for increasing the passion in your long-term relationship or marriage.

Create Cozy Seating Arrangements
Single chairs send a loud and clear message to prospective suitors and spouses: Back off! If you’re looking for love, create cozy seating arrangements from love seats, sofas, and chairs. Putting chairs at comfortable angles to each other will signal that you’re ready to welcome a relationship.

Replace Images of Lone Figures with Pictures of Happy Couples
Artwork has a tremendous impact on the subconscious. When you surround yourself with photos, paintings, sculptures, and knickknacks of solitary figures, you’ll carry yourself accordingly. Replacing such images with representations of happy couples will make you more receptive to love.

Keep the Television Out of the Bedroom
Nothing kills romance like the drone of late night television. If you have trouble falling asleep, try unwinding by reading love poetry or romantic novels. Your subconscious will shift accordingly, making you a virtual love magnet.

Treat Yourself to Sensual Bedding
That old ratty pillow from college and those serviceable sheets aren’t doing your sex life any favors. Go ahead and splurge on pillows, blankets, and sheets that invite you to linger in bed.

Downsize from a King to a Queen
Sleeping on a huge mattress won’t encourage intimacy. Invest in a comfortable queen-sized bed if you’d like to cultivate more love in your life. If you simply can’t make the switch, make sure to sleep on patterned sheets to add some zest to your sex life.

Make Space for Each Other
Avoid making your partner feel crowded out by your possessions by reducing your personal clutter in shared areas of your home, closets, drawers, etc. When you demonstrate you are willing to share your physical space generously with your partner, the space in your hearts can open up, too.

Pull Your Bed away from the Wall
Pushing your bed against the wall effectively crowds out any chance for love to expand in your life. Arrange your bed so that it has enough space to walk on either side. Before you know it, you’ll be cuddling close with your special someone, instead of hugging your pillow for comfort as if you were alone.

Make Your “Gua” a Shrine to Love
Using the front door of your home as a reference point, the far right corner of your home represents relationships and is known as the “Relationship Gua” in Feng Shui. Therefore, you need to keep this area intimate and inviting. A love seat illuminated with adjustable lighting is ideal for this special spot.

Keep the Family at Bay
Your bedroom represents your romantic life. Therefore, the last images you want to see here are photos of dear old Mom and Dad. Children’s artwork and toys will also undermine your sex life. Celebrate these relationships in other areas of your household, but keep your boudoir a private retreat.

Think Pink!
Warm colors like pink and red can enliven your love life considerably. Soft shades like rose, salmon, and coral can attract a gentle partner who is attentive to your needs, while bold colors like scarlet, crimson, and burgundy will draw a passionate adventurer to your side.