Cindi Leive

With insomnia as with any chronic problem, one must look for the underlying imbalances and root causes and address them. Here are the common sleep "mistakes" I see in my practice and their solutions.

When Cindi and Arianna accurately defined sleep as an empowerment issue for women, I recognized that empowerment is exactly what sleep can do for everyone.

When you give up unhealthy tendencies such as overdoing it on sugar, not getting enough sleep or consuming too much coffee, you can expect to get more energy.

This is it, the last post of Sleep Challenge 2010, my joint project with comrade-in-PJs Arianna Huffington to urge American women to stop walking around sleep-deprived and be good to themselves for once. So, what have I learned, other than that the world won't fall apart if I don't watch Letterman?

Recently developed sleeping pills are being promoted as effective for long term use. They produce on a 10-30 minute increase sleep in total daily sleep time, not a very large effect. But are they good for you?

Our frustrations about dreams arise out of a combination of romanticism and 21st century urgency, a mindset that leads not only to sleep deprivation but also to soul deprivation.

Sleep is one of the great mysteries of life. Like gravity or the quantum field, sleep is so fundamental that scientists still don't know exactly what it is.

Among the 972 weird things about sleep I didn't know until Arianna Huffington and I started the Sleep Challenge: There is a toothpaste that supposedly makes you sleep better.

If there is any form of incompatibility -- they snore, hog the sheets or keep you up in any other way -- and you've tried everything to remedy the situation, then you might want to think of sleeping in separate rooms.

Sex dreams are my kind of dream -- no meandering narrative, just the undeniable physical proof of the dream's meaning even after awakening. I wonder if Dr. Freud ever heard about that.

Throughout the Sleep Challenge 2010, I've faced numerous challenges in meeting my sleep goal. But this week has presented me with perhaps the toughest obstacle of all: the travel week from hell.

But hold on -- is this a realistic assessment of the sleep apnea condition, or is some writer over-blowing the situation in order to push business to the national Sleep Center sponsoring the brochure?

I know for a fact that everything in life is more interesting when you dress for it. So I've stopped collapsing in bed wearing my old Doors T-shirt, and actually started thinking of bedtime as a fashion occasion.

Several studies have reported the same results, that both long and short sleep durations are correlated with poor health and shortened lifespan, with most reporting a greater risk associated with long sleep.

The dream represents a question or message (often related to a limitation, fear or doubt) to the dreamer. It will reach a conclusion once the dreamer understands the message and resolves to make a change.

As he sits in his CA office of his startup NeuroVigil, Low holds his miniature iBrain device. The size of two pennies, the miniature iBrain marks what scientists see as a revolution in the study of sleep

If quality sleep is considered "fundamental" to high performance - how are you doing in this department? After all, all of us are performing in some aspect of our lives.

Can't sleep? Maybe it's something you ate--or didn't. The foods we eat can dramatically affect how much, and how well, we sleep.

Rather than introducing foreign chemicals that can cause a host of their own problems, my preference is always to go for the natural products that work with the body's own chemistry.

My own bedroom is where I escape to feel safe, where I relax, and where I do my best work. It's where I retreat for solitary contemplation -- where I try to leave the rest of my life behind.

I was so surprised to learn that many long-married couples don't share a bed, that I've been working on some theories why it is so much more common than I'd ever known.

According to veteran sleep researcher Dr. Samuel Dunkell, the position you choose in bed each night echoes the way you deal with your daytime waking hours.

So why does rest get so little respect? Why do people resist getting enough sleep? Is it because a Calvinist culture thinks rest is laziness? Or is it that we don't really know what rest does?

It's probably no surprise to frayed and exhausted new moms that repeated waking from deep sleep and hours of the taped yelps of crying babies are used to train Navy Seals to endure torture.

While leading a meditation class, we'll see people nodding off to sleep. Which is one of the reasons why Zen teachers whack their students with a thin bamboo stick -- it doesn't hurt but it certainly wakes them up!