Hello and welcome back to the practicing human podcast the podcast where every day we are getting a little better at life. I'm your host Cori Miskara and I'm tuning in from Yakima, Washington, the Pacific Northwest, and I am recently or currently

discovering that cold dry air is very different than cold humid air.

This cold air is nothing compared to New York cold air and I feel like I have a superpower, a

superpower of tolerance for the cold while I'm out here. I knew that dry heat was

different than humid heat. I did not know it translated to the cold.

So now that you have a meaningless update on my life, let's get into the episode. Today,

we are going to be continuing on the theme of sleep.

Two episodes ago, we discussed three tips to deep in sleep.

Yesterday's episode, we talked about why meditation is different than sleep and today we'll talk about if

meditation can replace sleep. More to come on that in a moment, but let's start by settling in together with the sound of the bells.

I'll ring them, you listen, let it drop your attention deeper into the present moment. Can meditation replace sleep? It's important for me to first acknowledge that sometimes sleep is what we most need,

more than meditation. Case in point, there's a great meditation teacher named Deepama. She's since passed, but a big part of her story was how much of her life she endured incredible suffering. She was forced into a marriage. She didn't want to be in.

She then ended up falling in love with that person but lost him shortly after.

She had children. They passed, she experienced a tremendous amount of trauma and hardship

to the point of feeling such despair in her life that it wasn't worth going on.

As a last resort, she went to a monastery to find peace.

And as soon as she started meditating, the first thing that came up was that she was exhausted for years of the suffering the grief

that she endured her body wouldn't let her shut down it wouldn't let her sleep in the

way that she needed to.

And the first three weeks of her time at that monastery

where she was supposed to be meditating hours a day,

she spent that time sleeping.

...