This is episode 1,559.

Welcome to the Daily Meditation Podcast.

I'm Mary Meckley and I honor you

for giving yourself permission today to slow down. And as you get ready to meditate, I welcome

you to our series this week where we're focusing on calming your mind and body so you can

sleep better. Of course these techniques will also help you to focus your mind. It'll also help

you to feel more energy throughout your day and to feel happier. So in yesterday's episode you

discovered how exposing yourself to blue light from your devices such as your phone, your computer, and the television can interrupt your sound sleep. And in today's episode I want to

share with you that when you wake up in the morning, if you expose

yourself to sunlight, especially in the early morning hours, this is one of the best

ways to help your body sleep well at night. And the reason is because when you are spending time in the sunlight during the day, this acts as a guide for your body,

and according to the National Sleep Foundation, they emphasize that when you expose yourself to sunlight during the day,

there are powerful connections between the eyes and the brain's biological timekeeper, and the

light rays influence the chemistry and behavior, and keep us in sync with the ebb and flow of the day.

And when you think back over millennia, humans have orchestrated their days, their work, their play all around the hours of sunlight,

especially before the invention of electricity.

So when the day started to close

and the sun went down. Humans naturally felt themselves slowing down

and easing themselves into sleep at night. They kept the lights low in their homes because they didn't have the

bright electricity. We have today where we can illuminate our house inside when it's nighttime and it can be as

bright at night inside our homes as it is outside during the day. And this confuses our bodies. So the more you can do to keep the lights

low at night when the sun goes down this will give your body the cue that it's

...