We are wake-centric. We believe, without questioning, that waking consciousness, what we're doing now is where it's at. This is the premium. This is consciousness. And that sleeping and dreaming and maybe other consciousness are secondary. And very importantly, they're seen as subservient to waking. We believe that we dream and we sleep to

make us better waking people. I'm Jocelyn K. Gly, and this is Hurry Slowly, a podcast about pacing

yourself, where I explore how you can be more creative, productive,

and resilient through the simple act of slowing down.

Now, every once in a while I get to have the wonderful experience of reading something

that utterly changes the way I think.

And that was the case with an article I recently read in Aeon magazine,

written by today's guest, Ruben Nyman, a psychologist who specializes in sleep and dream medicine.

In the piece, Rubin diagnosed our overworked, overstimulated modern condition condition with a single word that I found extremely intriguing,

hyper-arousal.

Essentially, Rubin argues that ever since the Industrial Revolution

and the introduction of artificial light,

we have been falling out of sync with our natural rhythms as human animals. Staying awake longer,

moving through our days faster, and treating sleep like a necessary evil. Like medicine,

we must force ourselves to take in order to move through our days. In other words,

our perspective as humans has become wake-centric.

And living in a wake-centric world, where we are always doing and thinking and striving,

leads us into a state of hyper-arousal, where our brain waves, our heart rates,

and even our core body temperatures are constantly jacked up, speeding along,

aided and abetted by uppers and downers like coffee and alcohol.

And the end result is that we are constantly wired and tired,

exhausted by the pace that we're operating at, but unsure how to break free.

...