Hello and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Muscarra.

In today's episode, we're going to talk about sleep patterns during the age of COVID-19 and what you may

be experiencing with your sleep during this time. More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells. So in the last few weeks I've been getting messages from people asking about why their sleep patterns are different now.

And for many people they're sleeping more than they're used to

and this is also true for me now I'm not a sleep scientist, a psychologist, or doctor.

So I'm not going to go into any sort of medical ideas around this.

The change in sleep, whether you're sleeping more or sleeping less, could very simply

have to do with not moving as much or changes to your routine that I wouldn't be able to diagnose.

But I will give you two perspectives on why you might be sleeping more than usual,

that I do feel more qualified to speak to.

The first is that this is a period of restoration,

and the mind and the body are catching up on years of exhaustion, both at the conscious, like physical level,

but also at what we might say the soul level.

And this makes me think of the story

of the great Indian meditation teacher Deepama

who experienced a tremendous amount of suffering in her life.

The loss of her children, her spouse,

multiple family members being forced into a marriage she didn't want to be in,

then falling in love and then quickly losing her partner after that.

Just really the deepest suffering and it caused her to not be able to sleep for years of her life and she

eventually got to a point in her life where she was just going to give up and there was nothing else to live for.

...