016 Good sleep is not a luxury | Petrea King

Lack of sleep is not the consequence but the cause of really serious illnesses
— Petrea King -

When I met Petrea at a Quest for Life Foundation retreat I heard her story first hand.  I was amazed that months of meditation in a monastery near Assisi in Italy was paramount in her healing from acute myeloid leukemia as was integrating past trauma.  How fabulous that Petrea is living the life she came here to live and through her vision thousands of people are supported to get back into the driver's seat of life.

Inspire yourself with these essential insights from Petrea

We spoke about

  • The impact of being a coper on Petrea’s health

  • The challenge of living with the uncertainty of a diagnosis

  • Our responsibility with our bodies and brains

  • The mind being a great servant but appalling master

  • The distinction between having feelings but not being the feeling

  • Our first or essential nature is who we are

  • Learning from others and our bodies

  • The opportunity about coming back to the present

  • The need for deep levels of replenishing sleep

  • Learning how to let go both during the day and when we fall asleep

  • A conducive environment to sleep

  • Building a practice of reflecting on the day and any unfinished “business”

  • Practical ideas for supporting you to get better sleep

  • Creating the ritual around the last hour before you go to bed

  • Being able to incorporate in noise as what is

  • How retreats at Quest for Life support people get back in charge of what’s going on

  • Managing all the D’s in life

  • Finding out what it is to live your life on purpose

  • Good sleep is a foundation for wellbeing

If you got value from this episode if you have not yet done so please Subscribe, Rate and Review on iTunes or Stitcher. You can follow the instructions here.  If you know someone else that would get value from this episode as well please share it with them.

Until next time fabulous podcast listener, I’m Bev and I invite you to live the fab life with me now!

Episode Links

You can find Petrea at:

Website: www.questforlife.com.au

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/QuestforLifeAus/

Sleeptember® Events

Sleep Beyond Belief will resolve the problem of feeling stressed out and instead we will be tapping out! Let's tap out your stress so you can Sleep Beyond Belief!

Petrea King discussing why sleep is not a luxury on Living Fabulously with Bev Roberts podcast P.png

Value Quotes

“I’d been putting a lot of emotions down for a very long time and not dealing with them”

“I had my life all packed up in this suitcase ready for the big trip then the plane got cancelled”

“Be in right relationship with your body, your mind and your feelings”

“Learn not to take your own life quite so personally”

“Recognise you have a body that you are not your body but you have a body and you do need to nourish it appropriately”

“You have a brain and you need to quieten it down on a regular basis”

“Keep your brain in good company”

“You want to manage your mind and not be managed by your mind”

“You have feelings and recognising that this is not who I am but it is what I am feeling”

“If we can stay with our essential nature then we have more sense of the unity and interconnectedness of life”

“The present moment can become a wonderful refuge from the internal suffering that our mind can bring to our circumstance”

“If you get a good night’s sleep almost everything looks better the next day”

“When we are restless in some way we may never arrive at that deep sleep level or if we do we don’t stay there long enough to really experience the benefits”

“If you go to sleep during the relaxation or at the end of the relaxation you go straight into your deep sleep which would otherwise take you several hours to arrive at”

“Create a sacred space where you can just be with yourself on a daily basis and internally declutter yourself”

“That reviewing time can save a lot of misery in the future because it gives you time to reflect on what has been for the day rather than thinking about it at 10pm when you climb into bed or never thinking about it which means things will begin to fall through the cracks”

“The more tired you get the more likely things are to fall through the cracks and that’s not a good way to run your business or to run your life”

“It’s building in these rituals so that your brain recognises that these are the rituals that I utilise before I go to sleep”

“You need to utilise all of these rituals in the hour before you go to bed”

“Make an absolute commitment to yourself that you don’t think things through in the middle of the night”

“Get back into the driver’s seat of life so you no longer feel a victim in the circumstance of life”

“A deep call from within yourself to get into right relationship with yourself”

”Live the life that you came here to live”

“Be a living demonstration of life unfolding through us and playing the part that we came here to play”

015 4 things to build new brain | Bev Roberts

You can become smarter, more creative and more productive than you thought was possible and in my book that’s worth taking action for
— Bev Roberts -

Wow it’s so exciting for me to be talking more about the 4 things that build new brain because every single one Dr Fiona Kerr spoke about are things I value and implement myself.

By now I am sure you have realised I am a sleep maven and yet each of these things have been my own learning as part of my wellbeing journey.  So I wanted to do a deep dive into the 4 things that build new brain and share some practical strategies to implement these.

4 things to build new brain on Living Fabulously with Bev Roberts podcast F.png

I spoke about

  • The 4 things Dr Fiona Kerr spoke about which were human interconnection, novelty through learning, movement and sleep

  • Brené Brown's definition of connection

  • The multifaceted value human connection brings to our lives

  • Our learning from others' experiences and insight

  • Safeguarding human connection above new experiences

  • The TED talk by Rita Pierson urging educators to connect with students

  • 3 ideas for creating an opportunity for connection

  • How the brain reacts to novelty

  • My personal experience of retraining my brain

  • 3 ideas from Belle Beth Cooper on how to increase novelty when learning

  • Lauren Gelman's view that movement is medicine

  • 6 ways exercise makes your brain better

  • Ideas for incorporating movement in your life

  • Sleep building new brain

  • The habits and outcomes of someone who has good sleep quality

  • Tash Corbin's experience of getting back to basics

  • Getting better quality sleep is about consistent action and you can keep it simple

If you got value from this episode if you have not yet done so please Subscribe, Rate and Review on iTunes or Stitcher. You can follow the instructions here.  If you know someone else that would get value from this episode as well please share it with them.

Until next time fabulous podcast listener, I’m Bev and I invite you to live the fab life with me now!

Episode Links

You can find out more about the references here:

Sleeptember® Events

1) Sleep Beyond Belief will resolve the problem of feeling stressed out and instead we will be tapping out! Let's tap out your stress so you can Sleep Beyond Belief!

2) Turn your sheet wrangling into blissful slumber... when you create a great sleep ritual you can create huge changes in your energy and your performance! Julie Nelson and I ran an online Scent, Sleep & Ritual Masterclass. Catch the recording HERE ONLY AU$27

014 Build new brain through sleep | Dr Fiona Kerr

Devices are designed to basically get us hooked. Your phone is designed very much like a slot machine and so are most apps
— Dr Fiona Kerr -

What a pleasure to interview such a multi-passionate and talented woman. Dr Fiona Kerr brings such fascinating aspects to the sleep conversation including the connection that we build new brain when we get quality sleep for a long enough timeframe. I share her concern that we have become sleep starved as a society and when we recognise how creativity comes about we will begin to see the benefits of restorative sleep.

Inspire yourself with these essential insights from Fiona.

We spoke about

  • How Fiona came to be a neurogenesis expert

  • Building new brain through connection, exercise, novelty and sleep

  • The role that sleep cycles play in the brain cleaning up, filing the data then having some fun

  • The way that memory works

  • Role of sleep in creativity

  • The role of a 30 minute refreshing nap

  • Why you may feel groggy if you nap in the day

  • Epigenetic strengths in the area of memory and learning in deep sleep

  • Impact of artificial light including technology at night

  • Relationship between being tired, our willpower and devices

  • The problem of being task based at night

  • Shallow task based activity versus deep thinking work and the impact on creativity

  • The importance of focusing on one thing at a time

  • The power of touch and eye gaze on healing

  • Taking time to interact with others

If you got value from this episode if you have not yet done so please Subscribe, Rate and Review on iTunes or Stitcher. You can follow the instructions here.  If you know someone else that would get value from this episode as well please share it with them.

Until next time fabulous podcast listener, I’m Bev and I invite you to live the fab life with me now!

Episode Links

You can find Fiona at:

Website: http://fiona-kerr.com/

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/fiona-kerr-72624a1b

Fiona has spent a number of years investigating the building of new brain, which can be done at any age with the right conditions, and is currently trying to complete a non-academic book which outlines in lay terms how to grow new brain.

Fiona was a guest on the ABC show “Ockham’s Razor” with Robyn Williams and taped a podcast called Neurogenesis: a force for creativity.  A short written summary of the broadcast can be found here:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/rewiring-your-own-brain/6358410

Fiona appeared on the Insight SBS program on sleep, speaking on the cognitive role of sleep, naps and biphasic rhythms, and the addictive nature of technologies on the brain. Here is a link to a news interview and article written about napping, one of the subjects covered:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/article/2016/05/09/power-naps-creativity-and-efficiency?cid=cxenseab_b&cx_navSource=related-side-cx#cxrecs_s

Dr Fiona Kerr discussing how to build new brain through sleep on Living Fabulously with Bev Roberts podcast P.png

Value Quotes

“Can you change your brain? Yes you can. Can you grow your brain? Yes you can.”

“Sleep is critical, especially the later hours of sleep.”

“We’ve become sleep starved as a society.”

“Willpower is like a muscle. The more you use it and exercise it the better you get.”

“Devices are designed to basically get us hooked. Your phone is designed very much like a slot machine and so are most apps.”

“Don’t pick your phone or devices at least for an hour before you want to go to sleep.”

“Often companies will get sold technologies as increasing productivity but they don’t they increase busyness.”

“Don’t have the phone dinging at you or the email alert. Just switch them off.”

“Daydreaming mode is critical to zoom out to the big picture.”

“We know that it’s really critical to connect and we watch our world more and more being disconnected through being told we are connecting more through technology but it’s not the same.”

“We need to give ourselves time out to do something that we like to do to feed our own soul.”

“We need to safeguard the value and the power of human interconnection.”

Sleeptember® Events

Sleep Beyond Belief will resolve the problem of feeling stressed out and instead we will be tapping out! Let's tap out your stress so you can Sleep Beyond Belief!