Internal Body Clock

Everyone has their own idea of what counts as a “luxury”, but to me, luxury is that first moment of waking up in the morning.

When the time comes for me to get up, my eyes naturally open up, light and easy. On work days, I wake up around two hours before heading out and on my days off, about an hour later than that.

When I have an early morning flight, I do set my alarm just in case, but each and every time my eyes will be open well before the alarm rings.

Tick-tock tick-tock…

My internal body clock signals me when the time is right.

Apparently you can now get alarm clocks which slowly wake you up by starting off soft and getting steadily louder. After all, we all want to wake up slowly, steadily and gently, right?

I've heard some delightful things like how when you're asleep, your soul slips away from your body and is free to roam about – when your soul returns, surely it's better for it to come in with a soft landing rather than crashing down in a nosedive.

Babies get all out of sorts when woken from a deep sleep and surely adults would be in just as bad a mood if something were to interrupt their sleep.

“That’s all well and good, but…”

Be that as it may, our bodies are a hundred times way more onto it than we think. On the one hand, it's slave to its master's orders, but it's in tune to us on a level we can't even perceive and functions accordingly. So, if you in any way think “there's no way I can wake up naturally in the morning”, your body will follow suit with “that's totally how it is” and will end up sleeping as long as it can.

But if you start to think “alright, I might just somehow be able to wake up naturally,” your internal body clock, having been given the chance - “finally, you've noticed me. It's time to show you what I can do!” - will cooperate with you wholeheartedly.

Modern people put faith in their alarm clocks' functionality but don't put any faith in their own bodies' functions – isn’t this the opposite of how things should be? Who on earth first suggested that medicine from a pharmacy works better than the natural healing powers we have in our bodies?

All alarm clocks do is ring at whatever time we've set them for, but our internal body clock regulates our sleeping patterns perfectly and makes it possible for us to wake up naturally.

If you're “alarm clock dependent”, please, please try this little prayer, starting tonight: “Let me be able to wake up naturally tomorrow.”

Of course, you should set your clock as always to start with. But, before long, you'll get to the point where you'll wake up a little bit before your alarm rings. Once that happens for a good number of days in a row, take the plunge and try sleeping without setting an alarm. You'll be on edge, but if you think to yourself that it'll be fine, it will be fine. Then, if you can do it once, that's it.

Want to have a good mood and greet the morning feeling refreshed? Try this!

[You can find the original post in Japanese 「体内時計」here.]