Begin today’s lesson by generating a discussion about how our bodies respond to life’s “storms,” using the questions below as a starting point.
- How does your body handle stress? (Increased blood pressure or hormones, irritability, headaches, weakened immune system, insomnia, etc.)
For many people, one of the most common symptoms of stress is sleeplessness.
- What is insomnia? (According to the National Sleep Foundation, insomnia is “difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, even when a person has the chance to do so.”)
- Do any of you struggle with insomnia? Tell us about it. (If anyone in your class does and is willing to share about their experience, give them the opportunity to describe how insomnia impacts their lives. Share your own experience if applicable.)
While a night of tossing and turning isn’t the end of the world, recurring sleeplessness can have devastating effects on daily routines. According to an article by the Sleep Foundation, “Stress and anxiety often lead to insomnia and sleep problems. Insomnia symptoms may begin to dissipate once the stressful situation ends and stress subsides … People with insomnia experience excessive daytime sleepiness, fatigue, irritability, and other impairments when they are awake … Elevated stress levels have also been shown to influence the structural organization of sleep, including the duration of each sleep stage.”
Although chronic insomnia, a constantly recurring form of sleeplessness that persists longer than three months, is relatively uncommon amongst most of the population, acute insomnia, a brief form of a sleep disruption usually brought about by life circumstances, is rampant, affecting about 57% of the U.S. adult population.
- What sort of life circumstances could cause insomnia? (There are many potential answers to this question, but most of them can be boiled down to stress.)
The connection between stress and insomnia is fairly intuitive: Harvard Health describes stress as “a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can arise from any event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous … Every time the fight-or-flight response is activated, it floods the body with stress-related hormones. Over time, repeated activation of the stress response—acute or chronic—takes a toll on the body.” It’s no wonder, then, that high levels of stress can reduce our ability to fall asleep. You can’t head off to dreamland when your body thinks you’re gearing up for a bare-knuckle brawl.
Stress is everywhere, and because of technology it’s harder than ever to escape. For this very reason, apps like Calm, a mindfulness and relaxation aid that promises moments of peaceful escape amidst the chaos of normal life, have emerged over the last decade. While there’s many versions of apps like Calm, one of the key differentiators for this company is the creation of “Sleep Stories” or as they call them, “bed time stories for adults.” Let’s take a look at one of their trailers:
Play the following clip [1:01]: Calm Sleep Stories | Cinderella | Trailer
This was just a trailer. The real stories are almost half an hour long.
- What did you think of this “story”? Moreover, what do you think of apps like Calm? (Accept all reasonable responses.)
Over one million people subscribe to the Calm app every day and have reported significant health benefits; however, one can’t help thinking that sleep stories, prescription sleep aids, and the like are just temporary solutions to a bigger problem.
Today, we’ll learn about the one Person that can provide lasting calm amidst life’s chaos—let’s take a look.
