Sunday Spark Sessions

Foreign welcome to Sunday Spark session at 6:30pm Pacific. And today is all about the impact of sleep on mental and physical health. Hopefully all having a fabulous Sunday. Walt, welcome to the show. Luke, welcome to the show. Happy to have you all here. I really want to talk about sleep because it is so vital for everything that we do across the board in our life. Relationships, mental health, physical health. Happy Easter, Luke. Hope you're having an awesome Sunday with the family and friends and to all the Cadre sphere, hopefully having an amazing Sunday with family and friends, loved ones, super important.

I am a fanatic when it comes to sleep. Tracking my sleep every night, pretty much. Fat, Fitbit, whatever. If you wear a wearable smartwatch, Apple watch, Garmin, Fitbit, what have you. So for example, so last night, so I worked till 4 yesterday. So I worked at 8:30am to 4pm Pacific and then went to my folks because my folks moved in their new place and they were super pumped. I was super pumped for them because they moved to their new place and then in this really nice area and I was super proud of them and me and my wife went to visit.

So we had a really nice Easter Saturday. Happy night. So it was very, very fun, very, very relaxing, good vibes and you know, peace, tranquility. Right? So that's what my folks have been like working towards throughout their entire life because earlier on in life they, they had a business and it was really, really kind of chaotic and busy and. And my mom and dad, like especially my dad is always emphasized he needs his eight hours. He needs his eight hours and. And that kind of stuck with me and I've always needed my eight hours.

And it's just when you get the proper sleep, it makes everything else easier that you're gonna do the next day. So it's really giving you a productivity boost physically and mentally with whatever you're gonna tackle the next day or the day of that you're in right now. So last night, like I wanted to watch a show with my wife. When we drove back, it was about an hour drive and I was just feeling bad because I was, you know, I've been working on my personal training course. I've been drumming up content for you guys.

Really hammering that home because I really want to promote Cadre on my YouTube channel. Let everyone know my YouTube channel, like what Cadre is all about. Just really emphasized like it's a, it's an amazing place to be and people will like, people need this kind of outlet to be able to improve their mind, body and soul. All right. Which is what my brand's all about. So last night had a long drive back. We stayed for a couple hours right after work finished work goes home within 10 minutes me and my wife drove to my parents place which was an hour.

So we got there just before 5:30, started having happies and everything, chatting, enjoying our time. And then we didn't leave till about 9:30 at night and then yeah, or 9. And then we didn't get home till yeah, basically just after 10. And I was so bagged and I was like, okay, you know, no, no, no late night. I wanted to. And I knew I had this session today. So like I literally slept until 9am and although I don't have kids yet, me and my wife are eventually gonna have kids. So that routinizing your sleep and just get getting as close to eight hours as possible, it is such a game changer for like I woke up and I felt like a new person.

Like you know, you know those days when you sleep so well or you sleep like quality and quantity, right? They're both important, but especially quality and the way that you get the quality sleep to help enhance the mind and the body is not any. I actually just did a sleep hygiene challenge on my YouTube channel and I always enjoy doing it because I'm someone that's always had a pretty easy time with sleep. But like everyone else out there, I still have my stressful days. It's not, it's not always easy to go to sleep and sometimes the minds, you know, your mind is up, your, you're tossing and turning, you're thinking about things, you're thinking about the day, you're thinking about, oh, why did I say that?

Say what I said that way or think that way. So definitely there's days where I'm just like everyone else and I have a hard time sleeping. But because overall over the long haul I've been able to sleep soundly and peacefully. And I would say probably the number one kind of tip is getting enough movement throughout the day, whether you're a morning person or night owl. S. Rolstad welcome to the live. Happy to have you here again. Srolstad 13:19 we're talking about sleep optimization and how important it is for the mind and body.

Basically, you know, we all know how important sleep is, but we often neglect it, right? So even if you're someone that hasn't been getting enough sleep, if you just get an extra half hour a night, I'm telling you, maybe even another maybe, even if you don't have a harder time going to bed at the right time. So sleep time when you go to bed, wake time when you wake up, sticking to that same, those same time frames are super important. So these are some tips that I outline in my sleep hygiene challenge on my YouTube channel and that my YouTube channel is mind Dash Set, which I'll start outlining that in the clips that I post to Cadre as well.

Sleep and wake time, super, super important. The more that we stay consistent with when we go to bed and when we wake up, the easier it is to get to get to sleep, to create that rhythm, create that cadence, that habituation of our sleep. It's super helpful and it makes it easier overall to keep our energy, our energy at a nice steady pace. So sleep and wake time, number one. Number two, which I already talked about a little bit earlier because I got, I got sidetracked was exercise. Movement, getting out, getting fresh air, like exercising outside, like going on hikes, going on walks, going on a run or a jog, Weight training.

I love to weight train and not last night, but the night before. Yesterday was Saturday. So yeah, Friday, Friday night I did a little boxing in the garage because I got a heavy bag. So it all helps. And I just did 20 minutes. I said 20 minutes. I just did. I always do three minute rounds and then I usually do five to seven. Five to seven rounds. So like seven rounds of three minutes, that's 21 minutes, we're done. So I just take. And just take your time. Right? The exercise that you do doesn't always have to be like a thousand percent.

In fact, it's actually better when it's like 70 to 75% because then you're going to go into the next day that you exercise and you'll be like you're going to have gas in the tank and you want to have enough gas in the tank and it's going to help with your sleep. So sleep and wake times, exercise, getting that fresh air, getting outside, hiking, walking and walking is an amazing and underutilized exercise too because it's bonding time with your spouse or bonding time with your kids or bonding time with your significant other.

So it's super, super helpful that way. So sleep and wake time, exercise. And another thing I want to talk about was eating. Make sure we're not eating too close to bedtime. I'll be honest, I eat till. Because I work 9 to 5:30, so I eat pretty much till 9 o' clock at night because sometimes we're not eating dinner till 8pm because that's just when everything's done. Because dishes walking the dog, we walk, we're trying to walk our dog for at least an hour. Well not an hour all the time, but as the weather gets nicer it's nice to get a good walk in with a dog like a little bit later.

So definitely not eating too close to bedtime. Because if you're eating too close to bedtime like within an hour or half an hour, you're definitely, it's going to keep you up because your body is working on digesting all that food you just ate. So try and give yourself more of a gap of digestion time and when you eat. So keep that in mind. So that's tip three, not eating too close to bedtime. I would say tip four, have a nice relaxing wind down ritual. So tip four, wind down ritual. When I say wind down ritual I'm talking like yoga, like stretching.

Let's say you had a really heavy duty training session today or yesterday like, like, because I trained really hard on the heavy bang on on Friday and I skipped yesterday. I want to do some cardio today and then with some like yoga because I feel, because it's, I listen, listen to your body. It's like intuitive training, intuitive eating, listening to what your body wants is super important because some days if you push too hard right, you're going to be like, oh, you're going to over train and then your body is going to take longer to recover.

And as, because as we age it takes us longer to recover. So we want to ensure that we're giving ourselves, giving, giving ourselves adequate exercise, giving ourselves adequate time to recover and part of recovery, bing, bing, bing, sleep. So making sure that we're exercising but not too intense, but we're making sure that we get enough sleep and get enough recovery and part of that recovery process is a wind down ritual for your sleep. Because if we're, if we're too wired and we're doing too much too close to bedtime, the same thing applies.

If we're eating too close to bedtime, it's going to affect our sleep. If we're thinking too close to bedtime and we don't have like a think, thinking cutoff time, then you're going to be thinking about work, you're going to be thinking about everything too close to bedtime and you're not going to wind down. So a trick to physiologically push out that energy that you've been holding on to for the remainder of the day even after you exercise. Because sometimes, even after you exercise, you still might be thinking about everything part of your wind down ritual.

Add in a combination of or just a few of these things. Yoga, meditation, breath work. So I try and do, in my meditation, I try and do the breath work because it helps center me and get me to focus on what I want to focus on. So I do what's called like an induction or I will focus on like for instance, I want to be a really successful personal trainer and then me and my wife want to go to Japan. So we already have all the building blocks and the pieces that we're putting together to go to Japan. And I've been manifesting it in my meditations.

And so you can manifest multiple things, whatever it is you're trying to improve or that you want to manifest and attract to you into your life. And a big, I'm a big fan and proponent of Dr. Joe Dispenza's work and he talks a lot about how we all have the ability to manifest our dream life through hard work, right? Through doing, doing the work through your meditations, through your positive affirmations, through exercise and through working towards your goals. Right? We can all do it. And I totally and firmly believe that.

And he, he always talks about like finding an area of focus, right? And my area of focus is going to Japan. I've been manifesting it every single day for literally like months in preparation because we already bought our one way tickets, right, for using points, we're going to be getting our other one way tickets going back from Japan, back home. So all these little pieces are helping manifest that dream vacation. And then similarly with my personal training dream of being a full time, full fledged personal trainer, Canadian personal trainer, and for my clients and building my own brand, all of that is like coming together through these meditations.

So a thing I do to help reset the mind when I'm maybe monkey mind, I'm a little bit too distracted is the breath work. So I'll go like so inhale for four seconds, hold and then exhale for four seconds and then hold. So it's basically like in the Oak app that I was telling you guys about, O AK they have all these different breathwork types of breath work. One was deep relaxation, which is like four seconds in, hold for seven and then out for or hold for eight and then out for seven seconds and then box breathing, which I just demonstrated to you guys is 4 seconds in hold, 4 seconds out hold.

So it's basically they call it box breathing because it's just like a very short duration of Breath, very short duration. Exhale, very short duration of breath. So it's like you're in a little, little box. So, um, that helps a ton with going to sleep. And I actually used that last night because I still had a full day at work and I was preparing for a meeting with my boss and the meeting went really, really well because I was manifesting my meditations that it was going to go well, right? In my exercise when I was training, I was manifesting that it was going to go well.

And sometimes that mental rehearsal, that mental preparation in the meditations, using my breath to detach myself from my, my body and my mind, you can do that. And it's a physiological way to not distance yourself from your fudge, your thoughts, but detach yourself from your thoughts. So you're not so fixated on any outcomes because you're, you're kind of, you're resetting your, your energy. And that's what we all are trying to do a lot of times, right? We can't unthink things, thoughts, but what we can do is we can decompress our thought, decompress our brain by using the breath.

And it's such an amazing tool to help fall asleep faster. So going back to that, your wind down ritual, stretching the body is another physiological way. Stretching out your muscles is a great way, right? Let's say you had a stressful day. A lot of people are going to carry their stress in their muscles, right? And when we carry our stress in our muscles, it's gonna, it makes it a lot harder to go to sleep because your muscles, you're rigid, you're tight. So it's like when we stretch, when we do the breath work, we're opening up our body.

And every time we open up our body it makes us think more clearly, more creatively and manage stress stressors in our life better. So try it for yourself. Do a combination of a few things that I mentioned or do a few things. And so wind down ritual could be combination of meditation, breath work, yoga, reading, bath, like a warm bath, warm shower, or could be just one of those things. So then that was, I think our fourth tip was want a nice wind down ritual. And then another thing that I'd have to say, which was another great lesson from this sleep hygiene challenge, which I've done a few times, is the quality of your mattress and the quality of your pillows and then having, making sure you have some sort of like blackout drapes.

Eye mask. I use an eye mask. Me and my wife, I got her to use an Eye mask too. And it's a game changer for sleep because the more light that you have coming in, that's that your eyes can see before bedtime. That signals to your mind that you're not ready for bed because you keep seeing that light. Light is for during the day, dark is for going to bed at night. So if you have any light around, turn off your light, your screen, your device. All of our devices have the ability now and even on our TVs, to tone down the brightness because that light that's hitting our eyes is blue light during the day, right?

Or junk light. But nowadays we have the ability on our devices to go into the setting and there's a, when you go to the brightness and you hold, click and hold your finger on the brightness on your phones and they all have, pretty much all have the ability about, I'd say 90% of the phones or your tablets or your laptops now have it built in. So for like a night mode. So the night mode on our phones and our devices makes it so it's like amber red, like kind of, kind of orangey looking. And the reason for that is because it's a lot easier on the eyes.

So if you are doing any late night computer work or later into the night, it'll still be a little bit easier for you to fall asleep. It'll, you know, it'll impact your sleep a little bit, but it won't have nearly the same impact as you just have regular blue light shining at your, your eyes. Same thing with daytime sunlight that's, you know, creeping in through your blinds and you're trying to sleep too. So at night, block out blue light on your devices, on your TVs, your laptops, like roll your blinds so you're not, you're not getting any of that, that sunlight coming in.

And if you have drapes or anything like that in your, in your bedroom, close the drapes so it's pitch black in your, in your space in your bedroom where you sleep. And then, yeah, try and use an eye mask. If you can't use an eye mask, then just have some sort of like white noise in the background too. That's super helpful for going to sleep. So hopefully you guys all enjoyed this little Cadre live for Sunday Spark session. How sleep enhances mental and physical performance. Thank you all for tuning in.

Have an amazing Easter Sunday. And if you get tomorrow off Easter Monday, have an amazing Easter Monday. I hope you all had a, an amazing Easter long weekend. Take care Cadre.