It’s been awhile since I last post on my blog. I’ve been traveling a lot. Among other things, running a very successful stop snoring workshop in England.
That was a lot of fun and an extremely effective healing process. People seem to be more motivated and focused when they’re coached personally than by just following a book.
Some of the questions that came up on this workshop motivated me to write today’s post.
You see, snoring usually occurs either very early night or in so called REM sleep (dreaming sleep). Why this happens is an interesting subject and leads us to the solution to stop snoring. That’s the subject of this article.
But first, we must look at what happens when we’re awake. During the day, we gather tension in our body. Not only do we become physically tired and tense, an emotional tension is also stored in our muscles.
Think about it. When you get angry, isn’t your tendency to make a fist with your hands. Even if you don’t intend to hit anybody. It’s part of our unconscious body language and our bodies do it automatically.
It’s estimated, the tone of our voice and our facial expression counts for at least 80% of our total communication. The words we use count for less than 20%.
Sometimes, we don’t want to show how we really feel. We try to consciously control our voice and facial expression. This is the poker face, the stone face or the superficial nice face, we sometimes have to put on. A customer service representative can’t scream at their clients, even if he/she is raging inside.
Every time we freeze our feelings like that, they’re stored in our muscles, throughout our body. This affects the muscles around the breathing passages more than any other muscle group.
When we fall asleep, this muscle tension blocks the breathing passages. That’s what causes early night snoring. As our sleep deepens, these muscles relax a little and the snoring often stops for awhile.
Now, here comes the interesting part. After sleeping for a few hours, we go back to a very light sleep called REM sleep. That’s when we dream. In a REM sleep, we also integrate all the informations and experiences from the previous day. Our subconscious takes all the emotions stored in our muscles and processes them. Imagine what’s going on in your muscles while this is taking place.
Sadly, the tension doesn’t get released from our muscles during REM sleep. The conclusion our subconscious makes, may even be that these muscles need to be kept tense to freeze any emotion the following day. This can make the snoring trouble even worse.
The important thing for you to know is that this emotional process in the REM sleep activates your muscles. They then block the breathing passages and cause snoring. We go into REM sleep 2-3 times a night. For longer period each time. That’s why early morning and late night snoring is so common.
So what’s the solution? There are two ways to eliminate the underlying cause for snoring…
1) The more sober and non reactive you’re, the less emotional stress is stored in your muscles. A happy, joyful attitude, in every situation, is the key to your well being. Indulging in a resentment is like eating a poison and thinking it will kill your enemy. Expressing your feelings and reality moderately, releases and integrates the experience immediately, so your subconscious doesn’t have to do it during the night.
2) Using special tongue, throat and jaw exercises to release the tension in your muscles. Most of us have been creating muscle tension for years, so it’s essential to dig down and loosen up these muscles. These exercises stop the early night snoring as well as the REM sleep snoring.
I recommend using both tactics!
It’s a shame, the most common methods used to deal with snoring only address the most obvious symptoms. Usually even if the symptoms disappear for a while, the real underlying cause gradually gets worse. This unavoidable makes the snoring reappear, louder than ever. The only way to permanently cure snoring is to deal with the true underlying cause.
If you want to read more about my stop snoring exercise program and try one of the exercises out for yourself, you can find it at http://TheStopSnoringExerciseProgram.net
Warm regards,
Christian Goodman
Christian,
This is amazing that I am reading this! I had just come to the same conclusion myself! I wondered about this correlation because I sleep like a baby when I’m on vacation (I visit an adult daughter in another state). I even sleep on her couch in her small apartment! My bed at home is luxurious, but my husband and I run a building company from our home. The stress is constant because my home is where my work is and we deal with many people and temperaments. This past week has been so stressful that I started not allowing anyone no matter how urgent anything sounded, to ruffle my feathers. I purposely walked, talked, and remained calm even when everyone was yelling that the sky was falling! (By the way, it didn’t.) I slept and woke refreshed that night.
Along with the exercises, I am looking and breathing like Sleeping Beauty!
God bless you dear man!
C. L.