Sleeping troubles affect many people. Some people fall asleep quickly, but wake up once or several times during the night. Some people repeat the pattern cyclically almost every day, but there are valid reasons behind it. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that each organ has an energy that increases at certain times of the day. If the energy is blocked at the time it should be increasing, it will cause disrupted sleep and waking up at night. You must unblock acupoints to resolve this.
Do you wake up at these times?
1 to 3 p.m.
If you wake up easily from 1 to 3 p.m., it is usually caused by exuberant liver fire. With this time interval, if you can get into a deep sleep, the liver will be nourished, but if you always wake up, then you will become irritable and depressed. If you can massage the Taichung and Yinbao points for 10 minutes before going to bed, then between 5 and 7 days later, your sleep state will be improved, and the pattern will have changed, making it harder to wake up.
3 to 5 p.m.
It is for the body’s qi and blood to turn from static to dynamic from 3 to 5 p.m. If you easily wake up during this time, it means that your lung fire is too exuberant and the qi in your lungs is not enough. In daily life, you can eat some lily, pear, and other lung-enhancing foods, and then press the Yuji and Kong Zui points for about 10 minutes before bedtime. If you persist for several days, you will see obvious effects.
Change bad habits
The above two ways can unblock two places in your body. As well as solving the problem, we must also prevent the problem from happening, which means some bad habits must be changed.
It is better not to use your mobile phone lying in bed at night, because the light emitted by the smartphone will affect the body’s secretion of melatonin, impacting restful sleep. Someone swiping on their mobile phone may have unknowingly made themselves stay up all night.
Do not drink ice-cold drinks or very cold water before sleep. As the internal organs of the human body tend to prefer warm to cold, drinking ice water before sleep can directly stimulate your senses and get you more energized, which is not good for the gastrointestinal tract that has already started resting.
Most important of all is to avoid overthinking at night. Overthinking will cause anxiety, stop relaxation, and disrupt falling asleep. It is recommended that you calm down and soak your feet in hot water before bed, as the warmth in your feet helps sleep and relaxation.
Translated by Joseph Wu and edited by Helen
