Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (00:01.654)
Welcome to the radically genuine podcast. am Dr. Roger McFillin. Today we're going to dive into something that affects every single one of us, yet somehow remains one of the most overlooked aspects of our health and wellbeing. That is sleep. You know, it's fascinating. We spend roughly a third of our lives asleep. And in recent years, sleep disorders and insufficient rest have become increasingly recognized as a major public health concern.

from chronic insomnia to sleep apnea, from irregular sleep schedules to poor sleep quality, the challenges that we are all struggling with modern technology.

Without getting proper rest, it tends to really define a mental and physical struggle that unfortunately we are all becoming way too connected to in our modern age. Sleep isn't just about feeling refreshed in the morning. It's tied to everything from our mental health and our cognitive function to our immune system and even our life expectancy. The quality of our sleep quite literally shapes the quality of our lives.

Over the past few months, my inbox has been absolutely flooded with messages from listeners asking for an episode about sleep. It ranges from entrepreneurs thinking, trying to balance hustle culture with basic human needs to folks dealing with anxiety induced insomnia, the impact of modern technology, making it more challenging to get restorative sleep and how to use technology to improve sleep.

Your messages, my clinical experience and the research I am reading suggests it's a bit of a modern epidemic. So I sought out a sleep expert, Dr. Nareena Ramlakan, who is an internationally renowned sleep physiologist based out of the UK. She's an author of very critically important books on these subjects, Tired but Wired, How to Overcome Sleep Problems, The Essential Sleep

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (02:09.422)
toolkit was published in 2010. Fast asleep, wide awake, published in 2016. And the little book of sleep, the art of natural sleep, which was published in 2018. She works as a consultant for sports franchises that include the Chelsea Football Club, various other industries. Noreena's work has been featured on the Times, the Telegraph, the Independent, the Sunday Express, the Guardian, New Scientists and

The Evening Standard, along with a number of highly listened to podcasts from around the world. I want to welcome Dr. Narina Ramlakan to the Radically Genuine Podcast.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (02:53.988)
Thank you so much Roger, it's an absolute pleasure to be able to talk to you today. Thank you for inviting me.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (03:00.088)
Well, it's an honor to have you on the show. Noreen, I am interested a little bit about you personally and what inspired your passion and your focus to include sleep. I just, a little bit about your professional background, introduce you to my audience.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (03:16.942)
Yeah, should we start with the messy bit first? Let's start with the messiness of the personal story. Like many of your guests, we come to our area of work, we become so-called experts because of our own suffering. And I had, throughout most of my childhood, in fact all my childhood,

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (03:20.866)
of that.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (03:44.384)
into my teens and 20s and the earlier part of my 30s as well. Huge problem sleeping. I couldn't sleep. But being a very high functioning individual, while I was kind of imploding emotionally, mentally, internally, I was doing very well on the surface of things externally. you know, I did a

got my doctorate in physiology, degree in physiology, doctorate in physiology, studied some psychiatry and psychology, ended up on stages around the world talking to people not just about sleep but my first book sort of catapulted me into the limelight, tired but wired. That got me some exposure because that was at a time where everyone was starting to realise that sleep was something that they needed to pay attention to.

So I became known as the sleep expert. But you know, at the heart of my work comes my own personal struggles with insomnia. I now sleep really well a lot of the time. Had to use some of my own techniques last night because I was dealing with some worries, but some personal worries. But yeah, it comes from a personal story. And my journey is kind of magical because I don't know if you know this about my story, but I ended up being...

I ended up spending some time in a psychiatric unit as a patient. In 1995, I had a breakdown, breakthrough, whatever I was sectioned and had a psychosis and then led to four years of sort of battling with mood stabilizers and various forms of medication and in and out of therapy. And

after those four years, I had some kind of awakening experience. And the journey of healing started then. But when I came, when I emerged from that, that, that awakening experience, I almost as if by magic, it started being given, being invited to give these, these, to speak at events about sleep and

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (05:54.234)
You know, I started attracting opportunities to do the work that I do now. And the most magical and crazy part of it was being headhunted to work at the same psychiatric clinic where I'd once been a patient, the Capio Nightingale Clinic. And it was from that place that it gave me the confidence to write Tired but Wired because I was able to help people with severe psychiatric problems. I was able to help them with their sleep problems. I realized I had a methodology.

So that's kind of it. I've kind of dipped around a little bit, that in a nutshell encapsulates the kind of craziness of my journey.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (06:29.752)
Well, it's a story I hear often where the obstacle is often the way forward, that you go through the struggle in itself, and then it propels you into a new area of your life where there's pronounced learning and growth that comes from getting through the struggle. I'm just, I'm a bit interested, I'm sure my audience would be too, is to understand a little bit about that awakening and what that was like for you, what you went through.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (06:34.287)
Yeah.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (06:56.624)
Yeah, you know, I've tried to understand it several times. And in fact, I wrote about it in more detail in my fourth book. You didn't mention my fourth book, and please don't worry, because it's not the main, it's not a mainstream book, that one. It was published during the pandemic in 2022. It's called Finding Inner Safety. That's my most recent one. Something happened back in 1999. You know, I was sick and tired of labels.

bipolar disorder, was given this label, you know, and medication. And I did what, you know, I probably wouldn't recommend that people do, but I kind of went cold turkey. I walked out of a marriage, in fact, a very supportive marriage, probably an overly supportive marriage that was enabling my behaviors, a lot of dysfunctional behaviors. I walked out the marriage, I left a very good job. I was a director at Bupa in the UK.

and I went off to Australia for a couple of months and I came off, I didn't take my medication with me, the mood stabilizing medication. When I got there, I really hit rock bottom. I felt really crap, to be honest. And I felt pretty suicidal, which wasn't the first time I'd felt like that. But I started, something started prompting me to keep going to this cafe, Mary Ryan's Cafe in Brisbane.

and I started journaling and I was surrounded by all of these books, these mind body spirit books and I'll take a couple of them off the shelf and glance through a few of them but I was writing in my journal and a lot of it was vitriolic and fairly hopeless but it was a few weeks into this and feeling pretty desperate that I had a moment where it felt as if I looked up and everything around me looked different, it looked brighter, it looked

almost golden, I felt different in myself. felt like, I felt safe. And so when I look back on it, I mean, there were a series of events that took me to that moment, but it felt like that was the turning point moment. And it felt that I had located a place within myself, a place of safety.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (09:16.548)
But I had in that and in that place, I was able to make sense of all of the events that had taken place in my life, why I had got to the point that I was at and where I wanted to move forward from then. I'm not religious. I was born into a Hindu family. I up until that point, I had started using a lot of mantras. You know, when I got to Australia and started falling apart, I was using a lot of the mantras that I was brought up with as a child.

in a Hindu family, the Gayatri mantra. Almost against my will, it would come to me at night when I was lying there unable to sleep. But it felt like in that moment of awakening, I had an experience of God.

you know, what I call God, but something beyond me, something I felt so looked after, I felt, I felt, I'm gonna be okay now.

And then everything changed after that. came back to the UK and that's where everything took off. I mean, of course I came back thinking, I'm enlightened now. I've had a full on awakening. People weren't really using words like that back then, but I thought I'm enlightened now. And I started doing more yoga, meditation, all of this sort of thing. I've started running marathons and things like that. Little did I know that my life was going to get a lot worse, that things were going to start happening that were really hard.

really traumatic. But I had this place to keep coming back to, that I could keep coming back to. And that is the place from which the healing of my sleep came. That was at the core of it, at the depths of it. That's where my sleep came from. So now in moments where I don't feel great, I'm able to touch that place again.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (11:04.742)
And I think that's an important message. I'm sure we're going to get into it when we talk about how to respond to the challenges that our minds all bring, right? That busy mind, that dysregulated nervous system and how it can really affect our sleep is that there's a place that we can find that inner peace that exists within all of us. You've had to find it yourself to get through challenges in your life. What sounds like an expansion of consciousness,

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (11:24.879)
Yeah.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (11:33.158)
a greater connection to something much greater than you. And it's fueled a very important mission that you have. And it's one of the reasons why you're here today. So let's start with just the importance of sleep. Very basic. I think it can sometimes be unrecognized, especially when you live in Western societies, Western capitalism, United States in particular, the

you know, the hustle culture, like sleep is sometimes spoken about as if it's a weakness or statements that we hear, you can sleep when you're dead, right? Now's your time to earn, now's your time to live. So what are the detrimental effects of sleep problems and adopting that kind of mindset?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (12:11.994)
Yes.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (12:22.084)
Yeah. Well, you're absolutely right. And you were absolutely right in your introduction, Roger, when you said that it's not just about your sleep, your sleep defines an impact on every aspect of your life and how you live. And time and again, I have seen this with my clients, having worked with so many different types of human beings over the years, thousands of people, and experienced it myself that when we sleep well,

And as you said, we're designed to spend about a third of our lives sleeping. There's an intelligence in that design. But when we sleep well, the body repairs on so many levels, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and I believe spiritually as well. We can talk about what that means. But if we look at the physical, emotional, mental impact, which is what brings a lot of my corporate work to me.

because companies are very interested and our world is a little bit chaotic at the moment. It's pretty chaotic. And businesses, financially, there's chaos, there's turbulence all around us. it's in many organizations would want to have employees who are firing on all cylinders. It would lend a competitive advantage. There is now an emergence of realization that actually if your employees are well rested,

In other words, they're sleeping well. They're more likely to perform better the next day. It will have an impact on productivity and performance. But there's still a lot of lip service. Maybe not as much as when I started doing this in the 90s. You know, I was listening to one of the interviews. I'm sort of a third of the way one of your interviews in your series this morning, where somebody was talking about how long they'd been doing. You say, my goodness, almost 20 years and I'm showing my age and you very kindly said, no, you're showing your wisdom. But I, you know,

almost 30 years of doing this work. And back then, the doors were almost firmly closed. They weren't fully closed, but I was pushing against closed doors. Now the doors are more open, particularly since COVID. A lot of people have had breakdowns, breakthroughs, awakenings, what have you. There's a lot more of it. We've got the Gen Z's, millennials, all over social media talking about the importance of wellness, the importance of self care. Trauma is a buzzword now. You know, so...

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (14:44.802)
All of this has become more acceptable, but still there is some way for things to go in terms of this to filter through to behaviors in those professional services firms. You know, I'm going to be speaking next month at an investment bank and I'm, I have to say I'm slightly nervous because you know, in our preparatory conversations,

our early conversations, I'm getting a feeling of almost being back in the 90s where they're saying, can you not say that thing? You can say this thing, but can you not say, and this I sleep when I die philosophy is there still, you know, taking slices off your sleep, going to bed too late, waking up earlier, trying to catch up at the weekends. The philosophy, I mean, it's still there's some way to go before it changes.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (15:38.028)
I was recently reading some research, as I was doing presentations for, you know, parents of teenagers who are struggling. And one of the areas of data that I was able to come across was how, now compared to the 1990s, teenagers on average get one less hour of sleep. And that certainly seems like it's tied to technology, the use of that phone. do you, are you seeing an uptick in sleep related problems? Is it more pervasive?

now than at any other point in our modern history.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (16:13.614)
It's yes, it is definitely increased. And there are more people I say like me, I like to think that there's no one out there like me, but I don't mean that in an egotistical way, but we all have our approaches and our methodologies. But there are a lot more sleep sleep experts on LinkedIn these days, you know, there's a lot more people talking about it. And there definitely is an uptake, you know, and I spoke at a school earlier in the month, worked with a few hundred students and

I did some, looked at some data, I collected data from them and compared to six years ago when I'd collected data, they're more exhausted, they're getting less sleep, they're having more difficulty getting to sleep, staying asleep, drinking more energy drinks, you know, finding it harder to, you mentioned that, you know, the mind and the thought process, but looking for more techniques.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (16:59.502)
Mm.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (17:10.69)
strategies to help them to switch their minds off and some of those strategies are not entirely the best, know, using all sorts of agents to help themselves fall asleep. So I think it's not great. While more conversations are happening, I don't know whether it's necessarily keeping pace with the rate at which it needs to happen, you know.

And one of the things that I am keen to do is not just work with teenagers but work with the leaders, work with teachers, work with heads of education. Because these are the hot spots. This is where I'm seeing a lot of exhaustion and dysfunctional behaviours.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (17:52.556)
Yeah, do you tie it to the rapid shift in technological advances and the use of the smartphone and Wi-Fi and all those things?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (18:03.504)
Absolutely, you know, and you know that there is now a lot more research emerging to show the effects of surrounding ourselves by electromagnetic waves which are not harmful, which are not helpful and not healthy for our own electricity, bioelectricity. In fact, just before this, I was looking at a grounding sheet that I want to get for my bed as well, but.

you know, there's a lot of research that shows that all of this electricity, all of the light and the blue light, all of the mental stimulation, but all of the constant incoming data traffic into the brain, you know, into the working memory of the brain, the frontal lobe is still evolving.

And we think that we're highly evolved and we think that our younger generation, and I know that a number of your interviews on your podcast series are looking at young people and their mental health. And I will be exploring those as well and teenagers in particular. But, you know, they're an interesting group, the younger generation and all the neurodiversities and ADHD that's starting to pop up. How much of this is really, how much of this is,

genuine medical problems. How much of it is because of the way technology is being used and misused? How much of this is because there's more narrative, there's more conversation, more awareness about mental health and trauma? It's such a mishmash of things, but I do believe, and I don't want to sit here and...

and I'd be a complete dinosaur about this, the fact that I can sit here and talk to you and I can communicate with my 87 year old mother who's in South America later on in the day. And I'm in the UK. It's great. Technology is great. But we haven't worked out how to use it. And my generation have set some crappy behaviors and examples, I have to say. You know, I want to hold hope for our younger generation, but we have work to do.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (20:13.964)
Yeah, where our attention goes, our energy flows. And, I mean, think it's very challenging to be able to get the body into a state of peace and rest when it's so constantly activated and the technological advances. I mean, they're so rapid. The way we've evolved as human beings. mean, we're not catching up to where the technology has advanced to. So we've got these.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (20:36.528)
No.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (20:39.896)
primitive minds and these emotional experiences based on survival. And now we have these rapid forms of information that are really hijacking our consciousness. And I'm sure has like these profound effects in the way that you spoke about it physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. So I know people are interested in, you know, a lot of these interventions, techniques, how to optimize our sleep.

I've heard you speak about some non-negotiables when it comes to helping people restore their sleep. Can we get into those as kind of setting a foundation and maybe a little bit of the science behind it?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (21:17.808)
Absolutely, thank you for asking. My work is very practical. It's philosophical, it's spiritual, it's personal, it's all of those things, but it's also very practical. And I always want to give people some quick wins. let's look at what this is about. I'm a physiologist. I'm not a medical doctor. I have a PhD in physiology. So we look at the physiology, the nervous from, you know, our nervous system and the role of the nervous system in, and the part that it plays in enabling us to get good sleep.

So I love to use this sentence, and I use it a lot in my fourth book, Finding Inner Safety. We sleep when we feel safe. We sleep when we feel safe. What does that mean? Physiologically, when we are living in the right part of the nervous system, the right part of the autonomic nervous system, that means the parasympathetic. Then the parasympathetic is what switches on rest and digest, enables us to restore, it enables us to sleep.

to digest, to have sexual function, all of that. So in order to thrive and to sleep well, we need to be in the parasympathetic nervous system. If we're running in survival mode all the time, then you're in the sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, all the stress hormones that keep us in go, go, go mode. So the five non-negotiables are the first step of my unique sleep methodology.

And they're based on the fact that I found that when I was working with people in groups, know, hundreds, thousands of people in a big group, whether it's corporate setting or a festival or whatever, I was talking to a lot of people, time and time again, in this almost 30 years, I was saying, look, if you want to get good sleep, do these five things. You know, if you want to get good sleep, start with these five things. And I call them my five non-negotiables and they're not everything, but they are the start.

of resetting Roger, the nervous system, resetting from sympathetic nervous system to parasympathetic. And I noticed that when people work with me and they come to see me and they're exhausted and they're not sleeping and they're struggling, they start doing these five things and they do them for 10 to 14 days. For some people, like elite athletes, it happens sooner, but they start doing them. Something shifts in their relationship with sleep and their energy becomes cleaner.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (23:38.596)
they start making better choices, lifestyle, their psychology shifts. You know, their spirit shifts, their energy shifts. So what are these five things? The first one is to start eating breakfast and nutrient rich breakfast within 30 minutes or so of rising. Particularly if when you wake up first thing in the morning, your nervous system is nervous. I'm pointing to my brain right now. What I mean by that is my mind.

What is my mind doing as soon as I wake up? Now, I don't sleep with my phone in my bedroom because I'm as addicted as the next person. If I had my phone there, that's the first thing I would reach for. So my phone is outside the bedroom. So I have a few, some spiritual practices in the morning. But even before I've done anything, before I've meditated or anything like that or thought about my day, I listen to the speed of my thoughts and I hear the absolute storm, the tsunami.

of punitive, shaming, guilt-ridden thoughts. The crap that's in my brain. mean, it's just... And so I go, okay, today, eat breakfast. Steady those blood sugar levels first. Steady the blood sugar levels. So I eat after my 20-minute meditation, after about half an hour, I eat a nutrient-rich breakfast. And this is what I recommend to my clients. Stable your blood sugar levels, stabilize it.

Tell your hunter gather a physiology that you're living in a world that is safe, where there's an adequate supply of food. The second thing, don't rely on caffeine for your energy. So I do have one caffeinated drink, but that might happen after my second breakfast and a dog walk and the first breakfast, know, so when I'm in a more steady state, then I have the coffee, which actually is kinder on my system. It has mushrooms in it, sets me up for my gym session as well. Number three, hydrate.

Hydrate your brain. Aim to drink about two litres of water at least a day. Number four, get to bed earlier. Surf the optimum phase of your rest activity cycle. The optimum phase of the evening, point in the evening to hit those deeper levels of sleep. You want to get to bed, into bed around 9.30, 10ish, sometimes even earlier. Last night I was in bed earlier than that. You don't have to be asleep, but you're resting.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (25:52.954)
You're powering down, you're decompressing the nervous system, accessing that parasympathetic. So when you turn the lights up, you slide down effortlessly. Number five, get your technology out of the bedroom. Don't be on your phone before you go to bed. Don't wake up and look at your phone. You know, take more breaks from technology during the day so that your brain isn't fried by the time you get into bed at night. Those are the step one of my sleep methodology. And then it goes on.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (26:22.702)
Yeah, let's get into some of those. First of when I ask about the eating upon awakening, there's a lot out there now about like time restricted feeding, intermittent fasting, right? Your thoughts on that for people who are struggling with having sleep, you believe that following those protocols can be damaging to their sleep. Scientifically, why is that?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (26:27.44)
Hmm.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (26:31.694)
Yeah. Yeah.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (26:38.768)
you

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (26:47.984)
Why is it sorry the volume there was just cutting out for a second.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (26:52.172)
Yeah, I'm sorry. So I'm talking about, you know, those who are actually having trouble with sleep. I would imagine if someone's not having trouble with sleep and they're using intermittent fasting, there's not major concern there. But people who are, you would not recommend that time restricted feeding schedule. Okay. And that's the body's response to...

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (27:04.709)
Mm-hmm.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (27:08.89)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (27:16.675)
It's like a sense of like it's regulating blood sugar and it's sending a very clear message that the body's not in any threat or danger. Physiologically.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (27:26.218)
right so yeah eating first thing in the morning sends a message of safety now if you already wake up in safety mode and you don't have problems you don't have the two most prevalent sleep problems the first one being difficulty getting to sleep the second one being difficulty maintaining sleep waking between two and four and you can't get back to sleep if you don't have those then it may well be that intermittent fasting is

absolutely brilliant for you and I have a lot of time for it. I actually went on a bit of an an intermittent fasting adventure last year and I loved the impact it had on my weight and all that kind of stuff but it really disrupted my sleep and actually it sensitized my whole nervous system. I became more anxious, I became more sensitive, more tearful, more argumentative. So certain people if you're having any sleep problems, any of my clients having sleep problems,

I kind of wrestle the fasting away from them. And also I'd include in that, know, women in perimenopause and menopause and postmenopausal, you know, where hormones are raging and they really want to be steadying and stabilizing their nervous system, minimizing production of cortisol, which tends to surge first thing in the morning anyway, with perimenopause and menopause. You really want to try and stabilize that with good.

food, nutrient rich food, so protein rich, fat rich. Of course you've got your carbohydrate in there, but making sure that you're telling your brain that it is, you're safe, that you're safe. And what you do first thing in the morning, sets the rhythm of your physiology throughout the day. And that's going to impact on how you sleep at night. Cause so many people put so much emphasis on sleep hygiene, bedtime routines. What shall I do before I go to bed? You know,

And actually from the minute you wake up, you are preparing yourself for how you're going to sleep.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (29:27.426)
Yeah. So you mentioned that you have your own spiritual practice, this meditation when you wake up in the morning. And what I'm sure you're seeing, what I'm seeing is I ask people, what's the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? And a lot of people turn to their phones. They get right back on and they start scrolling, whether it's checking email or looking at social media. Like that's the immediate thing they're doing. What's the impact on living that way?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (29:39.258)
Mm.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (29:43.14)
Yes.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (29:55.182)
I think we have become very intolerant of being with our thoughts. And so the minute, I mean, the thoughts are going to catch up with you. And when they do, we go, shit, excuse me. mean, I'm sorry. I think some of your other guests have sworn. So permission to be myself on this radically genuine podcast, but you know, God.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (30:12.951)
The rest.

Radically genuine. Be yourself, yes.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (30:24.14)
My thoughts are terrible. I've got a mental health problem. You haven't got a mental health problem. You're a normal person who's just thinking a lot. Because you don't allow yourself space to acknowledge that and notice it and listen to those thoughts. You think you've got a mental health problem. But actually, if you just took five minutes, if you just took 10 minutes, or if you just went on that dog walk, and Roger, I'm talking to myself here. You are looking at the sleep expert who...

started listening to probably five different podcasts this morning before discounting each one and going, no, not that one. Nope, not that one. Nope, not including yours. I will go back to it. But I realized that the maelstrom of thoughts this morning, I just needed to be with the discomfort of it and, and kind of befriend it and just notice it and breathe into it. And by the way, I think we're both reading the same book, which is wisdom of the masters.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (31:21.898)
yeah, I've read that.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (31:23.234)
I love Sarah Landon's book, but I'm sipping it. I'm not on a gull pit. Let me just be with it. And I'm trying to practice at the moment, you know, 20 % or 10 % imbibing information and 80, 90 % integration. okay, you've listened to something, that's it. Don't move on to the next thing. But we have lost the ability to be with our thoughts. And the minute we're on our own, we feel lonely. We don't know how to be lonely anymore. And we need to learn how to be bored.

And we need to learn how to be lonely. And I think this is a big part of what's happening for the younger generation. I remember as a teenager being extremely lonely, extremely bored. I mean, there were a lot of mental health problems that came out of that. It was a particularly messy, it was a messy childhood, but I didn't know. I mean, I wish somebody had said to me, just be with this, just watch this wave of loneliness, you know?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (32:21.41)
Yeah. You bring up so many good points and I just want to comment on what you just said about those negative emotions or with the ones we judge as negative loneliness and boredom. How important they are as powerful creators. So boredom can drive creativity and the expansion of, of, of new learning and putting ourselves in new experiences. loneliness of course, you know, drives us to attach and connect, right. And to be able to meet people. So.

There's a place for the duality that exists in our, emotional states of feeling good and the joy and the happiness and the creativity and the love, as well as those, those very difficult energy states of lower vibrational states. They are certainly very important in, in, creation. Now I want to get back to some, some of these other strategies because a lot of the clients I work with, they struggle to regulate anxiety. Some have traumatic pasts.

Others struggle to quiet their minds, their worries. I think you spoke to it. They might go an entire day of being busy and distracted. And then when it's time to go to bed, they're alone with their own mind. Really for the first time they're observing it and they can't shut it off. How do you work with people like that?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (33:35.888)
Mmm.

Yeah. So once I have, resourced my clients with the first step one methodology, the five non-negotiables, then they come back to me because they've been working on these five non-negotiables, they are more resourced and they will be already starting to sleep better. They're on the right healing trajectory and

sleep starts to do some of the work so they might still have difficulty some difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep but somehow they're not quite so fixated on on it it doesn't feel so catastrophic because they're getting more rest they're feeling more energized by doing these five things and when they start feeling more resource resourced they they become more tolerant of discomfort they're they're more able to i didn't even know if this is the right way of saying it but

Let me say it anyway, they become more tolerant of resting in the discomfort, being in the discomfort without having to manically move to do something to get out of the discomfort because their nervous system, feeling discomfort from the sympathetic nervous system is very uncomfortable. It's manic, it's jagged, it's edgy, it's suicidal, it's depressive. But if you're feeling discomfort in the parasympathetic,

You know, you might, I mean, I had a cry earlier on today. I just felt the discomfort, a wave of grief because of something I'm going through in my own personal life. I shifted that wave in about 10 minutes. My dog came and lay next to me. And then before we knew, we were lying on the floor, rolling around laughing. Well, I was laughing. I don't know if she was laughing, but she was happy. You know, I'm in my parasympathetic. I can be with that discomfort. So I teach people, first all, we have the

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (35:30.724)
practice these five non-negotiables. We get them to a more resource state. Then we might move in a little bit deeper. We might start looking at breathing and getting them to drop the breathing down deeper into the belly. You know, when I worked in psychiatry in that same clinic where I'd been a patient for 10 years, Roger, when I worked with those patients and I would run a patient group every Tuesday morning, some of the patients I'd look around the room and I could feel and I could see that some of those patients weren't ready to do breathing exercises.

you know some of them were but maybe a few weren't or I would say feel how it feels to do this breathing exercise if it doesn't feel right don't close your eyes or don't do it just rub your hands together keep your hands and your legs run your hands up and down your your thighs to keep them in their body but people sometimes even need to get to the point where they're resourced enough to feel the breath in the body to feel the heartbeat because it feels so unsafe and then we go deeper and deeper I mean next week

I'm starting a six week journey with a small cohort of people have joined my Be Your Own Sleep Coach program. And it's going to be a six week journey where we go deeper and deeper and we end up, we will end up talking about faith and hope and trust. You know, and often people start this program and I'm not here to convert anyone, but they start it with no sense of faith or hope, but they come into the body and they start to touch.

something where they feel safe and they start to develop a sense of faith or a sense of it's going to be okay. I can deal with this. I can deal with what's been causing the sleep problem in the first place, my dysfunctional marriage or doing the work that I hate, living a life that's no purpose or I can find some help. I'm ready to address the trauma of my childhood. I'm ready to look at it now. Do you see the trajectory? Does that make sense?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (37:29.814)
makes perfect sense to me. And I think this making room for emotions and thoughts that were so apt at trying to escape from or even judge and cultivating an observing stance of it and just letting that energy kind of flow and move in the body, we allow it then to be temporary and we can shift our consciousness and our focus to other things like playing with your dog on the floor.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (37:41.616)
Yeah.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (37:56.834)
But yeah, there is much more of an intolerance for those aversive experiences. There's challenging emotions and thoughts. And I know they have a contributing factor to those who lay down at night and their mind wants to continue to work. So meditation and breath work seems really important in developing these routines.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (38:09.476)
Yeah, yeah, they do.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (38:19.5)
It is really important when people are ready to do it, you know, when they're ready, because sometimes meditation can bring up, I mean, my meditation this morning, I couldn't wait to be done with it. It was really uncomfortable. And from that meditation came a very strong realization, Narina, you need to hit that gym today and you need to hit it hard and you need to go heavy and you need to go strong because I just needed it. You know, I really needed.

to get the adrenaline levels down. And I've had a bit of a flu-y thing for the last week and a half, so I haven't been able to exercise as much as usual. And the adrenaline levels have built up and I'm somebody who can produce a lot of adrenaline. I can literally think myself into a stewed state of stress hormones. So I need a lot of exercise. So went to the gym and that was what my meditation, it was not a transcendent experience this morning. It was absolutely messy. I was...

I was cutting corners. did it in front of an infrared lamp, which was pleasant. So I was biohacking at the same time, I was thinking, I can't wait for this to be over. And I'm to go to the gym, walk the dog, come back, do a bit of work, go to the gym. And then I went in my cold water tub for three minutes after that. And I feel absolutely brilliant now, but this morning I did not feel great. Now I have learned, Roger, after years of doing this work,

with other people, but on myself as well. And it's a work in progress. I've learned how to sit with uncomfortable emotions. I have learned to go, I really want to binge another episode on that box set. Why? Because I feel really uncomfortable in my solar plexus. There's something lodged in there that's so icky. I don't want to be with this. If I don't be with this, I'm going to take it into my sleep. And actually this happened last night. I watched something.

and I watched a little bit longer. I mean, I went to bed at a very reasonable hour. I was in bed at nine o'clock, but I knew I was avoiding feeling this thing, looking, observing this thing that I needed to feel. And it woke me up a couple of times during the night. I had to be with the grief and the worry about it. And I had to self soothe. But because I've worked on myself a lot and I've learned how to notice it during the day, I can soothe it at night. A lot of people can't. So when I'm working with them,

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (40:41.048)
I help them to develop practical ways of stopping and observing during the day. know, little rituals during the day. It might be two or three minutes. Go sit in your favorite chair or do it on the dog walk or do it while you're cooking. You know, just notice your thoughts. Notice that uncomfortable feeling. Notice your pattern. Where do you hold your uncomfortable emotions? What are the uncomfortable emotions for you? Is it fear? Where do you hold the fear? Is it shame? Where is that? And then...

Sometimes I recommend that people do what I should have done last night which is a vomit journal. This is an absolutely mind-blowing brilliant technique to do before you go to bed at night. You become aware. You've been very self-righteous, you've switched off Netflix, you've taken yourself up to bed, you put your phone away, you become aware of the absolute mess in your head. Get a journal, preferably paper and pen, not on a laptop or something.

set a 10 minute timer or 20 minute timer, literally vomit out all of the thoughts, write them down, it doesn't need to be perfect prose, it doesn't need to be grammatically correct, you vomit it out onto paper and the idea is get it out of the frontal lobe, get it out of there, so that it's all out of the solar plexus or the, you know, wherever it's stuck in your chest, wherever, so that it doesn't spill over into your sleep and then if it does wake you up at night, it isn't the tsunami, it's not a tsunami.

It's a gentle wave of worry or gentle wave of fear. And then of course I teach people meditations to help get back to sleep during the night if they do have that little wave of whatever, you know. So it's the things we do during the day. It's the things we do first thing in the morning, during the day, before you go to bed, and then how you manage the discomfort during the night as well. Knowing that discomfort is normal. Don't psychiatrize it, don't medicalise it. I'm so bored of the medicalisation of...

the normality of crappy sleep. I'm bored of it.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (42:42.988)
Let me ask you some questions about the use of like modern technology to track sleep. We have all these tools now that weren't there before. And in some situations I see people just getting obsessed with it. And I feel like that's affecting their sleep. So kind of the pros and cons of the use of these, like the aura ring and other technological aspects, know, smartwatches, Apple watches and so forth. And what data is really helpful for you as a sleep physiologist to help.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (42:55.578)
Yes.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (43:11.64)
Hmm. Okay. Have you spotted my aura ring by the way?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (43:17.91)
No, I can't see it. you have one on right now.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (43:21.076)
Yes. So in the nineties, I was so anti-tracking and measurement and like, why turn your sleep, why turn your sleep space into, into a laboratory, you know, into a sleep clinic. And then four years ago, during the pandemic, I was gifted one because we were working with this, with Blake Griffin and NBA basketball player, ex pro, and looking at his sleep. And this is in the public domain, Audible. made a little film with.

audible and they sent me an aura ring to compare and I was like I don't want to use this thing and then I've fallen in love with it and it's on its last legs I now have to charge it every day because it's on its way out my daughter's like mom I'm gonna gift you one for Christmas I'm like no yeah anyway I like it it's take it took me a couple of years to like it but I kept wearing it but you've got to use it in a meaningful way and you've got to understand your psychology

One of the things with sleep problems that I've noticed is that it's going to hit sleep problems are very prevalent in people who are perfectionistic overthinkers. People who love to be in control, those of us who love to be in control, we like everything to be just so. You know, often people who come to see me with their sleep problems, they are sleep experts themselves. They've read every book, they've got every gadget, you know, they've got every piece of equipment in the bedroom.

And they know a lot about sleep. They know a lot of the science of it, but they can't sleep because sleep is an embodied experience. It's not a thought experience. And they're also measuring, you know, your average professional services lawyer or accountant or investment banker, they're measuring the hell out of their sleep and they're obsessed with the data. And this can cause something called orthosomnia, which I'm sure you've heard of, orthosomnia, which is the poor sleep that arises as a result of the obsession.

with the data, with a lot of the time, you know, the data these days is pretty good, but it's not the same as going to a sleep lab and getting yourself wired up and to a polysomnograph. It won't be as accurate, but it's also not as good as listening to your lived experience. Like you wake up in the morning, it takes me an hour before I look at my sleep data because that's when I've switched my phone on and I've downloaded the data. But I always want to know, this is what I think. So I wake up, I think, how do I think that went last night?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (45:45.54)
So that even though last night I certainly remember two episodes where I had to put myself back to sleep, I thought my sleep would have been worse. My sleep scores are just under 90, you they're pretty good. My readiness, and actually I did feel, I did wake up feeling pretty good as well. But often people think, I woke up during the night. The data shows I woke up so many times during the night. It must have been awful. They get fixated. And I think we have to listen to our lived experience. You have to listen to your body.

And once you've become more familiar with listening, listening more deeply to how you feel and how did you feel throughout the day? How did you feel emotionally? How do you feel physically? And also notice even having had a supposedly bad night of sleep, can you notice that you still feel pretty good? You're really actually quite resilient. You can cope with the odd night of bad sleep. Especially when you work with elite athletes. I they're built to just...

plow through and they've got so many levels of resilience, which is not just dependent on the night, how they slept the night before. So I try and encourage my clients to find a balance with it. Personally, what I really enjoy, enjoy inverted commas is looking at the restoration on my data, on my ordering data. And it really annoys the hell out of me. The fact that I just don't rest enough during the day.

I'd to work in progress for me.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (47:17.688)
Well, that leads to another question that I had and a lot of people have is, naps, whether they're beneficial or potentially harmful.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (47:27.133)
Yeah, naps are good. We are built to nap. We're actually built to be pretty polyphasic, poly meaning several sleep phases in a day, as opposed to monophasic, going awake all day and then sleep at night. And many athletes who've done endurance events, which have gone over a period of time, sustained endurance, they've played around with napping. So you have long distance sailors, for example, who nap strategically.

Ellen MacArthur, who won the Vondé Globe in 2002, set a world record, 385 naps during the course of the 72-day race, her longest period of sleep, I think was 36 minutes. know, the power of the mind, the power of the spirit, the power of purpose, but the resilience of the physiology as well. So napping is good, but in our modern day world, people working, the sort of hours that they're working.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (48:06.317)
Wow.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (48:19.024)
You don't want to be doing so many naps in a day. It's going to be kind of professionally a little bit limiting, perhaps career limiting. But a power nap, there many different types of naps. The power nap is the one that most of us could benefit from. So closing your eyes at some point between 2 and 4 p.m. It's not sleeping. It's going to a state of relaxation with eyes closed, almost like meditation, ideally sitting, sitting.

or lying on the floor, but not getting into bed and pulling the duvet up. And what happens in even 10 minutes of closing your eyes neurologically, the brain, I'm closing my eyes right now. And even though I'm talking to you on some level, I'm starting to feel something physiological happening in my body with my eyes closed, even though I'm talking and I'm expending effort. So just even 10 minutes of sitting with eyes closed.

noticing the in and out of your breathing without even trying to do anything fancy with the breathing, noticing the thoughts but keep coming back to the anchor of in and out. I love to feel my feet on the ground as well. Just a 10 minutes of that measurably improves mental performance, cognitive performance. Now if you're coming down with an illness you want to push it out, push the boat out into a replacement nap. So last week I had one replacement nap which was about 30 odd minutes.

because I really needed to reboot my immune system. that was, yeah, 30 odd minutes. a replacement nap is anything up to 45 minutes at some point between 2 and 4 PM. And again, no later than 4 PM. Don't abuse the replacement naps. If you have too many of them throughout the week, that can impact your sleep at night because you need to keep some of your sleep drive, which you build up throughout the course of the day. If you nap too late, if you nap too long,

you'll have difficulty getting to sleep at night and staying asleep.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (50:16.332)
Perfect. That's important. What would you say to the doctors out there that when their patients talk to them about sleep problems, they pull out the prescription pad for drugs such as Ambien, Lunesta, or even a benzodiazepine or an antidepressant like trazodone or an anti-psychotic like Seroquel. I I see this way too frequently in my community and in the United States here in general.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (50:37.21)
Yeah. Yeah.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (50:43.93)
And let's try it, let's wage war against this, Roger. I mean, you are already, it pisses me off because that doesn't, you I had a very short stint in medical school before I was booted out, you know, a term. I just not cut out for medicine at all. But I know that, you know, I studied alongside medical students. They studied very little about sleep. There was more pharmacology than physiology.

And I've done a lot of, I've given a lot of lectures to medical doctors as well, because they don't know a lot of this stuff. And I've, I'd say to them, look at my work or at the very least, Google Huffington Post, Dr. Narina, the 10 things your GP should be, your doctor should be telling you before they prescribe sleeping tablets. And they're simple things like five non-negotiables, like gratitude practice to settle the body, like grounding standing barefoot outdoors with your feet on the earth.

you know, really simple practices or natural herbs, things like passionflower, valerian, things that will settle the nervous system without going to these highly addictive drugs, which I saw in psychiatry as well. You know, the Zopi clones, Zolpimeds, Ambien, Cataipin, all of these things that people are using, that stop working, you know, but they believe it's working and that's fueling the addiction.

So I would say to your doctors, get to understand the physiology of sleep. Understand the sympathetic parasympathetic role, the role it plays in creating inner safety and educate your clients and be the change. Do these things yourself. Because a lot of the doctors who would show up, they wouldn't be, they're not eating breakfast. They're absolutely frazzled. They're exhausted. They're not sleeping. In fact, they would often show up early for my sessions.

at the clinic because wine was provided at the end of the day. So they'd get there early so they could have a couple of glasses of wine, which meant I had to work extra hard because they'd be snoozing, you know. But often they themselves are exhausted and not sleeping well.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (52:44.078)
Mm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (52:48.526)
Right? And sedation through pharmaceutical drugs is certainly not the same as deep restorative sleep. you brought up, Wine. What is the impact of alcohol on sleep? And is there any tolerable amount of alcohol that's going to protect somebody from sleep problems?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (52:54.21)
It's not. It is absolutely not. No.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (53:10.978)
Yeah, I cannot put a number to it. Can't do it quantitatively because we're all, we're all different. And some of us have very low tolerance to alcohol. We're more sensitive. Other people can drink more. But if I had to generalize, I would say any amount of alcohol is going to affect the architecture of your sleep. The amount of REM sleep, the quality of your REM sleep, the quality of your deep sleep, the quality of your restoration. So

Personally, I have a rule of thumb is which is if I'm doing anything the next day, that requires me to be intelligent, firing on all cylinders, and it's strongly linked to my sense of purpose and passion. I care about it. I'm not going to have a drink the night before. I don't drink very much anyway, so it's not a difficult decision to make. But sometimes you go out to functions and things and you're kind of tempted. And every now and then I might bend the rules. But generally speaking, you're using alcohol to help you sleep, it...

it's not a helpful thing to do. You know, it may help you initially to sort of pass out because it helps you to relax, but alcohol has a dual effect. Initially, it's a relaxant and then it's a stimulant. So you'll wake up probably a few hours into your sleep. Your REM sleep is highly disordered. Your body temperature goes through changes and you're not getting the deepest of deep sleep. You don't wake up feeling restored the next day. So it's not a good way of relaxing.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (54:37.474)
Yeah, few more questions around like environment or tools that we can use. One of the things I'm going to ask you about is like cold plunging or cold showers at night. Any science to support that a cold shower or a quick cold plunge can improve our ability to get deep restorative sleep?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (54:49.36)
Mm-hmm.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (55:00.718)
Yeah, again, it's very interesting, the research. And this is where I think it's interesting to look at things like Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine, which looks at our elemental makeup and the fact that we're all a little bit different. So I said I had a cold plunge of three minutes this morning after my training, and that was to get some of you know, potential inflammation after a heavy session out of the body and then the kind of speed up recovery.

But it will help, that three minutes at 11 a.m. this morning, around 11, will help with my sleep tonight. If I did a cold plunge before going to bed, an hour before going to bed, actually that's going to over-stimulate my nervous system. So that actually activates my sympathetic nervous system and that's not going to be so good. Now Friday I'm getting in the river with a group of people in the UK, know, temperatures are dipping. So the river temperature is probably going to be around 11, 12 centigrade.

We're not in single figures yet, but I'm going to get, again, a sympathetic nervous system activation, but I'm going to go to bed a bit later because it's Friday. I've given myself an alarm. I even have a glass of wine. Who knows? But for some people, cold can really help before they go to bed. A cold shower or cold plunge. For others, it'll over-stimulate the nervous system, you know? So I would say listen to your body, get to know your body.

For most people doing a cold plunge in the morning, that's a useful thing to do, but don't overdo it. And again, there are gender differences as well. And the research seems to suggest that for women, at least two minutes, for most human beings, at least two minutes in the cold is going to have some kind of physiological benefit. you don't have to be completely macho about it. And it doesn't need to turn into an endurance exercise. But even two minutes in cold can.

reset the nervous system. And it's also so good for your mental health first thing in the morning. You know, that mind yakking away with all of those intrusive thoughts, unhelpful thoughts, which if you start buying into them can perpetuate your frame of mind for the day. know, just getting into the cold really stops that cycle. It really brings you into the present. That be here now is nothing like the cold for doing that. So, you know, as we're going into the darker months, into winter,

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (57:11.66)
Right.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (57:21.834)
I am definitely getting more disciplined about getting my cold and getting out into nature in the river as well because that helps my mental health, you know, beyond words.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (57:32.886)
What about lighting? know you mentioned the problems with blue light, obviously with technology, but what about the, you know, the typical incandescent lighting or the artificial lighting that we're exposed to in our modern world, even though the sun has already set?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (57:50.244)
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the light levels throughout the course of the day have a profound impact on the rhythm of your, on your circadian rhythm. So there is something in the brain, the pineal gland called the circadian timer. And this responds to the levels of light that are coming in through the retina and then being transmitted through to the pineal and this affects the working of the workings of the pineal gland.

to up-regulate or down-regulate. So in the evening, as the light levels drop below about 200 lux, this sends a message through the retina to start the down-regulation process and to start to increase, take you closer to the production of melatonin so that you can sleep. And you know, the cells at the back of the retina, they're not all the same. The photosensitive cells, the ones at the top of the retina,

tend to wake you up more. So when you're getting light at the beginning of the day, it hits those cells at the top of the retina and it up-regulates the whole system. So you feel more active and more alert. So that's why it's really important to get that light first thing in the morning. That's coming in from the sun, you know? But at the end of the day, you want to start bringing the light levels down, start targeting those photosensitive cells that are in the middle and around the edges of the retina.

So having the lighting in your home, you in the evening, the light levels come down. I have side lamps. I have an overhead lamp, which I don't think I've, you know, in 10 years of living in this house, probably hasn't been on for half an hour, you know, at a time. Hardly ever use it. But making sure you've got those light levels down. Even cleaning my teeth with a candle, candlelight at the end of the day as well. Three levels of light in my bedside lamp. So there's the highest level, which I can read on.

And then I drop the level down and drop the level down. that's the level where I will, you know, as I start to feel more relaxed, I think, right, this is the time to drop the level down and prepare to sleep. So it's not a passing out with lights on, but you know, the light levels are so crucial. And can I just go back to the point about temperature as well, which is important? Roger, I forgot to say, so it's not just cold plunges and cold showers, but the temperature in your bedroom is really important. So ideally going to bed,

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (01:00:09.36)
in a space and an environment that is you walk in and you go it's a bit cool so there's a differential in your sleep environment ideally your sleep environment wants to be around 17 to 19 centigrade which is a bit cool windows open i have windows open and a fan on even during winter but a warm duvet so i can get warm if i need to you know so temperature all of these factors in our environment which tell the hunter gather a brain

Time to be active or time to rest.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:00:44.034)
Right, one final question. You mentioned herbs before. Are there any supplements that you do recommend to improve sleep?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (01:00:52.362)
Yeah, it reminds me, I've run out of my magnesium glycinate. I've been trying to get hold of that for a while. So magnesium can help with relaxing muscles and it can help with sleep, with getting more restful sleep. also, I mean, there's so many different supplements on the market now. I know Professor Andrew Huberman does, he talks a lot about different supplements. And I do think again, it's a kind of trial and error because I recommend

sometimes sleep tease to my clients if they're trying to wean themselves off sleeping tablets and to start dropping it down so that what you're doing is you're supporting your physiology but more naturally more gently but for some people even herbal preparations can be too strong you know and personally if I have things like valerian the night before I have to be up early to present or something like that it almost gives me a hangover

So it might be, I might have a sleep tea bag on Friday after my cold plunge, you know, so that it doesn't matter if I'm a little bit more groggy in the mornings, but there are so many more supplements on the market that people can investigate. I say it's a rule of thumb. Look at adaptogens. You know, I take a tonic in the morning that's made for me. That's got things like rhodiola, ashwagandha. There's Siberian ginseng in there, which helps with my training as well.

But they're also, you know, some of the adaptogens which help you just relax at the end of the day as well. And all of this, instead of going for these prescription drugs, including melatonin, you know, in the UK, you cannot get melatonin at the chemist. You'd have to go to your doctor. But I know in the States, probably in Canada as well, you can get that over there. You can get that in your pharmacies, right? But even that is, it's so strong and it stops working after a while. It can become addictive.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:02:40.589)
Yes.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:02:46.894)
That's good to know. Well, listen, this was a great discussion. So much practical advice. Where can people find out more about you? Are you on social media, anything like that?

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (01:02:59.896)
Yeah. So probably the website is the easiest way to, Google me, just put Dr. Narina and sleep. And there's quite a lot there on the internet. On social media, I presume all of this will be in your, in your show notes, but it's at Dr. Narina and in all the usual places like Instagram and I'm resisting TikTok, but that may happen at some point. But you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, that sort of thing.

But on the website, drnorina.com, and of course there are books and things like that, but there are a lot of free resources. And I'm continually running programs where people get to dive deeper with me. For example, this six week program that starts next week. Because it starts with the five non-negotiables, but when people start going deeper and start accessing, in Sanskrit, there's a word called satvik. Satvik means pure.

And I use that word when I talk about satvic sleep. There's something that happens to our life force, to our sense of purpose, to our ability to access joy, even in the face of adversity. We have access to that when we start accessing that satvic sleep. Not only have I experienced that personally, but I see that with my clients as well. We deserve it.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:04:21.486)
Yeah, definitely. think that's part of the spiritual aspect that you were referring to earlier. Yeah. Dr. Narina Ramlakhana, I want to thank you. So grateful for the discussion today. It really was a radically genuine conversation.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (01:04:26.196)
Absolutely.

NERINA RAMLAKHAN (01:04:36.048)
Thank you, Roger, it's an absolute pleasure.