21. "Sleep"enhances insight.

21. "Sleep"enhances insight.

Sleep enhances insight; sleep provides answers (Stickgold, 2010). When we are awake, the hippocampus, which is like the librarian of the brain, takes in information and 'catalogs' the network usage as best as it can. While we are sleeping, napping, resting, or meditating, the hippocampus turns the flow around and rekindles lingering networks. By doing this, the hippocampus strengthens the lingering networks ("memories") that would not have been strengthened otherwise. This is why sleep, rest, and even meditation is so important to cognition and a meaningful and fruitful life -- it allows the brain to turn on older networks, recombine information, and come up with unique ideas. All of these wonderful things happen within us automatically by just taking time to get well rested.

Q. Have you ever tried sleeping on a question? (I often do! It is quite reliable. Careful --don't stay up all night thinking about it! I find that if I relax and expect an answer to come, I can sleep on it peacefully, and have a nice answer waiting for me in the morning.)

To tell the truth, I have tried sleeping on questions before and woke up singing or humming a song.  The songs have been ones I din't know well, so I had to google them and youtube the lyrics.  I found the answers to my questions in the lyrics!  Incredible.  This has only happened 2 times, but, wow!  How did my brain catch those lyrics when I wasn't even listening?  How did it have it so readily available for me the next day? And how did it literally make me sing my own answer??  In some yoga classes I have attended, some of the teachers have made me repeat, 'All the answers are in me'.  It's really true, isn't it?

I love that this is a question on the forum, btw!