Resonance – Episode 23
Verbatim Transcript
Speaker: Viktoria Levenberg
Sleep sets the pace for everything. I only experienced this for in one night, and so many women
live with this for a year or maybe even more. My goodness, I could not function. How many of us
spend our evenings in front of our laptops, our phones, doom scrolling social media, watching
Netflix, watching sports, whatever it is, until you solve this one basic thing. If you don't have your
baseline of sleep, there's no way that you are going to achieve and live the life of your wildest
dreams.
Welcome, welcome.
Alright, if you have been feeling exhausted, sluggish, and maybe you keep reaching for that coffee
to get you through the day, listen up because you and I both know that you need more and
better quality sleep. So this episode is all about why and how, even when life is really hectic and
really busy.
Welcome to Resonance, a podcast for ambitious, heart-led humans craving more balance, depth,
and aliveness in their lives. I’m your host Vik—health coach, yoga teacher, facilitator, and fellow
high achiever learning to live in tune with my nervous system, not against it. This space is here to
remind you that you can have it all—the career, the success, the fulfilment—all aligned with your
truth. Through honest conversations, expert insights, and practical tools, we’ll explore how to
work with your body, mind, emotions, and spirit, not against them. And the best part—you don’t
have to stay stuck in survival mode to get there. Because true well-being is not about being
perfect. It’s about being in resonance.
Let’s dive in.
Welcome to this week’s episode. It is so nice to be in my brand-new studio. So those of you who
are either watching on YouTube or have seen some of the behind-the-scenes—I’ve done a little
remodel in my office, so you’ll probably notice some different plants in the background. Um, and
we’re really coming into full swing, like spring is thriving. We’re really approaching summer here
in New Zealand.
This week is also a full moon week, and we are in Beltane here in the Southern Hemisphere,
which is actually like, literally just maybe a half hour ago—the exact midpoint between the spring
equinox and the summer solstice at the time of this recording.
Um, and I have had the most incredible week in the history of my business. Those of you that
have been following around would have seen that I just closed doors to the founding members
launch for The Stress Reset, which is my virtual group experience designed to help busy women
finally overcome chronic stress so that they can thrive again, and magnetised three incredible
women into this experience.
We kicked off just this week, so this is like fresh off the bat. And what inspired the episode is
actually how crucial some basics are. This is why we’re talking about sleep this week—and not
just the why, but also the how when you are time-constrained. Because let’s be real, right? Like, if
you were on holiday, you’d probably be getting the right amount of sleep—unless you’re like
having a crazy big night out. So how can we get into this rhythm in our day-to-day life?
And look, I can already see that some of you might just be rolling your eyes at me being like, “Oh,
duh, I know that I need sleep, come on.” Like, what are—what are you gonna tell me? And I can
guarantee you that there are nuggets in this episode that you’ve either not thought about before
or that are completely new to you.
And let’s just start with the absolute basics, right? So yes, the ladies in The Stress Reset inspired
this episode, but also, I feel like it’s been brewing for a little while now. Because sleep sets the
pace for everything. Like you, there is no way that you can function like a decent, let alone a
thriving human being, if you are not getting enough and good-quality sleep.
And I may have spoken about this on the episode before, but I just—it breaks my heart when I
speak to people like my partner, who I vividly remember asking him once, like, “Hey, you know,
when’s the last time you had a good night’s sleep?” And his answer was, “Not that I can
remember.”
And understanding what that does to the physical body—I just know that, you know, they can try
all the supplements and all the practices and all the things in the world, but until you solve this
one basic thing, like everything else is just—my coach calls this like “whipped cream on garbage.”
You know, it’s sort of—you’re just trying to put more pretty bows on like a pile of crap, basically.
And I myself personally actually had a recent experience where, um, I had a terrible night’s
sleep—like, so bad that I had to take the day off work, um, because I think I only had like two
hours, maybe four. And I’m the kind of person, like based on my chronotype, I need a solid eight
to nine hours just as a baseline. My goodness, I could not function. Like you had the irritability,
the mood swings, the brain fog, the kind of inability to form coherent thoughts, um, the fatigue
of course, like the physical symptoms.
And I remember in that day thinking, “Oh my God, this is how new moms live every single day.”
So if any of you out here are listening who are either new moms or have recently had children or
know someone who has recently had children—damn, hats off to these ladies. Like wow. I don’t
know how you do it.
I know there’s like a primitive, instinctual survival thing that kicks in, and that’s why the babies
are so cute—so that you don’t wanna strangle them when you’re sleep deprived. But wow, like so
much respect. I bow down. Because I only experienced this for one night, and so many women
live with this for a year or maybe even more.
And um, this continued to be a recurring theme in my life over the last few weeks, where Piper,
who is my partner’s dog—she, due to the change of seasons, you know, coming out of autumn
into spring or winter into spring—she was, um, shedding a lot of fur, and with that also a lot of
pollen being in the air. She was getting really itchy, and like clockwork, she would have these
itching fits like in the middle of the night, about 2:00 a.m., maybe 3:00 a.m. sometimes. And she
would just not stop itching and whinging and crying for like an hour, maybe an hour and a half.
On a good night, it would be a half hour.
And so for about three weeks consistently, um, it was really hard for me to get like quality sleep.
And so that even further accelerated, um, my compassion, my understanding, my remembrance
of the importance of such a big basic that most of you listening—including myself—probably
struggle with quite a lot.
And yeah, I think the women in the circle and in The Stress Reset were just kind of the cherry on
top that was like, “Alright, we need to get this message out there,” because they have also really
shared, you know, how fatigued they’re feeling, how hard it is for them to come into a routine,
and then also the inability to calm the racing mind—like they would just lay in bed awake all night
thinking about things and overthinking and replaying scenarios.
So let’s dive a little bit deeper into the why sleep is so important. First things first—it is crucial for
you to heal and regenerate. When you fall asleep, you enter a state in your brain waves and in
your body that allows your body to heal, to process the day, to make memories so that you
remember what actually happened, to cement new learnings of, you know, whether you are
actively learning or just kind of through life, to help you process some experiences—whether
they were big or small—all of that is happening while you sleep.
You cannot do that in your waking state, especially not if you are running around rushing like the
busy, chronic achievers that I know that you are.
The other piece is why it’s so important is—it lowers neuroinflammation. So think about
inflammation kind of in the body, right? Like we might think of a lot of symptoms like gut issues
or like skin breakouts or, um, allergic reactions—those are all inflammation. And the same thing
happens in our brain. So that’s what neuroinflammation means, where, um, potentially you
might be experiencing feelings of anxiety or perhaps even symptoms of depression, um, brain
fog, et cetera.
And I’m gonna tell you—the thing that increases neuroinflammation is a lack of sleep.
The other things that happen when you don’t get enough and good-quality sleep—because
those two are not the same—stress. You are more prone to be more reactive to stressors in your
life. So you are naturally more stressed.
And then stress reduces the quality of your sleep. So you are then more stressed, and it's just like
a vicious cycle. Do you see how it just kind of never ends?
The other piece is it leads to HPA axis dysfunction. So that is the axis between your brain, your
nervous system, your adrenal glands, which again help regulate cortisol and other stress
hormones in your body.
Speaking of hormones, a lack of sleep contributes to hormone imbalances. So say you're a cycling
female, and we've spoken a lot about the female cycle on this podcast already, so I'm not gonna
dive too deep down that rabbit hole. But stress impacts your hormone production, so it can even
mess with your cycle if you're not getting regular, quality sleep.
Because think about it—if you need to be in a state of thriving for your body to feel safe to
procreate and ovulate, what’s it gonna do when you’re sleep deprived? You’re probably not
gonna ovulate, right?
Um, and a few other things, unfortunately, that do happen when we have a lack of either
quantity or quality sleep. There’s things like, um, the detox pathways in our body. So, um, without
kind of going too far down this rabbit hole—we get so many toxins in our day-to-day life, whether
they are mental or physical, uh, or if you wanna go out to Vik Woo town with me—even spiritual,
um, and mental. But effectively think—let’s just stay, like, real basic in this 3D reality—things like
pollution, uh, dust, the glyphosate that your food is sprayed with so that it doesn’t have any
blemishes and looks really pretty in the supermarkets.
Please buy organic.
The hormones and antibiotics that are pumped into the animals whose meat you consume. Um,
what else? The stress, of course, stress is a massive toxin. If you smoke or drink or take drugs,
these are all huge toxins. Alcohol is like the number one toxin in in the world, um, at least like
from a “what happens to your liver” perspective when you ingest it for a normal human.
Um, these are just the physical ones, right? And then when we think about sort of the—the
mental, the emotional load of toxicity, and then from a spiritual perspective—if you’re like
around negative energies, negative people, or, um, I’m kind of not gonna go too far down that
rabbit hole because I know some of you might be like, “What is she going on about?”
But these are all toxins. And so, no matter what toxins—and a few examples of these—when you
sleep, you help your body flush out those toxins. So whether it’s physical through your liver and
through your kidneys, whether it is mental through giving the brain the time to move through
those four sleep cycles that we go through when we’re sleeping, whether it’s in your energy—for
being able to just be still and in rest and venture off into the ether and have your little astral
travel before you come back to your 3D reality—um, it’s important to help you detoxify, is
effectively what I’m trying to say.
And there’s also an additional couple things, so things like your metabolism. So when you don’t
get enough sleep, um, put it this way: like, I know that a lot of people who are trying to lose
weight also often find it difficult to do so, and there’s quite a strong correlation between that and
their sleep patterns and sleep behaviours.
So what happens when you don’t get enough sleep, right? Like, your body needs the energy from
somewhere, so it is probably gonna eat more. You’re gonna get cravings for junk foods because
you have less resilience to resist those temptations, because your cognitive function is impaired.
And at the same time, like, the lack of sleep actually slows down your metabolism, right? Because
your body’s like, “Okay, I don’t have enough energy, so I need to make sure I am preserving the
energy that I do have.” So it’s not gonna burn calories as quickly.
Does this make sense? I really hope this is making sense. It’s like, “Oh, okay.” And of course, like,
that links back to energy production, your mitochondrial health, and all the like.
So if I haven’t convinced you now at this point that you need quality, good amounts of sleep,
come have a chat with me, and we can go down the rabbit hole a little bit more. Um, you may
notice, um, as I move into kind of some of the common misconceptions, that I keep referring to
quality and quantity.
So I know that we’re all kind of hearing the things prescribed around like, um, “Oh, you need your
eight hours a night,” or whatever. The reality thing is, like, we’re all bio-individual. And in fact, like,
the quantity of sleep that you need will depend on your chronotype. It will depend on you and
your body, your ancestors, um, your lifestyle, and also, uh, some other Ayurvedic concepts, for
example, that I’ll dive into in another episode at a later stage—like your doshas.
And it’s not just the quantity that matters—that’s why I’m not like saying, “You need X hours of
sleep.” Yes, you know, ideally, there is a specific minimum of six, I would say, is like the absolute
minimum, just so you have enough time to move through the sleep cycles and get into REM
enough times. However, like, I’m not the expert in your life—you’re the expert in your life. You
know how much sleep you need to feel like you’re thriving.
Like my, um, starting point—like my guidance—is always: how much sleep do you need when
you’re on holiday? It’s like, when do you normally go to bed? How do you normally wake up
without an alarm, without any chores or events or whatever, without the kids, without the
dogs—it’s just like, how does your body sleep? Because then that is your, um, answer to how
much sleep you need.
And quality—you can get nine, ten, eleven, twelve hours of crappy sleep and still be exhausted.
So it really isn’t just about the quantity; it’s also about the quality.
And, um, I’m gonna share now a lot of the things that will impact the quality of your sleep. So for
example, if you are busy, you are stressed, right, you don’t have the time in your day to give
yourself extra hours of sleep, some of the things that I will share right now will likely help you
alter and improve the quality of your sleep, so at least the hours that you are in bed, you are
getting the most bang for your buck.
So it all starts—it doesn’t start—you might be like, “Oh, surely it’s like the bedtime routine,” or
“No.” No, my friends. The quality of your sleep starts as soon as you wake up. Yep. I’m gonna say
that again—the quality of your sleep starts as soon as you wake up and is determined by what
you do when you wake up.
So take a moment to reflect—what do you do when the alarm sounds? Probably snooze it a few
times, check the phone, check the emails, start to get ready for work. “Oh no, running late for
work!” Rushing around the kitchen trying to get everything done, get the coffee, and out the
door you go.
Many of you probably resonate with that. Some of you might have different morning routines,
but it’s not so much the routine—we’ll get to that in just a moment. How what you do in the
immediate thirty minutes after you wake up is so crucial, particularly from a mitochondrial health
perspective.
You might be like, “Mito what?” Look, without getting too science-y about it, natural light in your
eyes first thing in the morning. No artificial light, just natural light in your eyes. And if you can,
and it’s available to you, some kind of movement. Let me tell you why.
When we look at the sun in its natural state, our body—like we as humans—are designed to rise
and go to bed with the sun. Like, that is back when there was no electricity—that is what we did.
This is what our ancient body has evolved to do.
And the sun has different light rays, or different light wavelengths. There’s like infrared light,
there’s blue light, there’s all these different kinds of wavelengths, and they’re different depending
on the time of the day.
So as the sun rises, you’ve got your—there’s more infrared light coming through, which is like a
more, hmm, gentle kind of soothing light that kind of signals to your body, “Hey, it’s gently time
to wake up.” Um, and then as the sun progresses into midday, kind of peak, peak sunlight, um,
that is when blue light is at its peak. And then as you go down, it’s again kind of winding down
the blue and more into the infrared, which is why we see all these beautiful sunsets and that kind
of golden orange hue that you can probably visualise in your mind’s eye right now.
So with that in mind, if our natural state is to see more infrared light rather than blue light first
thing in the morning, and then you open your phone first thing in the morning and get smacked
with gazillions of bazillions—ha ha—rays of artificial blue light, what do you think is going on to,
like, your melatonin receptor sites and—and just like your body’s like, “What, why—why did we
just sleep through till midday? Oh my God, quick, boom, cortisol spikes! Alright, ah, I need to get
going, I’m—I’m supposed to be at my peak productivity because it’s midday!”
Yeah, my friends Sunlight, sunlight.
Sunlight, sunlight. And you might be like, “Oh, I live in a country where there’s like no sunlight,” or
maybe it’s, um, you know, winter, and the sun rises really late. Look—meet yourself where you
are.
I would say it’s probably more important to avoid screens for as long as you can in the morning,
before you get outside and before you get some natural light in your eyes. Even if it’s cloudy, the
light rays get through the clouds. So even if it’s like—some days, guys, I’m not perfect—I will
literally just open the balcony and stand there as I sip my hot water with lemon for like maybe a
minute, and I’m just like, “Okay, I’m just, I’m just here, just getting some natural light on my eyes,”
and then I’m out of here—and that’s good enough.
And of course, if time allows—luckily, I live with a dog that needs to go out every day—so we
naturally get out, get into the daylight, and have our little movement. But yes, movement—and
all of this first thing in the morning already sets you up for success for bedtime later on.
So, believe it or not, the quality of your sleep starts as you wake up.
Movement—I’ve already touched on this, yes. Of course, it’s great to get yourself up and running
first thing in the morning, because naturally when you wake up, your cortisol—which is your
stress hormone—those levels spike, because it is your body’s way of being like, “Okay, time to be
alert.” It is kind of like that little—if you think about like the turbo kick-start for you to start your
day.
And so our body needs to process that cortisol somehow, so it’s really great if you can move your
body in whatever way, shape, or form suits you—even if it’s just a few minutes of kind of
conscious movement, stretching, whatever feels good on your body.
Stress levels, of course, workload—all these things throughout the day are gonna impact the
quality of your sleep.
But let’s kind of fast-forward now into the end part of the day.
So, when you eat and drink is more important than you think.
Cam makes fun of me that I am a Nana, because like, in a perfect world, I have dinner at about
five—six o’clock at the latest. Because in a perfect world, you give your body at least four hours
between your last meal and bedtime.
And the reason behind that is that it actually takes a lot of energy for your body to process all the
food and digest what’s happening in your stomach. And so if you eat too close to bedtime, you’re
actually gonna have a lower-quality sleep, whether you like it or not.
And I remember vividly working with one client—we were literally working on their sleep and
energy levels—and they struggled with that for a little bit. And he was like, “Yeah, I was getting
the right amount of sleep, but the quality was so bad.” And then we dove into, you know, what’s
happening beforehand and what his lifestyle looks like, and he’s like, “Oh yeah, we usually have
dinner at like eight-thirty, nine p.m.”
And I just kind of let that simmer for a second, and the aha moment came to him by himself—he
was like, “Oh yeah, that’s probably quite late, isn’t it?” I was like, “Yeah—give it a try, having
dinner a bit earlier.” And he tried it out and boom—right away, that worked some wonders.
And similarly, when you drink as well—I don’t know about you, but I love a cup of tea at night.
However, try to not drink anything if you can up to forty minutes before you go to bed.
Otherwise, chances are your bladder’s gonna get so full that you are going to wake up in the
middle of the night and have to go use the restroom.
Of course, I can’t speak for people with, you know, like prostate or bladder issues—I know that’s
a bigger area to address. And so if you are someone who suffers from this as well, be extra
conscious of what and when you put into your body, and be extra curated with the other ways
that you can improve the quality of your sleep so that whatever interruptions might be there
aren’t impacting you as much.
Oh—it’s a lot, isn’t it?
Well, I’ve got a few more common misconceptions and tips for you that can impact and positively
influence the quality of your sleep so that no matter how much you get, you are getting the best
bang for your buck when you’re in bed—and that is your sleep environment.
Just think about it for a moment—how much noise do you have outside of your bedroom?
What’s the light like? What’s the temperature like? Is your phone in your bedroom? Is your
phone on at night in your bedroom?
So a few things on this.
Noise—first of all, look, our nervous system and our brain, our reptilian brain, pick up on
everything that is a potential threat. And when you are trying to wind down and down-regulate
your nervous system and get good quality sleep, and there’s noise happening outside of your
room, that’s activating for the nervous system. So it is still gonna be on alert to some level.
The same thing with light, more so not from a nervous system perspective; that’s more from the
melatonin production perspective, right? Because as humans, we are wired to wake and sleep
with the sun.
And if all of a sudden there is artificial light in the bedroom, that’s gonna impact you. Like, we
had a fire alarm test thing done here a few weeks ago, and something was faulty with the alarm,
and I had this big green light right above me for a few nights. And it was during the time that
Piper was having all her scratch issues, so that just wasn’t helping the situation. So definitely
reduce that as much as possible.
You know, if you have technology in the room that just has like these automatic kind of sleep-
mode buttons lighting up—maybe you can put a towel over them or a piece of clothing. Every
little bit of light makes a difference.
And in terms of temperature, the ideal temperature for your sleep time is about eighteen
degrees Celsius. But you’ll know—you’ll have your own preferences depending on what your
basal body temperature is, so I’m not gonna dive into that too much, except for the fact that
cooler is better.
Yeah. Now, note on phones in the bedroom—look, if you don’t want to look at your phone first
thing in the morning, then the easiest way to do this is to just keep it out of the bedroom.
However, I will be the first one to put my hand up and go on record that I don’t do that. I have
another hack that I use that I’ll share with you in just a moment—because like many of you, I use
my phone as my alarm, and it’s just easier to have it there.
However, if you do keep your phone in the bedroom, please, please, please, please, please—put
it on flight mode at night and on silent and all the things. Yes, it is so important because, like, if
you are getting notifications and dings and all these different things in the middle of the night, do
you think you’re gonna be getting quality sleep? I don’t think so.
Okay, so—that leads me to screen time, right?
When we think about screen time, I kind of nodded to that in a total daytime sense. However,
how many of us spend our evenings in front of our laptops, our phones, doom-scrolling social
media, watching Netflix, watching sports—whatever it is, right?
And these screens are filled with blue light, which we spoke about earlier already, that you are
literally bombarding your body with just before bedtime.
So can you see how confusing it is for your body when it’s trying to wind down—because out
there it’s dark, but in here it’s bright—so it’s like, “Okay, do I send more waves of cortisol and
keep you alert?” And then we just keep going.
So just be really cautious with this—and again, I’ve got another hack on this as well that I’ll share
with you in just a moment.
And then the last couple of things—things that influence your quality of sleep, and also maybe
the quantity of sleep that you need, are any increases in demand.
So think of things like learning new things, starting a new project or a new job, or moving to a
new country. Increased stress in your life, increased emotional demand. Even for a lot of people
who I work with—definitely the women in The Stress Reset—you know, as you start digging a
little bit deeper and expanding your consciousness, that can feel really tiring. Because the thing
is, it actually takes more calories for the neural networks in our brain to rewire and form new
synapses.
So that is why you’re more tired. That is why you need more sleep.
And the same goes for women who are cycling and are in their luteal phase. So I’ve spoken about
this a lot—I’m not gonna harp on it too much—but if you are in your luteal or in your menstrual
phase, you’ll likely need more sleep because your body is using more energy to either produce a
nook for a potential baby—whether you’re pregnant or not, that’s just what happens, that’s how
our body is built—or to shed the uterine lining.
So these are all normal things. Particularly, the women listening—yes, your sleep needs will
fluctuate throughout your cycle.
However, the body loves, loves, loves love routine. Like The more consistent you can be in your
day-to-day life when it comes to your waking and sleep patterns, the more you’ll see the quality
of your sleep improve as well, because your body starts to know that things are predictable, and
it kind of adjusts to these things. It’s amazing—we’ve got this malleable, incredible machine that
we’re working with.
However—and I know, I used to be there, guys, I used to be there too—weekends count too,
okay? And I’m not saying that you’ve got to be perfect. Like, we’re all human, we’ve only got this
one life—go out, have fun, have a big night bender—but like, don’t do it every weekend, you
know?
At this point, for me, it’s really rare that I’ll be out past like ten o’clock. I think for my birthday, we
went out till like eleven, and I was like, “Oh my god, that is not good.” Took me a while to recover
from that.
And that’s for someone who is, you know, not drinking, eating really well, still got lots of good
sleep. But it just—it messes with your cycle of your sleep–wake rhythm.
And speaking of your sleep–wake rhythm, cycle consistency is more important than the actual
hours that you go to bed and wake up at.
So you might be like, “Wait—what is she talking about?” So, find the hour that works for you to
go to bed, and the hour that works for you to wake up every morning, and keep that consistent.
That leads me to my last point around chronotypes. You need to know what your chronotype is.
You might already have an intuitive sense of what that is; some of you might not know at all, and
it might take a little bit of experimentation.
So, based on the training that I got with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, there are four
different chronotype—kind of—animal names for people, and I’ll just gently walk through them,
just so you can kind of start to think about, “Okay, which one am I?”
So the first one, which is most common—it’s about fifty-five percent of the population—is the
bear, which follows the sleep cycle that aligns with the rising and the setting of the sun.
People who are the bear chronotype are most productive in the late morning, and they can easily
feel drained in the afternoon. I am probably most likely a bear—might be a lion depending on
what’s going on, um, we’ll get to that one in a bit.
The next one that’s most popular—say between fifteen to twenty percent of the population—is
the wolf, which stays up late into the evening and really struggles to wake up in the morning. The
wolf type is the one type that’s really prone to consuming more caffeine, alcohol, sweets, and
calorie-dense foods at night because of this cycle that they have gotten themselves into.
And I have someone who I live with who is definitely in the wolf chronotype at the moment.
However, there is also another lens that I’m not gonna weave into this episode because it’s just a
little bit too complex, and it’s gonna go a little bit too far out. But I’ll make sure that it is in an
episode in a couple of weeks’ time, so that we can kind of pick this conversation up where we left
off and dive into Ayurveda and the doshas.
So, taking it back to chronotypes—excuse the little side tangent—the next one down in terms of
popularity, or I guess frequency within the population, is the lion that I spoke to earlier, which is
about fifteen percent of the population.
And this is someone who’s a natural early riser—they’re like awake, alert as by dawn, and then in
bed between eight to ten o’clock. They’re super productive in the early morning to mid-morning.
My mom is through and through a lion.
I go through seasons between lion and bear, so I think I’m predominantly a bear but sometimes a
lion.
And then lastly, the least frequent chronotype that we tend to see is the dolphin, which is about
ten percent of the population. These are people who are really, really alert at night and usually
find it really hard to fall and stay asleep.
They unintentionally skip meals, they have a really hard time with routine in general. So you
might see that there’s quite a bit of crossover between the dolphin and the wolf, and the lion and
the bear—and that’s quite natural. You might kind of see yourself in multiple. So there’s no hard
and fast rules; these are just more helpful chronotype views for you to kind of put a little animal
analogy for yourself too.
So that brings me to the conclusion of kind of the “why sleep is so important,” the common
misconceptions that we see around sleep, and you know, if you are busy and don’t have the time
to get the sleep quantity that you would ideally like to have—starting to tweak these little things
in your life and in your day can really significantly impact the quality of sleep that you do receive.
And I promised you a few hacks—so of course, I do deliver.
My first and number one hack for anyone who is sleep-deprived is Yoga Nidra.
You would have heard me speak about Yoga Nidra on a previous episode, where I dive into all the
different types of yoga. And basically, what Yoga Nidra translates to is “conscious and aware
sleep.”
So think of it like a longer mindfulness meditation practice that is done lying down—not in bed,
quite important to have a different space where you do your Yoga Nidra practice than where you
sleep. And it helps you tap into a deeper, a fourth state of consciousness.
So if we think about the main three states of consciousness that we are generally familiar with, it
is your waking state, your lucid dreaming state, and your sleep state.
There is another, fourth state of consciousness that is your Turiya, or this kind of bliss field. And
Yoga Nidra helps you tap into that state.
And they say that if you can tap into Yoga Nidra during your practice, those fifteen minutes can
be just as restorative as about an hour—or up to an hour and a half—of sleep.
So if you are someone who’s really time-constrained, or you have more demands in your life at
the moment, or just in general, Yoga Nidra is a really great practice to weave into your routine
and life.
The other hack that I have is kind of on a similar vein—meditation.
And I’m not talking about the classic meditation that you would see—I’m really talking about true
Vedic meditation practices that you have to learn from an actual teacher. So I’ll link that up in the
show notes below for you.
I, like, through and through recommend Ziva, which is Emily Fletcher’s meditation technique. It
changed my life. And it also helps you tap into that verifiable fourth state of consciousness, just
as Yoga Nidra does—just in a different way.
So those two are like my ultimate go-to hacks.
And then a few that might kind of feel more accessible to you—one is blue light blockers.
So I personally use Ra Optics—I don’t have them in front of me right now, which I know is kind of
not preaching, not doing, not walking the talk, I guess. But I try and keep them off for these
recordings just from an aesthetics perspective. I don’t know, maybe something for me to think
about.
But anyways—I use Ra Optics, and like, blue light blockers—here’s the thing. I’ve heard a lot of
people get really confused with having prescription glasses and thinking they’re blue light
blockers just because the company sold you on the fact that they are adjusted to screens.
What that is—when they’re adjusted to screens—is reducing the glare on the screen, which is
the reflection. That is not blocking any blue light.
If they’re blocking blue light, they will have a tint of yellow or orange. So unless your glasses have
a tint of yellow or orange, they are not blocking any blue light. I’m sorry—you have been sold a
lie.
So yeah, I through and through recommend Ra Optics. They actually create blue light blockers
that don’t make you look like a weird IT hacker living in their parents’ basement. They’re quite
stylish, and they also make them to your prescription, which is what I had done.
They have at this point three different kinds of lenses. I personally use the daylight lenses during
the day, and then my nighttime lenses during the night—because the amount of blue light that
you need to block depends on the time of the day, right?
So like, during the daytime, the hue is a little bit less intense because my body can tolerate the
blue light. But then at nighttime, when it’s time to wind down, it’s like you want as much of that
blue light blocked out as possible.
And I kid you not—ever since I started wearing them, I have noticed improvements to my already
pretty good sleep quality. However, I’ve also actually noticed how much better my eyes feel. Like,
they don’t get as sore looking at the computer screen.
And yesterday, by chance, I accidentally forgot my blue light blockers to the office, which is a
really dark building with, like, horrendously bright lighting and I kid you not—and the screen as
well—I was just sitting there like squinting, like, I cannot see, this is ridiculous.
Um, so it just really shows you how exhausting the modern standardised, uh, lighting system can
be. So blue light blockers—invest in them. You’re gonna use them every single day. Definitely
worthwhile.
And I’m pretty sure I have a discount for you as well, so I’ll pop that in the show notes down
below. You can use, uh, the code—I think it’s Viktoria Levenberg—and it’ll give you at least 10%
off.
Um, and the other hack I have for your phone, which, um, I cannot show you right now because
my phone is kind of recording B-roll for this podcast, but, um, on the iPhone, there is a way that
you can set up a setting to have a red light screen with the click of a button, basically.
Um, so I will hyperlink that in the show notes as well. I’m sure there is a way to do this on
Android devices or, like, non-iPhone devices as well—I just haven’t done the research personally.
If one of you happens to do it and finds a great resource, send it my way and I’ll link it in here as
well.
But this has been an absolute game-changer.
So that ties back to the earlier conversation we had about, like, what do you look at first thing in
the morning?
So I’m not gonna lie—like, I wake up, I turn off my alarm, and then, um, first thing I do is I put my
Oura ring on charge and let it synchronise with my device, so that, like, my Natural Cycles app
does its thing. Um, but none of that is disrupting my, um, circadian rhythm because the red light
filter’s on.
So that is a really great hack for those of you who are interested in it.
And look—this might sound really obvious, but I actually think it’s also quite the hack: just
bedtime routine, whatever it is. I’m not gonna, you know, kind of dictate what your routine
should look like—you probably know it better than myself.
But we’ve spoken about a few things beforehand, right? Around the food, the drinking, the, um,
watching TV late at night or whatever, versus kind of doing something that helps you wind
down—whether it’s a hot bath, or some meditation, some stretching, whatever that looks like—
some journaling.
Um, interestingly—look, I love reading before bed sometimes; however, I have been told and
taught that it’s not the ideal way to wind down, because that’s stimulating your brain. Um, but if
that’s—I mean, look, we’re humans. It’s better than watching Netflix and, like, some horror TV
show and having your heart rate elevated.
Um, and I’m gonna tell you what’s not a hack for improved energy when you don’t have time for
sleep—it’s not coffee.
“Oh, I know, Vik, but it helps me.” Yeah, it helps—you have, like, a super quick hit, and then you
crash, don’t you?
So I’m not gonna go too deep and too far down that rabbit hole, but if you do need a caffeine hit,
maybe, um, some better alternatives for you would be some green tea, or, um, perhaps you play
with cacao.
Because cacao actually releases theobromine—I’m mispronouncing it, I think it’s theobromine—
anyways, basically it’s a cousin of coffee that has the same, um, or similar stimulating effect to
caffeine, but without all the negative side effects of, like, you know, elevated heart rate, jittery,
etcetera, etcetera.
So, um, just do be careful what kind of cacao you get. I’m not talking cocoa powder, I’m talking
proper ceremonial cacao. Uh, more on that probably in another episode—again, another rabbit
hole I could very quickly dive deep into.
Uh, but that is an alternative to coffee, and actually, a lot of people have come off their coffee
addictions with cacao as a transition tool.
So, I have given you quite a bit to reflect on in today’s episode.
And my invitation to you would honestly simply be just to be conscious and present to how your
sleep has been lately.
How much sleep have you been getting? How has that quality of sleep been? And can you see
any connections between your lifestyle and certain habits that you currently have that are
potentially damaging the quality of the sleep that you do get?
So, with that awareness comes choice. Because once you have that awareness, out of those
insights I shared, you can decide which one feels like it would be the easiest to experiment with
over the coming week.
And from that, you can experience the benefits that come with better, more quality sleep. That is
exactly what’s gonna take you closer towards thriving and living your best life.
Because remember, as I said earlier, if you don’t have your baseline of sleep, there is no way that
you are going to achieve and live the life of your wildest dreams. You cannot thrive in a deprived
state.
And sleep is one of those basics that we need to nail in order to thrive.
That’s all from me this week. Thank you so, so much for listening. I’m so incredibly grateful for
you and for your presence.
I am so excited for you to listen to next week’s episode—it’s gonna be a really juicy one. It is a
love letter to tired mums, which is kind of so potent with this episode that we’ve been talking
about on sleep as well. I think you’ll really enjoy it, and I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.
Alright—maybe you’re tired. Maybe you don’t have the time to get extra sleep. Maybe life’s just a
lot right now, and maybe the demands are getting too much—but you need a quick fix right here,
right now.
You may have heard me speak about how incredible Yoga Nidra can be to give you rest that is five
times deeper than sleep. So in fifteen minutes, you could get the equivalent of up to one or one
and a half hours of sleep.
If you can carve out fifteen minutes in your day, I can guarantee you—you will feel more
energised.
And I have a little nifty giftie for you—I would like to offer you a free Yoga Nidra recording.
The link is in the show notes below. Simply click the link, it’ll send you straight through to a
download, so that you can finally get a little bit of that rest that you and your nervous system so,
so deeply desire.
The views and opinions expressed by guests on Resonance are their own and do not necessarily
reflect the views of me, Viktoria Levenberg, LVN Health, or anyone working within the LVN Health
brand.
This space welcomes a diversity of ideas, experiences, and stories—and part of Resonance is
learning to take what aligns and gently leaving the rest.
Also, while I am a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach and deeply passionate
about wellbeing, this podcast is intended for educational and inspirational purposes only.
Resonance does not substitute personalised medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice. Always
seek guidance from qualified professionals for any physical, emotional, or mental health
concerns.
