Does your home keep you awake at night?

A good night’s sleep is essential to health and happiness, yet millions of people suffer from sleep deprivation and chronic insomnia. Don’t let your home be one of the causes.

Sleep quality

My first experience of staying as a guest in an American home was in 1998. In those days, I travelled around the world three times each year so I was very used to sleeping in different locations and usually had no problem getting to sleep. However, I had only slept in hotels before in the US, never in someone’s home.

One of the worst sleeps of my life

The first night, I snuggled down in the big, comfortable bed and started drifting off to sleep. Then suddenly a loud sound went through my body and jerked me awake. I was very tired from travelling so tried to ignore it. Thankfully, the noise stopped after a few minutes and I continued falling asleep.

A few minutes later, I was rudely jerked awake again. This time I tried to figure out what was happening. There was a background hum in the building and hot air was being blown into my room through a vent in the floor. Then, after ten minutes or so — bliss! The machinery stopped, so did the flow of hot air, and peace descended in my space. Back to sleep I went, hoping that was that.

About ten minutes later it happened again. Kerrrrchhhunnkkk brrrrmmmmmm! The central heating sprang back to life, the fan started blowing hot air into my room, and I was jolted awake again.

What the heck was going on?

I realized the house had an automated heating system that had been set to cut in whenever the temperature fell below a certain level.

A furtive prowl around the house revealed no easy way to turn this menace off. My magnanimous host was fast asleep and impossible to rouse, and her two cats eyed me with suspicion. I returned to my room and tried to make the best of it that night but let her know the next morning that I would need to find somewhere else to stay unless the system could be turned off.

Having been brought up in the UK, where invasive forced air systems are almost unknown and no one in their right mind would want to run the central heating at night, this experience got me wondering if this might explain why many Americans experience sleep disorders. There are other reasons too, I’m sure, but I suspect some are being kept awake by machinery in their own home and don’t even realize it.

What happens energetically during sleep

We start the day full of energy and it gradually runs out and we become tired. What’s supposed to happen when we go to sleep is that the upper complex (our astral body and Higher Self) lifts out of our lower complex (our physical body and etheric), and this allows our etheric body to rest and revitalize, our astral body to travel to astral spaces (that’s where dreams take place), and our Higher Self to reconnects to high spiritual spaces. In the morning, the upper complex lands back into the lower complex and we wake up.

However, the whiplash effect of mechanical equipment starting and stopping interrupts the natural separation of the upper and lower complexes and that was what was happening to me. Just as my higher complex was lifting out of my lower complex to allow me to sleep, it was suddenly jerked back into my body by the heating system starting up. This happened every ten minutes or so throughout the night, meaning that I only got to sleep in ten-minute instalments. It would be putting it mildly to say I was pretty tired and grumpy the next day.

Most people can learn to tune out sounds around themselves when they sleep. But here’s the thing. Our etheric body is designed to open and relax during the hours of sleep, so it has no defence against jarring mechanical sounds. You may not hear them, but your etheric will still feel them, and each time it does, your higher complex will be pulled back down into your physical body and your sleep will be interrupted. You may become so used to this that you cease to notice it, but it will still be happening and your vitality will not be replenished during sleep at the deep levels it could be.

The example I’ve given here was a forced air heating system, but other types of devices that work on thermostats can also be problematic such as cooling systems, fridges and freezers. You may not notice them stopping and starting during the day but if they are within earshot at night, they can interrupt your sleep in the way I’ve described. After a while, you’ll get so used to it that you’ll forget what good quality sleep even feels like. You’ll think it’s normal to wake up tired.

So what can you do?

Well, I don’t have any magical solutions to offer except to keep mechanical systems turned off at night if your home resounds with a noisy mechanism such as the one I’ve described, or sleep in a different part of the home if you can find a place where the noise is not so prevalent. Earplugs may help a little but won’t resolve the etheric jolting effect.

This article is not so much about providing solutions as giving insights about how to improve your quality of life. We spend a third of our life asleep, and the quality of our sleep very much predicts the quality of our waking life. So making sure you have a good night’s sleep is one of the most important aspects to get right in any home you occupy.

Of course there are many factors that can contribute to disrupted sleep and I’m not going to go into them all here. My intention is simply to highlight a cause that’s often overlooked because many people are not aware of the etheric whiplash effect of mechanical noises and how that can affect sleep. When deciding to rent or buy a new home, one of the things Richard and I are always sure to check is the type of heating system and the location of the boiler. If you are thinking of moving anytime soon, you might want to add this to your checklist too.

Copyright © Clear Space Living Ltd, 2020


Related link
Do you really need to open your bedroom window when you sleep?

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About Karen Kingston

Karen Kingston is a leading expert in clutter clearing, space clearing, feng shui, and healthy homes. Her two international bestselling books have combined sales of over three million copies in 26 languages and have established themselves as "must-read" classics in their fields. Her best-known title, Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, is now in its fifth edition. She is best known for her perspective-changing insights and practical solutions that enable more conscious navigation of 21st-century living.
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4 Responses to Does your home keep you awake at night?

  1. BLESS YOU, Karen. You are the first person to write about house noise at night–the main reason for years of sleep deprivation. Surrounding wires and substations also whine at night.

    Would you publish the checklist you use to rent or buy a new home?

    Patricia

    1. Hi Patricia – This is a question we get asked a lot, so Richard and I have decided to include a section about it in the new book we are writing at the moment. Choosing a new home is a major life decision that can seriously affect the course of a person’s life, so a simple checklist is not enough. Some aspects that we rate as important, for example, need quite a lengthy explanation for anyone to be able to use the advice to make an informed choice.

    1. Hi Tara

      White noise is a wall of sound created by all the sound frequencies between 20 and 20,000 hertz jumbled together. Humans do not need complete silence to sleep, but there is a huge difference between hearing sounds of nature and listening to an artificially created sound loop of white noise.

      A number of studies have found that this causes the stress hormone cortisol to be released, which means your body never fully rests. Elevated cortisol levels are implicated in weight gain, gastrointestinal problems, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hormone imbalances, inflammation, a general weakening of the immune system and other health issues.

      A white noise machine may mask other sounds that could jar you out of sleep, but listening to it night after night will wear you down. It’s far from ideal and I would never use one myself. Earplugs are a much safer option, although I don’t like them either. Long-term, the best solution is to find a way to live in a quieter location.

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