Today I would love to talk about the interesting topic of sleep.
Sleep.
There are various different subtopics and ideas about sleep.
How long should we sleep?
At what time should we go to sleep?
Sleeping disorders or issues with sleep?
And some other very interesting things regarding sleep.
But before I talk about that, I just want to say thank you for all the wonderful messages I received from last week's podcast.
Many of you messaged me on Instagram and I just loved reading and responding to your messages.
There were so many great questions and ideas.
So I came up with an idea.
In the next podcast I would like to answer your questions about the UK or about the English speaking world in general.
These are not necessarily language questions.
So, for example, don't ask questions about grammar.
Send me any questions about culture or literally anything, even if you would like to know what I eat for breakfast, for example.
And in the next episode, I will answer your questions in the episode.
The reason why I have asked you to not ask questions about grammar is that the purpose of this podcast isn't to learn grammatical structures or grammar tenses of verbs.
It is to simply understand English speech across various themes of English language.
This means that you will naturally understand and adopt grammatical structures from my speech with time, of course,
It prepares you for real discussion in English.
So now that I've announced that, let's start the topic.
Sleep.
I don't know about you, but for me, sleep has always been a difficult part of my life.
Since about the age of 16, I have always struggled to get a full good night's sleep.
I often wake up still feeling tired or I often fall asleep in the early hours of the morning.
For example, 1 or 2 a.m.
A.m. simply means in the morning.
So very, very late at night after midnight.
This problem started when I was around 15 or 16, as I said, and I would often stay up late at night reading books or watching YouTube videos, or sometimes even playing computer games, with my friends.
Thankfully, I don't play computer games anymore, but back then it was a huge distraction.
I'm not sure if you can relate to this, but I find it so hard to stop doing something and just get into bed.
But once I'm in bed, I really enjoy relaxing and sleeping.
And then it's always hard to get out.
It's strange to me that it is so hard to get into bed but also so hard to get out.
I think this is the same with taking a hot shower.
You may have noticed I pronounce the word shower quite strange.
Whereas someone from the south of England pronounced this word like shower, shower.
I pronounce it like the sound.
This is because I have a northern accent.
And as a result, we have a harder sounding sound instead of the very English sound .
Of course both are correct, it just depends where you come from in the UK.
So do you have trouble sleeping?
Or are you one of those people that goes to bed very early and you can't wait to get to sleep?
In English, we say someone that gets up early in the morning is an early bird, not a early bird.
And someone who goes to bed really late at night and doesn't like getting up early in the morning.
We call them a night owl.
A night owl.
So an early bird or a night owl.
Are you an early bird or are you a night owl?
If you haven't guessed by now, I am definitely a night owl.
I don't like getting up early in the morning.
And sometimes the best work that I actually do is very late at night.
But to be entirely honest with you, I wish I was an early bird.
I wish that I loved getting up early in the morning, because I always have so much that I want to do.
When I get up later, I feel like I haven't accomplished as much, even if I stay up much later working.
In quarantine during coronavirus, which I'm still actually in, by the way.
I found it much harder to get up early because my routine became so blurred.
It became very unclear.
I didn't have to go anywhere.
I didn't have classes to attend or a job to go to.
Everything was when I wanted to do it. and how I wanted to do it.
At first this seems quite liberating.
Liberating means a feeling of freedom.
You feel like you don't have to do something.
You feel free.
But after a while, this began to feel not so pleasant, I would say.
And I needed some more structure in my life.
That's why I'm very happy that I am back at university now.
However, everything is online.
We have no classes in person.
And as a result, I still have a very flexible routine.
This means that I can do what I want when I want.
I can move the things that I have to do around in my day.
I don't have to do anything at a specific time.
So I got a little bit sidetracked, but back to sleep.
One interesting thing about sleep is something called lucid dreaming.
I have read quite a bit about this lucid dreaming.
I will explain what this means.
The word lucid means very clear or very vivid, which also means clear or bright.
And a dream of course is something we have when we sleep.
Lucid dreaming therefore means a very vivid, lifelike dream, one in which we feel as if we are awake, as if we are conscious.
Many people often talk about having lucid dreams and feeling as if they are awake in their dream.
I wonder if you have ever had lucid dreams?
Sometimes, when I dream, I sort of realize that I'm dreaming and then I feel as if I have woken up in the dream only for a short time.
I then maybe try to fly or do something, and then I wake up quite suddenly and I think wow, what happened?
This for me is an interesting topic.
I wonder why do we lucid dream?
Why does it exist?
Why is it possible?
Another very interesting area of sleep is a disorder or something that occurs, called sleep paralysis.
The word paralysis means that you can't move.
You can't move your body.
What happens is your brain begins to wake up before your body does.
So you open up your eyes and you feel awake, but you can't move your body.
This can be a little bit scary when it happens to people.
But it is a perfectly natural thing that occurs to quite a lot of people at least a few times in their life.
Have you ever experienced that?
So that finishes our topic of sleep for today.
I hope it was very enjoyable for you.
But I have one more exciting announcement.
I am currently working on a project.
It's an online platform.
But first I want to say that these podcasts and all of the content that I do on Instagram and social media,
It will always be free and that isn't going to change.
None of that will ever change.
However, I wanted to develop something for people to take their learning further.
So I am working on a platform to practice conversation with me.
Conversational classes.
This can be with me and other native speakers of English.
The idea is that all classes will follow a similar concept to this podcast actually, and that is immersion being surrounded by English.
All classes will be in English.
And in order to understand something which you don't know, it will be explained to you in simpler English terms so that you understand.
This really helps to stop translating in your head, for example.
You can begin to build thought patterns in English, a way of thinking in English.
Through this platform, I also want to launch various courses.
This includes accent and pronunciation courses.
As well as talking more naturally like a native.
All of this is in the very early stages of creation.
But I just wanted to announce to you guys first.
I haven't said anything on Instagram about this.
But to me, this podcast is something more special.
And I know that the people that listen to it are much more serious about their learning.
When I launch the service, there will only be a limited number of spaces in classes.
And I want to tell you guys about it first.
And you will also hear about it first on this podcast, when it is launched before anyone on Instagram or my other platforms.
So one last thing, don't forget to send your questions and I will answer them in the next episode.
Thank you very much for listening and I will see you next time.
Goodbye.
