19/11/2025
One of the biggest disruptors of health is an unnatural lifestyle.
Many times l have been asked to fix a physical or emotional problem and on enquiry find that there is a very clear "maintaining cause".
I offer the analogy of a person who arrives with a pain in the leg. I inform them there is a knife stuck in the leg, they say to not be concerned about that, just to fix the pain to which l reply it might be worth taking the knife out first.
Once, men and women did not sleep as we do now. The notion of “eight hours straight” was foreign. In the Middle Ages, the night unfolded in two distinct breaths: the first sleep and the second sleep.
As the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky turned to dark velvet, people would retire early, surrendering to the hush of night. After four or five hours, their eyes would open, not from anxiety or disruption, but from rhythm. This pause in the night was a quiet, secret world.
By candlelight, they prayed, leafed through worn books, or sipped spiced wine. Some crossed the street to knock on a neighbour’s door, while others lingered in the kitchen, telling stories to their children, hands wrapped around warm cups. It was the heart of the night, and yet life moved gently, intimate, unhurried, profound.
When the invisible clock of darkness signaled, they returned to bed. The second sleep carried them to dawn, when the rooster’s crow marked the beginning of the day.
For centuries, this was the rhythm of rest, recorded in diaries, stories, even medical manuals. But the 18th century arrived with street lamps, factories, and the clamour of urban life. The middle hours of the night lost their enchantment, and people began to sleep “all in one go.”
By the 20th century, the memory of segmented sleep had faded. What was once a natural rhythm became misunderstood. Today, we might call it insomnia.
Then… it was simply the most human way to live in harmony with the night.
There are many ways to assist rebalancing of hormones in the field of homeopathy, even those disrupted by exposure to artificial lights, electromagnetic fields and other xenobiotics but ultimately one must return as far as is possible to a natural lifestyle.