Dr. David Alter

So even things like people with significant sleep disturbances, spending a week waking up to the sun and going to sleep by the light of the moon and the stars is for many people curative.

They've reconnected with original rhythms of activation and deactivation, activity and rest.

So I would say in a world that is so fast, I'm old enough to remember how long it took a dial-up modem with a screeching sound before you finally connected.

It seemed to take...

Forever.

It took 30 seconds or a minute.

It seemed like it took hours.

And now, if we hit a button and the computer isn't instantly responsive, we're pounding the table, right?

Calling Comcast.

My system's broken.

Right, right.

I have to wait two seconds.

We're in this accelerated state.

And I think meditative practice is slowing down, not driving at 120 miles an hour and missing the exits.

It puts us back to the original normal, which is the capacity to shift in a day.

between the energy intensive sympathetic responding pattern and back into the energy conserving parasympathetic pattern.

We know it's a heck of a lot easier to use our credit card and write a check than it is to rebuild the balance.

We have to have practices that focus on energy restoration and energy conservation.

and not just spending, spending, spending, spending energy, time, pressure, et cetera.

And I think that's really how we were designed.