NORTH, EAST, WEST, OR SOUTH:
DOES THE DIRECTION IN WHICH YOUR HEAD POINTS WHEN
YOU’RE ASLEEP DETERMINE THE QUALITY OF YOUR SLEEP?
According to vastu shastra, the traditional Hindu science of architecture,
the answer is YES!
If you’ve experienced sleepless nights for days, weeks, or months on end, you don’t have to be reminded how crucial sound, restful sleep is when it comes to your daily functioning, mindset, and energy levels. Restful sleep helps heal your body, refresh your spirit, and give you the get-up-and-go you need to tackle your duties and your delights.
Ayurveda is the form of alternative medicine (and the traditional system of medicine of India) that seeks to treat and integrate body, mind, and spirit using a wide-ranging holistic approach that emphasizes eating with the seasons, exercise, herbal remedies, and meditation to establish and preserve robust health. It emphasizes three pillars of health: diet, sleep, and energy management. All three are crucial, irreducible aspects of wellness. Unless all three are addressed simultaneously at all times, disharmony ensues inside our bodies, paving a path toward malaise and ultimately disease.
If you find yourself unable to achieve a full rejuvenating night’s sleep despite doing all the usual things to decompress and deescalate prior to retiring for the night (turning off your electronics before 8 p.m., journaling, etc.), I suggest you try the sleep positions discussed below to see if any of them can help.
Vastu shastra’s goal is to balance the five natural planetary elements (earth, water, fire, air, and ether) by preserving and placing each element within its proper position and proportion. Whenever this is achieved, your dwelling spaces become harmonious, peaceful, and wellness-centered. And like creates like: your enhanced energy helps your surroundings and other beings in your orbit receive and radiate healing energy.
According to vastu shastra, the direction in which the top of your head points when you’re asleep truly matters!
NORTH
“Only dead people sleep with their heads pointing north.” — Vasant Lad
The Vedas teach that North is the route your soul will take when it exits your body at the end of your corporeal lifetime. So, only those interested in occasional lucid dreaming or astral travel should sleep with their head pointing in that direction.
In all other cases, it’s not a good idea because of the planet’s magnetic field. Because we, too, respond physically to magnetic poles — with our internal positive charge facing north and our negative charge facing south — those who try to sleep against this natural polarity are similar to two positive magnets being forced into face-to-face contact. Good luck with that! Those who sleep with their heads facing north regularly can expect to wake up feeling exhausted night after night, with no end in sight.
And because it is magnetic polarities that affect the circulation of your blood, sleeping with the top of your head facing north can cause stress, illness, and thought disturbances, none of which help you attain a restful night’s sleep. The result: potentially unhelpful emotional instability, frustration, lack or diminution of willpower, misery, and physical problems.
In a single sound bite, sleeping with the top of your head facing north withdraws energy from your body.
EAST
Academic students, listen up! Sleeping with the top of your head facing east is an excellent strategy. Doing so will boost your ability to retain what you’re learning, increase your ability to concentrate, and promote meditation-like sleep.
East is also the perfect direction for educators, scholars, and job and promotion-seekers. Sleeping in this position can help you feel more powerful, masterful, and energetic.
East is also ideal for anyone who is striving to overcome health challenges.
WEST
Sleeping with the top of your head facing west can be problematic for anyone who is experiencing sleep deficits. Although west is okay (not ideal, but okay), if you’re success-driven and striving for some form of world renown or domination in your field, the head-facing-west position won’t necessarily serve you as a reliable sleep-inducer. Although some sleep experts suggest that west is a neutral sleeping position, others claim it’s hard to get excellent rejuvenating rest because of the occurrence of frequent, unsettling action/adventure type dreams. (Type A’s are especially prone to sleeping fitfully, so East and South are ideal for them.)
Bottom line: Sleeping with the top of your head facing west or north opposes your goal to maximize the amount of rest and recuperation you want to achieve.
SOUTH
Ding ding ding ding ding! When it comes to achieving restful, rejuvenating sleep, south is the hands down, gold-plated winner.
If you want to sleep like the proverbial dead and wake up ready to embrace and enhance your life, turn your bed so its head faces south.
Recall the above magnetic pole information. Sleeping with your head facing south and your feet facing north draws energy into your body. Not only will your sleep be happy and contented, your health, happiness, and prosperity are likely to increase. Sleeping with head south means you’ll absorb the energy required to tackle what needs doing to advance you to the next level in your journey toward your life goals.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you might also like learning about lucid dreaming, an excellent precursor to astral projection and traveling the astral realms. Take a look at my Astral Wisdom course where I teach you how to design the Life of Your Dreams By Mastering the Out-of-Body Experience.
