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RESETTING YOUR RHYTHM

Quite a lot of attention is paid to the psychological reasons why people have problems with sleep, like stress, burnout and anxiety. These are important to address, but first I want you to focus on the physiology of sleep and how vital it is for you to be physically comfortable to welcome the sleep process. That’s crucial.

In this chapter, there are four Sleep Hacks you can choose from. There are two other chapters dedicated to the Physical Sleep Hacks, so remember, you just need to pick one of the six Sleep Hacks in total from this section, to be combined with two from the other sections, Psychological and Hypnomagical.

MY PERSONAL SLEEP JOURNEY

My experience of sleep shows how your sleep patterns can change over your lifetime. These days I enjoy excellent sleep, and as I will show you, you can too. But I haven’t always. Truth be told, it wasn’t until I had a car accident in 2007 that I understood how strongly physiology and sleep are linked.

Earlier in my life, I used to sleep very little, but that was by choice. I had this mantra in my head, which I got from my dad: ‘sleep when I’m dead’. In hindsight, I know that is the wrong attitude (sorry, Dad!), but in my late teens and early twenties, that’s what I believed. I thought I was thriving on five hours’ sleep and I believed I was being super-productive. Now I know that certainly wasn’t the case and by following the mantra I was simply bringing the ‘death’ sleep sooner than fate would otherwise have decided for me. Sure, I was doing TV shows and enjoying success, but if I had been getting the optimal levels of sleep, my work would certainly have been better. My health would also have been better; at the time I was struggling with digestive problems and weight issues. Not getting enough sleep also affected my attitude. I always try to maintain a positive outlook, but if something went wrong in work or in life I was sometimes crankier than I needed to be. The noughties is the decade that I can pinpoint in my head where I was so busy being busy that sleep simply wasn’t important to me. I started my TV career in 2003, with my first TV show, Close Encounters with Keith Barry, on RTÉ. The next year, I did my MTV show, Brainwashed, and in 2006 I began my CBS show in the US, Keith Barry: Extraordinary.

In 2008, I heard an interview with Will Smith. He was 39 at the time, and he’d already had huge success, not only as a rapper but also on TV in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and then as a big movie star. In the interview on CBS News, he was asked what the secret of his success was. He said, ‘I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. I’ve viewed myself as slightly above average in talent. And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping? I’m working.’ That resonated with me. In my head, from then on, from my twenties to mid-thirties, I told myself that when all the other magicians, hypnotists and mentalists are in bed, I’m out-working them. That’s a flaw. For many years, I thought it was an amazing attribute, and I still do think that out-working everyone is a smart idea, but not to the detriment of sleep.

In the moment I thought I was doing amazing work, but when I look back now, while some of it I think was good and because I’m my own worst critic, some of it I think could have been so much better. What would have happened if I had got more sleep? Would my work have been better? The answer is a definitive yes.

What changed my attitude to sleep was the aftermath of a car accident. In March 2007, a car I was travelling in collided with another, head on, both doing around 60 miles per hour. I broke my knee; I had multiple fractures in my fibula and tibia; and my metatarsals (the bones going to your toes) were broken. My ankle was dislocated and my foot was wrapped around my shin, pointing the wrong way. The trauma surgeon in Daisy Hill Hospital in Co. Armagh spent 30 or 40 minutes trying to pull my foot back into place, to no avail – I was tensing my body so much it kept popping back out. Suddenly he stopped trying and said ‘Keith, if you don’t somehow relax your body, I’ll need to amputate your foot.’

That was when everything shifted. I realised I needed to use all the hypnosis and brain-hacking techniques I had used on other people on myself. This sounds crazy, but right there and then I self-hypnotised myself into a deeply relaxed state of mind. Immediately the surgeon jolted my foot back into position and the nurse wrapped my whole leg and foot in an open leg cast. Ultimately, over three-and-a-half weeks, my leg had to be rebuilt up in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. After that, I struggled with my sleep because of the pain, especially in my ankle, which now has arthritis. Since the accident, I’ve also had problems with my back and shoulders and other areas of my body.

Pain is something we must all deal with. But the point is that even a minor ache or pain can keep you awake at night.

What I have uncovered, through the trials and tribulations that I’ve had since the car accident in 2007, is that the first step in getting good sleep is about relaxing your physical body and your whole physiology, which I’ll explain to you how to do in a later chapter.

HOW GETTING MORE SLEEP IMPROVED MY LIFE

Before that, I want to let you know about how my wellbeing improved once I began to get more and better sleep.

MY ENERGY LEVELS SHOT UP

People often ask me, ‘Where do you get your energy from?’ There are two things I can put my energy down to. The first is that my internal purpose/my ‘why’ is clearly defined. That means I know exactly why I’m doing whatever I’m doing every day and what my future reality looks like. The second is sleep. I’m bouncing out of bed every morning because I’ve had restful, good sleep; I’m ready to attack the day. I’m definitely more productive and I’m managing to juggle a lot of projects quite well. I’m more focused than I’ve ever been. I have more projects going on than I’ve ever had in the past and I’m able to compartmentalise and focus on each and every one of them when I need to. If I’m focused on my family, I’m with them and I’m fully absorbed. When I’m on stage, I’m present with the audience and focused on them. While writing this book, I have been fully focused on that. If you don’t have an optimal amount of sleep you can’t function like that and you can’t operate at the highest level.

MY RECOVERY FROM INJURY HAS IMPROVED

The link between recovery from injuries and getting enough sleep has been well documented.3 There are several reasons why this is the case. The first is that in the deeper stages of sleep there’s increased blood flow to the muscles, which allows oxygen and nutrients to regenerate cells. Another is that the hormone prolactin is released when you sleep, and this helps regulate inflammation. When I was in constant pain, my body was inflamed. I did various things to help this, including a breathing technique called the Wim Hof system, and an anti-inflammatory diet. But it wasn’t until I addressed my sleep issues that the pain level truly went down. I found the pain getting less and less and I’ve been able to hit the gym hard every day and play football in the garden with my 12-year-old son, neither of which I had been able to do before.

There were other clear benefits too.

I’M ENJOYING PERFORMING ON STAGE A LOT MORE

When I wasn’t getting enough sleep, I would get more nervous going on stage. I might mess up a demonstration or fail to hack someone’s mind, sometimes in front of 1,500 people! Can you imagine the embarrassment? The stress was unimaginable.

I’M LESS CRANKY

Like many parents, I found myself getting short with my children and raising my voice with them when I shouldn’t have, and I no longer do that. I find that I have way more patience with them, am more attentive to their needs, and have more fun moments with them every day.

And now let’s turn to what you need to do to enjoy restorative, relaxing and regenerative sleep.

KNOW YOUR CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS

If you’ve read anything at all about the science of sleep, you’ll have heard of circadian rhythms. These rhythms are a core part of our physiology, the 24-hour internal clock that includes a variety of processes including sleep–wake cycles, activity–rest cycles and eating–fasting cycles. Circadian rhythms mainly respond to light and dark, and they affect most living things, including animals, plants and microbes. It’s so important to grasp the fact that we need to regulate these rhythms to optimise sleep, as well as our overall health and productivity.

The big issue is that, right now, more than at any other time in history, these rhythms are all over the place, largely because we’re staring at screens and our smartphone is never out of our hands. Understanding that we are all tech addicts is a first step to solving our sleep issues. Light exposure is what keeps us alert during daytime, and natural sunlight is rich in blue spectrum light. But with so much artificial light coming at us via devices, computers and LED lights, it’s...