82: Why You Can't Sleep: The Surprising Truth with Nicholas Stewart

Why You Can't Sleep: The Surprising Truth with Nicholas Stewart

Nick Stewart: Sleep is a tricky beast. 

Michael Kummer: You know, it seems like humans are the only species on this planet who struggle with something as simple as falling asleep at night and waking up full of energy in the morning. Why is that? 

Nick Stewart: The moment that you feel like I'm suffering in bed, get out of the bed now. Get out. And go to the living room, find your favorite couch, grab your favorite book, light a candle, put yourself in the most restful and restorative space that you can.

And then when you feel yourself start to droop to go, head back to the bed and keep doing that. 

Michael Kummer: And, and I've noticed that there is a seasonality to my sleep cycles. I sleep differently in summer. Michael, 

Nick Stewart: I think if someone had just said to me, I don't know, a year or less into the insomnia that I was experiencing in 2018, Hey Nick, whatever you do before 10am, get your butt on the street and walk for 30 minutes.

I think it would have shaved a year or a year off my insomnia 

Michael Kummer: with all of the things I can do intermittently. I feel great if I try to do it with sleep. Not so much. Welcome to the primer shift podcast. Hey, Nick. I'm thrilled to have you on the podcast to talk again about a topic that seems so. Well, easy really at the end of the day, but a lot of people seem to struggle with that.

You know, we raise a lot of different animals. None of those animals that ever come to me and say, Hey, Michael, you know, I need your advice. I don't sleep well. You know, it seems like humans are the only species on a species on this planet who struggle with something as simple as falling asleep at night and waking up full of energy in the morning.

Why is that? 

Nick Stewart: That's a great question. You know, I'm gonna answer it indirectly because I'm not sure that I know the exact answer. So one of the things that the book that I'm promoting Sleep Fitness about has a chapter that reminds me of the question, and after about six years of studying I had, I realized actually if you're into like history and archeology and anthropology.

And you think about the tribesmen around the fire protecting the food and the family. We evolved to be able to stay awake. Now if you really come from a monotheistic Christian background, then you believe that God designed us. So like tonight, you could decide to stay up. Right. It might not be fun the next day.

You could do it another day, but probably by the third day you'd probably have enough. So one of the things in the book is that, and I make that known right away, I think the chapter is called, it's like one of the first or second ones, it's like, Um, and I'm happy to send your viewers a copy of that chapter because it's kind of interesting for people to be like, we are, but I thought we had to sleep every night.

It's like, no, we don't actually have to. That's, that's the big surprise. So that's something I find, Michael, that when people. Understand that and really own that they don't panic as much. So I'll have a client who has that same feeling of you of like, what's wrong with us? Why aren't we falling asleep? And then for an individual it's like, Oh my God, it's three in the morning and I'm still awake.

Oh my God, it's four 30. Oh my God. I have to get up in 30 minutes and drive. Oh my God, there's a problem. I'm freaking out. I've had clients where that's, that's been the anxiety and simply having them read that chapter and go over that with them until they really get like, Oh, so I could stay up and probably not do that bad that day.

Like, it's not pleasant, but I can do it. So it just sort of takes people's like. That rigid belief that I must sleep every night and calms it down. And, you know, I say like over a third of the people that I work with, anxiety is there in some way or another. And when people don't sleep and they think that that's going to be the world, what happens?

They get more anxious. So your, your question is, well, there's an old, I call it old sleep knowledge, which is like, well, Michael, you better get your sleep every night. And new sleep knowledge. It's like, no, you're actually capable not to. And in today's, you know, I can give you a blank and answers as to why we're not sleeping compared to animals, which is we have rampant burnout.

Which is causing immense anxiety, which is causing immense amount of sleep disorders that's going on, and it's increasing every year. So just the pressure society wise for working professionals is, is that, is that an all time high? Um, so yeah, again, it's a bad situation. There's not a fun, friendly Matthew Walker mechanical answer to your question.

A lot of it gets roped up in because people are anxious or, or they don't feel like they're producing at work. So they're, they feel guilty and they have to stay up, you know? So that's where you kind of get into that. Of an answer, you know, which is a grayer answer than I think you wanted. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah, no, I mean, I didn't really expect a, you know, clear cut answer because I, I don't know that there is one, uh, and I don't have one either, you know, and so to kind of unpack what, what you said, because I agree and I.

I want to push back on, on, on one of the things you said that one thing is I've noticed this in the past when I started, um, taking my sleep hygiene more seriously, I got to a point where I was incredibly rigid. You know, if, if a kid would come, one of our kids would come in the middle of the night and wake me up.

I'm like, fuck, you know, now my sleep is disrupted. I lost half an hour, 45 minutes, you know, and kind of it, it, it at the end of the day, think thinking that way. Cost more harm than good for my, the quality of the remainder of my sleep, but overall, obviously, so by letting loose and saying, you know what, if tonight, I know we're going to have friends over and I know who, I know, you know, who you are, if you listen to this, you know, they come over and we are up until 11, which is two hours later than we usually go to bed sometimes two and a half hours, um, you know, but just saying, you know what?

Yeah. I'm okay with going to bed later today for the benefit of enjoying, you know, our friends and by making that mental switch of not freaking out that I might not get optimal sleep that day I've been sleeping better, you know, so. Totally agree with that. And I, I think that a lot of people, and I've talked to, you know, friends and family who struggle with sleep, they go through the exact same thing, you know.

They worry so much that it prevents them from, from what they are trying to accomplish. They are in their own way, basically, by being in their head and by being anxious about, you know, I must get this sleep right. Otherwise, you know, terrible things are going to happen. We need to interrupt this episode for a quick shout out to our sponsor OneSkin, because let's be honest, nobody wants the skin cells checking out early.

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Now, back to our regular schedule program, before any more cells decide to retire, obviously, you know, if you, if you struggle with sleeping well every single night and you, it takes you until three in the morning to fall asleep and then you have to get up at five, you can only do that for so long before you're gonna pay the price.

Right. So saying every day, you know what, it's for a, 

Nick Stewart: it's for a long time. You know, so I remember one of the first people that I worked with and they said, yeah, I have this woman She has a lot of anxiety. She doesn't sleep enough Well, it wasn't till subsequent conversations that I found out this lady 72 years old depending on a couple things She's not really expected to sleep as much So she was living in the old world of like, no, if I don't get eight hours of sleep and I haven't gotten the hours of sleep forever, like this is a huge problem.

And so the first thing we did was sit down and I just showed her some of the articles of like, no, it's okay. You know, it's normal. And just like taking that panic down was one level. But the thing I was going to share with you before was that. I had this one woman who was like, I've been suffering from insomnia for 10 years, you know, and you know, what can you do?

And we corresponded back and forth. And I said, Hey, I just want, I wanted to thank her for helping me. I said, Hey, listen, I'll give you one of the only two rules I give clients in the six week training program. And I said, number one is no suffering in bed. And she's like, wait, what do you mean? I said, well, tell me this.

When you walk by your bedroom during the day and you look in. Do you think to yourself, that's the place that I suffer? And she was like, yeah, right. And so I was like, for the next six weeks, the moment that you feel like I'm suffering in bed could be like, damn, I've been going back and forth for 40 minutes and I haven't fallen asleep.

Get out of the bed now. Right, get out and go to the living room, find your favorite couch, grab your favorite book, light a candle, put yourself in the most restful and restorative space that you can, and then when you feel yourself start to droop to go, head back to the bed and keep doing that. And honestly, when I say that, people think like, Oh my God, I'm going to have to do that 50 times.

No, I haven't met anyone who had to do it more than three times. Four weeks later, I checked in on the lady, and I just said, Hey, how's it going? Like, It's not like I really gave her a lot of tools to do other than, Hey, just get out of your bed when you realize, Oh, no, I'm, I'm, I'm like suffering. And she wrote back and was just like, Nick!

Oh my god! I've had insomnia for ten years! Do you know how much of a nice, first of all, it was just nice to have times at night that were nice. You know, so many people, Michael, you know, we're really looking society wise, conservatively, one in three people, likely pretty close to two to three people are having that issue.

So for her just be like, Oh my God, that's the first time in 10 years, like I didn't perfectly go to bed Nick right away in two weeks. But I started having nice moments at night that I hadn't had for over 10 years. You know, so just sometimes that one little thing to your point earlier is like, it's a mental thing.

I think I twice tried to trick this two smartest guys. I know about sleep with a question. One was on a podcast and he's a one guy is a, uh, Canadian CEO and founder of a neuro tech. That's going to come out. And I tried to catch him at the end of the thing. I was like, Hey, if you had to like pick one product for your family for sleep, that wasn't the one that you're selling, what would it be?

And he didn't hesitate for a second. He was like education. And I was like, that was such a lame answer. And then like eight months later, I talked to this other guy, I tried the same thing on him. And he's like education. And this guy had been in the sleep industry, like. Michael pioneer, like 40 years, you know, taking phone calls from Phil Jackson with the Chicago bulls stuck at the airport.

And he's like, how do I get to get these guys to go to sleep? I, I tried to float in the same answer to be like, is there a product out there that I could help my own followers and find out about, and his was education. So it's weird a year later, I still find like. Oh, educational things and new understandings and new ideas are still a welcome and needed thing for people to help sort of put boxes around how they think about sleep and then manage their sleep better.

Michael Kummer: You know, I've been paying attention to how I feel for about a decade now, and I've, I can certainly tell that, or in the past, I would think that if I don't get, you know, X number of hours of sleep, I don't function well. These days. I don't have an alarm, you know, I wake up when I wake up and then in retrospect, I kind of look, okay, how long did I really sleep, you know, how much time did I spend awake at night, how much time did I spend in the various stages of sleep, you know, assuming that the numbers I'm getting are somewhat in the ballpark and, and I can tell that if I sleep less than seven hours and 15 minutes.

I'm not at the top of my game. 

Nick Stewart: Yeah, 

Michael Kummer: I, I function, I, I would argue I function better than most others, but I don't function as well as I can based on my own baseline. And so I know that for me, a somewhat consistent bed and wake time are crucial to optimal performance. Yeah, you know, um, now I will go ahead.

Nick Stewart: The only thing that you were talking about earlier, and this doesn't apply to everyone, but it's one of the chapters in my book is, um, that I highlighted for today, especially when I was thinking about how you approach fitness kind of from all angles. And there are some fitness practices from nutrition, diet, physical fitness, where really snagging a perfect repeatable routine is the key momentum and building.

And sleep, it's a trap to try to go for perfect because you set off a couple different things. You set up, well, what, what if I don't, you know, like. I'll give you an example. I get this with a lot of clients in the beginning. We'll go over what their plan is. And then Michael's like, Oh my God, I'm running a, I get to, I get together.

It's going to run until two in the morning in four weeks. It's going to destroy all of my men's momentum. And so I have to say, no, calm down, calm down. If you went to the gym for, for the next four weeks and missed one workout and picked it up for the next two weeks, what would happen? No, I. Nothing much.

I'm like, same thing. Like, when I find a lot of them try to go for perfect, I have a guy recently who I'm working with, and right off the bat, to your point, anxiety being like, Right out of the gate, he knew. I think I have anxiety, I think I have ruminating thoughts and stuff. So it's like over a third of the people I talk to, that's what the thing was.

But when we had our first check in in a couple weeks, it came out that he hadn't done much of the sleep plan. He had worked on some of the burnout training that I was giving him, which was working good, but he kind of stunk it up with the sleep training. And, and we have trust and rapport. And so we can joke and I can hear, and I said, okay, so you didn't do great, but we figured it out, which was if I don't do it perfectly, the, at the time we said we'd do it for the length that I said I would do it for the number of days I said we'd do it, then I don't do it at all, you know?

So I try to get people to be like. It doesn't have to be perfect. It could be 1045 one night and 1030 the other night, uh, you know, and, or the numbers could fluctuate. And so just loosening up a bit cause people can get so tight about it. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I'm a huge fan of intermittent living, you know, and, uh, and I say living because I try to apply that intermittent concepts to, to dieting, to exercising, uh, to really everything because.

You know, back in the days, you know, humans did not have, you know, a fridge where they could just eat whenever they wanted. No, they had to hunt. And sometimes the hunt was unsuccessful, so they had to fast. Right. Sometimes they had to abstain from water if they couldn't find any clean, you know, source.

Sometimes they couldn't sleep because one guy needed to, you know, watch the fire and make sure that, you know, no wild animal would, would, you know, attack the tribe or whatever. Exactly. There's always an intermittent, um, concept to most of what we should be doing. And I would argue that Why not apply that intermittent idea also to, to sleeping?

Nick Stewart: Tell me what your thought is about that because there are some versions that there are some versions like, like once in a long while, I'll get someone that wakes up all the time through the night. And there's a book, I can't remember the name of it off the top of my hand, who has a totally different method of training sports people.

And it's exactly like you said, they're, they're, they're going for 90 minute cycles. You know, so they'll report to him like, Oh, hey, Bob, man, last night I had five cycles. They don't talk like, Oh no, I got my seven and a half hours. So I'm interested to hear what you think about that in terms of how you would apply that to sleep.

Michael Kummer: Yeah. I mean, that's a great idea. I mean, I, I know that, you know, I wake up or at least I, I, I'm, I don't wake up and like, Get up and, you know, and, and walk around the house. But I do wake up roughly after every sleep cycle, right? When you get out of the, you know, the REM sleep or deep sleep and, you know, you have a brief moment of awakening and then you fall back asleep, kind of.

That's a perfectly normal cycle. And if I, if I notice that, you know, I, I've, I've, and, and I've noticed that there is a seasonality to my sleep cycles. I sleep differently in summer than I do in winter. Um, and so, you know, maybe there is an argument to be made that, and even my sleep timing differs because in summer, I'm not going to go to bed when it's still light outside, right?

I try to go to bed after the sun is set, after there is no more light. Right. Right. And so that by, you know, already defines my changes in, in, in sleep, uh, in, in my sleep pattern, because it's different in winter than in summer. And, um, but even with my, with sleep cycles, you know, I noticed there are times.

Where I wake up at a certain time and I feel like my cortisol is higher than it should be at that time of the day and I feel like mildly awake, you know, and, and my wife has the same, we, we don't have to very often, but it, it does happen and you know, and sometimes, you know, we, I just get up, you know, get a glass of water, whatever, go to the bathroom, go back to sleep.

And, you know, I fall asleep relatively quickly, but there is the time where I'm awake, where my sleep is interrupted. 

Nick Stewart: Yeah. 

Michael Kummer: Um, yeah. However, one thing that I have noticed is By by making changes to my sleep cycle that are not gradually. So not going from, from summer to fall into winter, like changing it over the course of weeks or even months.

If I say, you know what, usually the last couple of days I went to bed at nine. Uh, next few days, I'm going to go to bed at 10 30. I can feel. The impact on my mental performance when I do that. And the more, um, the more, the more I get away from my normal sleep routine. Let's say, you know, we go somewhere, we come back at midnight.

Let's say I can feel that in a negative way for the next couple of days. So I've, when I, when I don't eat, I feel great. When I am a day, I don't work out. I feel great with all of the things I can do intermittently. I feel great if I try to do it with sleep, not so much. 

Nick Stewart: Yes, it is its own beast. I mean, the more I learned about it, the more I'm amazed by how much it informs our total health, you know, and I think this is one of the things where.

When, when I looked at like your podcast description, it was this great listing of all these sort of health related topics. And I thought about how so many of them have a very strong industry, you know, or there's a very strong catalog of confirmed information. But right now the sleep industry is so broken.

So we think about some of those core issues that you guys address on this podcast. There's university academic researchers who specialize in those things, who have connections with sports teams have connections with independent trainers who are testing different studies that they can cross collaborate with that relationship.

It's not there in the sleep world, you know? So when the more I thought about sleep, when I thought about public health and doctors, I realized, Oh, we got to a point with obesity. We're primary care physicians in the U S we're like, we, we can't keep, we can't keep up. We can't, we can't help these people. We, we need, we physical trainers, we need, and then some, we have a whole physical fitness industry with clothes and research and constant books and different diets and so on, mentors, leaders, gyms, training facilities.

There's an industry and that industry is hardly existent in the sleep world. So, so as I told them, I said, listen, like. I'm cool to take the loss. I'm not copywriting the term and I don't really care if no one ever adopts it, but we need something where we can go, Oh, that makes sense. And it kind of brings some of my ideas together, but it also tells me maybe I don't know as much as I thought I did.

And I think that that's one of the big shockers. I think Michael about folks today. Is that a lot of people think, well, I know enough about sleep, like my sleep's fine, you know, or they'll sort of be like, It's good enough. And so it's like, Ooh, I don't think that you're aware of like things have evolved.

There's a new information out there. It's just not disseminated in a way that's very practical for people. 

Michael Kummer: But you know, one of the things I've, I've noticed that a lot of the things that we do from a biohacking health optimization. Many of the things that I do, you know, it's all trying to mitigate the shitty lifestyle that we all live.

Right? Because if you, if you live out in the woods, you know, with your family, disconnected from social media, disconnected from EMFs, you know, you, you, you grow your own food. You're sleeping well. You're sleeping well. You know, there's not really much you need to do. So my, my question is, I, I obviously understand, you know, I, much like I understand the need for medication, you know.

Yeah, I don't want to mitigate my shitty lifestyle and don't just medication a Medicaid and hope you know I'm gonna be okay somewhat But I do understand that if I have a certain condition and in in addition to making lifestyle changes, you know I cannot do something to make a meaningful impact and how much of what you teach is about Getting your shitty lifestyle together, you know, and making meaningful changes.

Maybe, you know, the job that you have is crap and it's not sustainable. Regardless of what you do, you will never be a hundred percent if you continue working for this company in a cubicle, you know, for, you know, 60 hours a week. 

Nick Stewart: No, I think, I think that's where the line gets drawn for me is, and you know, you use shitty lifestyle, you know, and, and I would probably say that shows up as this really insane level of burnout we're increasingly seeing.

So the more I worked with people, the, one of the things that was coming out of it is people were becoming a lot more burnout resistant, right? In a way they were They were doing what you're saying. They were sort of taking care of their life more. So I was like, Ooh, I, I think we need to do some focus on training around that.

So that's something I've introduced and I'm just testing it with some clients and they really appreciate it. You know, and I'll give you an example. It's just, there's been a lot of books in the last, like, I don't know, four or five years about around rest. So I would say like another one of those. Old sleep knowledge would say, well, okay, I'm Michael and I just worked for 40 minutes at my desk doing creative content posts and I got it to all my social media platforms.

I've done it. Now I need to get to the next thing. I've learned enough about burnout and rest where. When I'm training someone with it, it's like, as soon as you hit that point, you're going to take at least a 10 minute break. Your body is totally passive and you let your mind wander. And what a lot of people that I find don't understand yet, and this is usually kind of a fun, helpful moment is they think the mind turns off, but having to have done some work around ADHD and sleep, it became clear that, Whoa.

Even if you go and lie down for 10 minutes after a work session and just relax your body and let your mind go wherever you're not like, okay, what was that list? And I need to like, make sure. And I'm like, do I remember? No, you just let your mind wander that it's act. It's extremely active. You know, if you stick it in an fMRI machine, it's like.

Why isn't it resting? They have like a measurement. It's like a half a kilowatt of energy less. So if you know anything about REM sleep, one of the things that I found is when you research these sort of non directional focus states of mind and give yourself those respites during the day. I don't always want to sell everything because it's productive, but I'd be lying to say to you Those 10 minutes are going to be hugely productive.

You will, your brain will start connecting things. And often I'll tell people, Hey, if you, if you're doing this and you're lying on a yoga mat or something, put a little notepad next to it. Because suddenly you might be like, Oh my God, I totally forgot to send Michael that thing and I need to tell him good.

Just write it down and go back to relaxing. What you do during the day has a much more dramatic effect on how you're going to sleep that night than the last few things you do before you go to bed. You know, so that's why I'm starting to integrate a daytime burnout training for people because I'm like, you're starting to set yourself up well for at night.

You know, it's like to your point, I remember a guy that was just meeting and we were colleagues and he says, I mean, Oh, my wife and I, we sleep like babies. We, you know, we lie down and we're, we just pass out. Well, like four minutes later, it becomes clear that the two of them hiked three or four hours a day.

I'm like, you, you, did you, do you think that might have something to do with it? Like maybe just, I'm guessing it's a theory. It probably could, you know, 

Michael Kummer: for me, good sleep starts when I wake up, you know, if I, if I get outside in the morning, you know, be in, in the, in the early sun. That sets me up for a good night's sleep.

You know, if I go right to the office, you know, an artificial light, sedentary, you know, not moving, I don't sleep as well. And, and yeah, so I, I totally agree. You know, what do you do during the day matters a lot in terms of how you sleep. Yeah. And 

Nick Stewart: Michael, let's nail that one right on your head, on the head.

First of all, awesome for you that you did that, but some people have no idea. Like when they get into a sleep problem, they think, well, I better sleep as late as I can in the day. And it's like. Actually, do you really want to do what Michael's doing, which is as soon as he's up and going he's hitting the street and getting sun into his retina, which is then creating serotonin, which magically somehow hangs out in your brain until the sun comes down and your brain goes, Oh, remember that hormone?

Cool. Let's convert it to melatonin, Michael. I think if someone had just said to me, Okay. I don't know, a year or less into the insomnia that I was experiencing in 2018. Hey Nick, whatever you do before 10:00 AM get your butt on the street and walk for 30 minutes. I think it would've shaved a year or a year off my insomnia.

That's how big of a deal it is. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah. So speaking of, you know, what are some of the, I don't know, top three, five, however you, however many you wanna, you wanna mention. Some of the things that are maybe not so obvious, like, you know, go to bed at the same time every day, whatever, you know, like that, like the sunlight thing, what are some of the top tips that, that you think you already mentioned, you know, don't, don't freak out, even if you know that tonight's not going to be the best night or you woke up in the middle of the night, you know, having a lack of anxiety is going to help you.

What else, what are some of those things that people needs to hear that will have a positive impact on their sleep? 

Nick Stewart: I think a couple things. One of the things in the book, one of the chapters is hard work won't pay off. And that was one of the things that I was thinking about before your show, because so many of the things that

you focus on the opposite is true. If I work hard on my physical fitness and I don't over injure myself or anything like that, I'm just working hard. I'm going to get good results. You know, if I forced that extra rep. At the end of my set, that's going to benefit me later. Sleep is a tricky beast. It's like, if you try to force it and you try extra hard, whether that's, I learned more information about it, so I should be able to sleep, or I learned all the steps of what you should do before you go to bed and I did them perfectly.

It won't produce results like that. It's, it's a much finer, subtler, sneakier thing to either repair for some people or just to improve for some people. So I would just say that too, is that for folks who like your work and are used of like, like really engaging physically and hardworking to get these gains.

Sleep is like the karate opposite, you know, it's like trying to grab water with one hand and having it slip out So that's just another one of those like warnings that is like don't apply that same idea. So One little tidbit for listeners is that if you're, you know, and it's a two part thing, one is if you're trying to shift your sleep to be earlier, do not try to do it more than 15 minutes at a time until a week or two later you go, Oh, sweetheart.

I think that we, we have gone upstairs and fallen asleep for four or five days in a row, 15 minutes earlier. And that's when I coached him to go great, turn the dial, let's go another 15 minutes until we hit the sweet spot. You know, so that's, that can be very helpful. And then one of the other things is making sure whatever the, your changes are at first is that they're, they're tiny, meaning it could be a small duration.

So I think I would be. Uh, negligent not to answer part of your question about what are things people can do even in my own book, even in my own past, just working on it still blew me away by how powerful mindfulness meditation research has shown to improve the falling asleep, the staying asleep, the waking up, the, uh, the quality of the deep sleep.

I mean, it just go, it just goes on. I mean, the things, Michael, that I've been on several podcasts talking about suicide. And one of the things we talk about is some research on basic mindfulness meditation for a few days a week, testing. These is like college age students, six months later, and they have major decreases in suicidal thinking, but it really turns out I would be like, to your point, like when your sleep isn't perfect, even though you're Michael, a clearly physically fit guy.

It kind of takes a toll, which tells me it's a big deal. I would say mindfulness meditation brings the second big deal. And so one of the metaphors that I make for people, or one of the things I'll tell people right away is like, look. Your brain, yes, we have neurologically discovered that it's plastic and can change, but the truth is, it doesn't want to.

It does not want to. It wants everything to stay the same, even if the same is bad. I said, so I always tell clients, listen, I want you to think of your brain and your mind like a castle with two guards in the front. You gotta be small enough to fit into the castle and then sort of grow the uprising from inside out.

You know, so that can be helpful for people to realize. And I think the second thing for people who are trying to start new routines with sleep, you know, and that's a big crux of of what need what you need to do is is this idea of it being flexible? You know that it doesn't have to happen every at the right at the exact time that you plan for the day And that again makes it so that person can do it.

So i've had clients where The idea was to do them at night, but after we met for two weeks, it never happened. So we started talking about their morning and we said, sounds like you'd like to jump out of bed and go outside. Let's reverse. Your morning sequence and try it at a different time and test it for two weeks.

And let's, let's cut down the amount of minutes for each of these things. You know, one of the things I've enjoyed recently, Michael is using AI to help customize little things like that. So in this guy's case, we started running AI. And basically we're like, we, we, we worked it until it was like, give us a three minute meditation that, and then I think we put in some parameters, you know, that would do this for that, this, and, you know, and it kicked out this, this one that was like, for one minute, it was the traditional type of mindfulness meditation, which is a much more active mental state.

One was a sun meditation. And the third one was like forest bathing. You ever heard of forest bathing? Okay, so, so it reminded me of a little baby forest breathing where it was like, listen to the trees. Listen to that. And that was it. So it was like, hey, bud, do you think when you go outside in the morning with the dogs, you could take 3 minutes?

To do this. And it was like, yeah, totally. In fact, we could add such and such, you know, so, so those are those little kind of movements around that can really help somebody, you know, and, and again, with the flexibility part, especially when you're starting to be okay with forgetting, I forgot to do it. Well, it's okay.

It's still three 30. I can, I can do it now, you know, it's still okay to do it. And so that's helpful for people. For sure. 

Michael Kummer: Makes sense. All right. Well, that was a ton of good information, but before we wrap it up, you mentioned your book a couple of times, where can people find it? Where can people find you?

Yeah. Are you any resources that you're offering for those who are not quite ready to buy the book or whatever? Any chapters you mentioned before you could offer a chapter that we can. Yeah. So, 

Nick Stewart: yeah, so this is the cover. If it can be seen, you can just see it. 

Michael Kummer: Uh huh. 

Nick Stewart: Um, that's on, it's on Amazon. Uh, so that's available.

I, I will say that the reviews have been really good so far that have been coming out. Uh, again, I think what it does, first of all, I should say there isn't another sleep book like it. I've already upset some people for the things I've said. So, if you're like, I don't want to read a boring sleeping book.

Don't worry. I won't bore you number one and number two, all of the subheadings have the reading length. So in terms of just pacing your busy life, you can look at it and go, Oh, I got a minute and 35 seconds to read this next thing. So check that out on Amazon. Um, And then the next place that I can either send it to you in the chat or after for people to hold, I'm really hold my real like center location is LinkedIn.

And that's the best place for folks to get me. But for any of your folks and your listeners, I'm happy to send the free PDF chapter. So yeah, those things are there. And yeah, I can send you the links for that stuff. For sure. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah, please do. Cool. Well, I appreciate man. Thank you so much for, for hopping on, on, on the show.

And, uh, I will keep you posted on when the show goes live. 

Nick Stewart: Okay. Great. Yeah. Thanks Michael. I appreciate it. And I love your show's premise and what you're doing. And I thought, yeah, maybe a little talk on sleep might fit just right where folks need. 

Michael Kummer: All right. I think so. Yeah, I think it does. Yeah. 

Nick Stewart: Yeah. Well, I look forward to connecting you in the future, Michael.

Thanks so much. Thanks, man. Cheer. Talk to you soon. Bye. 

Extra: What if the modern world is robbing you of your testosterone? We're diving deep into what really drives tea production, how it's made, where things go wrong, and most importantly, how to fix it naturally. Don't miss this one. Tune into the next episode to learn how to optimize your testosterone and take back your vitality.