What is the point of sleeping less? And how to achieve that?

Srila Prabhupada wrote quite a few times about the importance of not sleeping too much for spiritual life. In many passages, he advises a maximum of 6 hours. How does it work?

Srila Prabhupada wrote quite a few times about the importance of not sleeping too much for spiritual life. In many passages, he advises a maximum of 6 hours. This may sound counterproductive to many since most will not be able to operate very well with so little rest. What is the point of sleeping less and then sleeping during the japa and becoming lethargic the whole day, many will argue. On the other hand, we can see the obvious advantages of having more time to chant our rounds and reinforce other aspects of our spiritual practice.

So, what to do with this instruction? Should we try to follow it, or just discard it in the name of “time, place, and circumstance”?

There is a letter to Sri Govinda Prabhu (06/12/1974) that offers some extra insight:

“Regarding the temple management, one man can be left behind, while the others go out, to take care of the Deity. And, you can come home at night and take prasadam sumptuously. Once eating sumptuously is enough to maintain body and soul together. In the daytime you may not take, and at night you can take. As a matter of fact, a devotee may take only once in a day either in the day or night, and whenever you eat, you must first offer. But I do not mean you should neglect temple life. Do not misunderstand this. But, one man can remain, and so far the other devotees are concerned, they can eat once in the day or night, after having kirtana, then six hours of sound sleep, and this will maintain their health properly.”

Here Srila Prabhupada is giving a more complete picture, advising not only to sleep just 6 hours but also to eat only once a day. Although there are no other written references I can find, there are other anecdotal references that he gave similar instructions to disciples at different times.

Eating only once a day may sound very revolutionary, but it’s actually the diet traditionally followed by renunciants in our line. As described in the Jaiva Dharma and other works of our acaryas, renunciants would practice their sādhana in the morning, go to beg from the gṛhasthas at lunchtime, and eat only once at some point in the afternoon. This would allow them to keep good health (despite their austere living conditions), help them control their senses, increase their mental clarity, and help to situate themselves in the mode of goodness. According to different accounts, Srila Prabhupada was personally following this system when he was living alone in Vṛndāvana, before coming to the West. As he mentions:

“Generally those engaged in spiritual advancement take food only once, either in the afternoon or in the evening. If one takes food only once, naturally he does not become fat.” (SB 7.13.18)

We also have many passages where Srila Prabhupada mentions that eating too much is not very positive for spiritual life. If one eats too much at night, especially, one will have disturbed sleep and will have to sleep more hours to feel sufficiently rested.

We can see that these two instructions, of sleeping less and eating less, go together and were traditionally followed by renunciants and devotees who were very serious about spiritual life.

When we take things in this context, it seems that when Prabhupada speaks about sleeping less, this is part of a package that also includes controlling one’s eating. Without doing one, it’s very difficult to follow the other.

Eating only once a day may sound too extreme, something only for sannyasis or pure devotees, but that’s actually something that is becoming quite mainstream nowadays among people who want to improve their health and productivity. It’s called OMAD (one meal a day). That’s a form of intermittent fasting. There are different versions of it, like the warrior diet, but they are all based on the same principle: eat healthy foods, eat less, and eat only once a day, or in a narrow time window.

It may sound surprising, but there has been a lot of scientific research done on this area recently. The main point is that any fast of more than 12 hours offers a number of benefits, including autophagy, an increase in the levels of growth hormone, cellular regeneration, and so on. When one eats just once a day, one will be fasting for 22 or 23 hours daily, which can offer a number of advantages.

As one starts to eat less and improves their health in general, the quality of sleep tends to also improve, allowing one to feel well-rested with fewer hours. The combination of these two components seems to be the secret to following this instruction of sleeping less, something that can be positive for our spiritual lives, since waking up early to chant and attend spiritual programs is indicated by many advanced devotees as one of the secrets for the success of our spiritual lives. There is also, of course, the famous purport to the first verse from the Upadeśāmṛta: “Similarly, the demands of the body can be divided into three categories – the demands of the tongue, the belly, and the genitals. One may observe that these three senses are physically situated in a straight line, as far as the body is concerned, and that the bodily demands begin with the tongue.”, where controlling eating is also pointed as assistive to solving another problem we frequently have.

Apart from helping us to sleep less, eating once a day also helps to save time on cooking, eating, and cleaning. When we combine the two, the savings can be substantial. Most of us don’t have enough time for studying or properly chanting our rounds, and that’s one way to find it. A sincere devotee may be able to go to sleep at 8:00 or 9:00 pm and wake up at 2:00 am, for example, and thus have time to chant 16 rounds and study a little even before everyone else starts to wake up.

Eating once a day is also a way to find time to maintain a healthy diet, since it’s easier to find time to cook a proper meal and eat peacefully when we just need to do it once a day.

If you want to try, the secret is to be gradual. Start by fixing our eating habits and eating healthy food, and then gradually start doing intermittent fasting, following the 16:8 system (fasting for 16 hours, and then eating for 8 hours). After a few months, when the body starts to get used to it, one may start to gradually reduce the eating window until reaching the desired schedule.

One observation is that women are more sensitive to fasting than men. Most men can feel very well doing 20:4 or even OMAD, but ladies should be more careful with these more rigorous modalities of intermittent fasting. Women have more of the hormone kisspeptin, which makes them more sensitive to fasting. Although women can benefit from intermittent fasting as much as men, a regimen that is too rigorous (especially if combined with caloric restriction) can throw off their hormones and mess with their cycle. It’s probably OK for older, ascetic ladies, but probably not a good idea for younger ladies who want to become mothers.

Concluding, there is the issue of the best time for the daily meal when one is doing OMAD. This will depend mainly on one schedule, but the two main options are to eat during the afternoon, at lunchtime, or to eat in the morning.

The most common is to eat at some point in the mid-afternoon, anytime between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. That’s a time when the body is prepared to digest a good amount of food, and the time that we are used to having lunch. Eating at this time, one can still attend many professional and social events that require one to eat, and there is sufficient time to digest the food before bedtime. In short, this system consists of skipping breakfast, having lunch, and skipping dinner.

Another possibility is to have a meal in the morning, something that I did for a long time due to my particular routine. It’s more challenging in the sense that you need to have self-control to not eat for the whole day, and it’s difficult to eat a big meal early in the morning. However, it also has an advantage: if you do it correctly, there is a chance of getting better sleep (after the body gets used to it at least) since by the time you go to sleep, the body will already be in a fasted state, with very low levels of insulin. It happens that insulin makes it harder to fall asleep and to reach deeper levels of sleep. With low insulin, the chances of having a good night's sleep are higher. My experience, however, is that it only works if you have your meal early in the morning (before 9 a.m.), and eat meals very low in carbohydrates (more vegetables, milk products, nuts, etc.). If one eats a meal high in carbs at this time, they will be ravenously hungry by late afternoon. If we eat later in the morning, the body may not have time to enter a fasted state by the time we go to bed, and we may have difficulty falling asleep. In general, eating in the morning has some strong advantages, but it’s difficult to get it right.

When Prabhupada started teaching his first disciples in New York, he at first encouraged them to eat lots of prasāda. At some point, however, he said that from now on they had to learn to restrict their eating. Some immediately protested. Prabhupada’s answer was priceless: “You didn’t protest when I said to eat more...”

When someone is new, the general recommendation is that he should eat a lot of prasāda, so he can lose the taste for mundane food and get attached to spiritual life. As one progresses, however, austerity becomes more and more useful as a way to control our senses and progress to higher levels of devotional service. We can observe that most of our acaryas (and even many of our contemporary spiritual masters) underwent several austerities at various periods of their lives. Naturally, we should not try to imitate, but if we can follow their example as far as possible, trying to control our eating and sleeping, we can progress faster in spiritual practice.

If you are interested in reading more about health for devotees, you can check the book I wrote about that. It is available here on the site.

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