Meditation and yoga (yes, they are seperate), have great beneficial effects on the body and mind, but in no way are they an alternative to sleep. As mentioned above, the body needs time to prepare itself for another day of working and living the life we have put ourselves into. Both meditation and yoga teaches the mind to stay focused, which in turn, allows us to take an outside perspective on everything in our life, and see a much brighter light than others. That's the basic form of meditation. It can later be taken to great lengths in becoming one with the Divine, and opening up, and clearing blocked chakras, the major energy centres of our body. But even with that, nothing comes close to the benefits of having a full rest. Full usually being 8 hours, as dictated by science.

Meditation does help make us feel more awake afterwards (considering you have grounded properly), but only for a short time.

All in all, meditation and yoga is best used in balance and conjunction with proper sleep. And I wouldn't recommend doing anything other than that, for your body's sake.

 

 

 

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Meditation can be quite refreshing in my opinion, it can help you recover lost sleep, however can never be considered as a substitute. Buddha came to find during, his self exile, that deprevation was not the answer. One must Eat, Sleep and Exercise properly to be truly happy and enlightened.

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Have you read any of Wayne Dyer's work? He has written some interesting things about meditation, and he supports what you are saying about how you can medidate for 15 min and feel as if you just woke up from a nice 8 hour sleep. While I think that it is definitely possible to feel rested and calm after meditation, especially if you really are able to get into it, I think that it should be considered a temporary solution to a lack of sleep rather than a permanent practice. Biologically, sleep serves many different functions, such as repairing tissues and storing facts to memory. By neglecting to sleep, you may not be allowing your body to do what it needs to to keep you healthy. You may feel okay, even great, for a little while, but after awhile it will probably catch up.

Bottom line is, meditation is great stress relief and definitely good for you, but I dont' think it's good to get carried away and have it replace sleep on a regular basis. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't all make it a part of our daily lives

 

 

 

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Well the main difference between meditation and sleeping is that meditation is a state of super consciousness while sleeping is a state of sub consciousness.
But you may say that we get refreshed after a long deep sleep and like wise after meditation. (Here what i mean by getting refreshed is increase in the degree of alertness and increase in the performance of our intellect) . This is because our body the greatest machine ever gets itself repaired and reset as we aren't giving any work to it or forcing it . But the main difference between sleeping and meditation is we spiritually travel towards a blissful state of ultimate or GOD consciousness as stated in Pathanjali's Yoga Sutra the source book of the science of Yoga and Meditation. This is the ultimate state of bliss or being the GOD. But on contrary sleeping is something like shutting yourself in a sound proof room in order to escape from the noise of the outside world. Well , if i have been too much complex or if it seems that i have blabbered something please do forgive me and please send your feeds to d_sriram@msn.com with the 'subject' of the e-mail as 'yoga'.

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