In this fast-paced world of Red Bull, Macha Tea, Ozempic and OTT, there is one area of life which is always on the back seat – a good shuteye. One of the most underrated superpowers, sleep continues to be a second fiddle in our lives, almost at the compromising end of it. Sleep for us is like Miscellaneous Accounting, anything and everything takes precedence, and finally what good is left of the day, goes to sleep.
When we talk about the 12th house of astrology with an astrologer, the first few things which come to mind are foreign travels, foreign settlement, losses, expenditures, and bed pleasures. Some are also worried about hospitals and jail time. While the whole world around us keeps crashing down on us each morning and we bear its weight the whole day, the evening promises a cure, a panacea to all our problems – a good night’s sleep. Yet, in hustle prone life, sleep is the one who always ends up taking a back seat. Take my teenager for example – there is already enough workload on her from school, that she has started making her days an hour or two longer. At 13. We are systematically programmed since a very young age to compromise on one thing which we need the most – Sleep. Rarest of the rare is that person who goes to an astrologer with a Prashna and a life problem to fix his sleep. More often he asks of everything which will help him sacrifice more sleep – even if they are few moments of bed pleasures.
Why is sleep important for us? Let’s dip our feet slightly on the physiology of it, before coming back to astrology. I am guessing you would be quick enough to ChatGpt the details, but if we look at the core function of sleep in our lives, its Repair, Recover, Reset. Every part of our body and mind, goes into boot mode to ensure the waste is out and the vehicle is ready for the next day. Our brain which is the powerhouse of our machine, is the most important organ which needs to clear out wasteful data, simplify connections, build useful memories, and get you ready to take on the world. Our digestion and gut, which is the core of our bodily functions gets into night watchman mode ensuring the factory processes all raw materials into energy efficient finished goods and supplies it to all the body energy centers. Our mind needs a bit of a off time from the life changing decisions we make during the day, especially when it thinks the whole day that it’s in control. The mind needs to let its guards down a little.
Such are the woes of modern human life that we do everything we can to prevent our own body and mind to recover. So, why do we sacrifice sleep? We would not sacrifice our screen time by a moment, we wouldn’t sacrifice our office call at 2 a.m., so why this step-childly behavior with sleep. The answer lies deep in our making. Go back 100,000 years. A hunter gatherer Homo Sapien friend is sitting on a tree top, doing what humans do best, thinking. What do you think is on his mind – a mutual fund SIP he can start for his children, or is it safe to climb down now that the predator has left the scene. As he starts to climb down his tree to take rest, his smartphone suddenly plays a loud tone only to find Tendulkar and Dhoni telling him – Mutual Fund Sahi Hai. Such is the state of our present day lives. The moment we decide to give priority to sleep, everything around us tells us the benefits in going for immediate gratification than long term benefits. Ironically, mutual funds do give long term benefits, but we still lose sleep over them. Losing sleep over stuff, is one of the hallmarks of the current generations. But it has been programmed in us from ages, when we were in flight or fight mode, where saving one’s life took priority over sleep.
Let us come back to astrology understand how sleep plays an important role in our charts. Why is the 12th house of astrology connected to sleep. The 12th house among many things, is isolation, release, unconscious, escape, the other world connection, and moksha. Our sleep is the single most act of exclusive isolation we could get. Sleep takes us to the other world via our dreams. Sleep lets us escape our lives, hopefully for a few hours. It liberates us from disease – daily and the long run. And in a very lose way, we could associate a good night sleep with the term – moksha. Every small disturbance in the fabric of sleep ripples across every house of our chart –
Often when we do not get quality sleep, especially, post binging a series, you would notice the body is in fatigue state, cannot think straight and has a foggy day in the mind, thereby showing signs of strain in our 1st house.
Irritabilty gets to us, invariably showing up in our speech. The body craves unnecessary carbs, hoping to crawl out of the hole we have dug. Thus, bringing out the effects of no sleep on our 2nd house.
The 3rd house plays with our motivation, resolve and resilience. Hard work also comes from this corner of the chart. The sluggishness of the body kills the drive we want to run our day job, hence the lack of getting things done.
Mood swings, lack of peace in self at home, undercuts the benefits of our 4th house. Restlessness lingers around the whole day, and affects the mind, the moon, and its natural house.
You can forget about writing an article on astrology as your creative cells are in hibernation post the late-night binge drinking you have done, so much for having a good 5th house.
The 6th house – not much has to be said on how the broken immune system helps disease to prosper here. Add to it many sleepless nights and you are sure shot on your way to bring out the worst in your Ari Bhava.
I cannot think of a spouse who can bring the closeness in a relationship with an irritable, outspoken, restless partner. The 7th house also represents any kind of partnership, business or otherwise. This is the house which tells you how you face the world. A dent here could hurt you in many places.
Our psychic connections, healing, deep rooted fears, are all sitting in the 8th house. A aberration here by the mind, brings out the worst of our fears. Most importantly, a long-term sleep abuse will surely help solidify long term diseases – in today’s world we sophisticate them to – Lifestyle Diseases
The higher mind and the spiritual clarity stems from our 9th house of astrology. Any woes of the mind, does not allow us to reach our higher self, and eventually brings about loss of purpose, like a ship with a broken compass
We all have had a bad day in the office, courtesy a bad hangover from an office party. Keep doing it regularly and you can earn yourself a beautiful spiral down the unemployment chute. Our clarity of mind and quick decision making plays a key role in the work we do – career or otherwise and the 10th house is where the Idea meets Action. With a broken vehicle, this house suffers the most on how we process our Karma
An interesting spot, the 11th house, sitting right in front of the 12th. Think of the 12th like a charging station for the 11th house of gains, social networking, and goals. If the charge is not right, the ability to utilize our networks and our focus on goals is limited there by inhabiting our growth.
The 12th house with its hooks to sleep is like an epicenter of an earthquake waiting to happen each night, and the day it happens – shockwaves are felt everywhere. Some days less, some days more, but sleep surely has a way to making its presence or non-presence felt in our lives.
What can we do to fix this from an astrological standpoint? Will strengthening the 12th house alone ensure a good night sleep. Or will it, on the contrary, reduce sleep due to an increase in losses, or expenses or visits to the hospital, or for that matter bed pleasures. So how does astrology help us to fix our sleep cycle and affect good health. The key is to understand the makeup of the 12th house to fix your own specific sleep routine. The sign in the 12th plays an important role, as the sign lays down the foundation of how you want to dissolve yourself in this house. A Mercury sign might be more prone to reading a book before sleep, or writing a journal. Whereas a Pisces sign might benefit from meditation. A Moon sign might be better off having a glass of milk before sleep, while a Scorpio sign might need some deep dark meditative music to sleep. The sign provides you the makeup, but it’s not a binary answer. As astrology works, you must peel the layers of the 12th house to further design you own night time routine and follow it. For example, a Venus sitting in 12th house of Cancer might need pastel sheets with a warm glass of milk. A Rahu in 12th clearly tells us to stop screen time few hours before your sleep time to reduce mental stimulation. Just like astrological remedies, the sleep routine remedies must look at all aspect of astrology like 12th house, planets in 12th, sign of 12th, lord of 12th, Moon. All the layers combined will help you define a sleep routine which is customized and practically possible for you.
Sleep is the most underutilized weapon we have for leading a healthy and successful life. Like every other gift of God, it is free, and available to us in our Nidra Bhav. I leave you with words from a great man, who has summed this entire article in one sentence (so much for reading all of it 😊),
“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn,” – Mahatma Gandhi
Good night.