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A Sermon Shared at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant

In Celebration of Veterans’ Day, 2018

On November 11, 2018

By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, Ph.D

Good morning, Covenant and interfaith friends!  Thanks to all of you who came out this morning to honor veterans.  I hope you will stay after service to enjoy some refreshments and meet others in our community who are doing fabulous work to help veterans come home and use their warrior wisdom for peacemaking.  Wilmington is a small town, really, and yet often people in the same line of volunteer work don’t know each other here. So I hope you’ll take this opportunity to network.

In early July I gave a sermon from this pulpit about trauma care. I shared insights from Dr. Nadine Burke Harris’s book, The Deepest Well, where she explains how adverse childhood experiences, ACEs, can lead to chronic diseases in adulthood, such as cancer, diabetes, and severe depression. At the end of her book she sets forth six ways that we can help people with a history of heavy stress to be more resilient. Returning veterans diagnosed with PTSD do well to follow these six recommendations of hers:

1. Get adequate sleep. Seven hours at a minimum is best.

2. Eat healthily. Use caffeine and alcohol in moderation.

3. Get regular exercise, and don’t overdo it!

4. Meditate.

5. Seek professional mental health care if you need it.

6. Join a supportive community.

The one recommendation that seemed most challenging for this congregation was number 4: Meditate. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that not many Presbyterians meditate, at least not regularly. So I promised to address that subject in a later sermon, which brings us to today. Welcome to this sermon entitled “Many Ways to Meditate.”

Presbyterians turn to the Bible for guidance on how to live. So I began my sermon research by seeing how the words, meditate and meditation are used in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. I found that almost without exception they are used to refer to a practice of thinking, thinking about the meaning of words. For instance, in Psalm 1 we hear, “blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law, day and night.” Meditating on written law certainly involves very thoughtful reflection.

The activity of thinking takes place in the top and front of the brain, in the prefrontal cortex. That’s the area of the brain that is very active when a person reads scripture and strives to understand how it applies to one’s own life. There is another kind of meditation, though, almost an opposite kind in fact, because it strives to avoid thinking. “Be still,” says another psalmist, “Be still and know that I am God.” The Quakers who practice silent group meditation are fond of that verse.  William Penn, a Quaker convert, urged his followers not to think, but just be still and wait for the God’s spirit to fill the empty vessels of their minds.

Ah, but how does one quiet the noisy clatter at the top and front of the brain, the “monkey brain” as some call it?  Simply by willing it to shut up? That doesn’t work. As one of my meditation instructors said, “What you resist persists.” Rather, a preferred natural means is to breathe deeply and slowly, paying attention just to the intake and outflow of breath.  Now, how does this still the mind?

Well, we begin to understand by coming to realize that the body and the mind are intimately related, so that a change in one affects changes in the other. Except for self-flagellation and fasting western religions have paid very little attention to the body. But Eastern traditions, such as asana yoga, start with the body to achieve benefits for both the mind and body. Veterans returning from war are finding great benefit for calming the mind by using various disciplines of the body. Chief among them is the simple practice of deep and slow breathing. An organization called the Welcome Troops Home Project is offering this training free to veterans and their spouses.  Alice and I have taken the instruction and have been practicing daily. Among veterans it’s called Power Breath. Civilian practitioners call it “sky breathing.”

Let me digress for a bit to explain how this helps returning warriors. I’m a combat veteran and speak from personal experience. Wnen you live in a war zone your whole body is on alert, guarding you against being killed. All the time you’re awake your body and mind are revved up and ready to fight. Your prefrontal cortex has enough to keep it busy just trying to outwit the enemy.  It’s the bottom and back of your brain that has your back, so to speak. This part of the brain controls all the unconscious functions necessary for staying alive. It keeps your heart beating. It regulates your blood sugar. It regulates your breathing rate and pulse rate. All this happens automatically. It requires no conscious attention whatsoever, thank goodness! The bottom and back of the brain changes your body chemistry, sending naturally produced substances into your bloodstream to ready you for fighting or fleeing. In the short term these substances, like cortisol, don’t harm you. But if you keep living in a war zone they begin to break down your health.  However, you don’t know this because you are on autopilot. You have no way to turn off what’s happening in the basement, because the top and front of the brain has no idea whatsoever of what’s going on down there.

When the warrior comes home the autopilot is still racing along on its own, and the veteran can’t figure out how to shut it off. Especially the anger part.  You see, aggression is a natural response to a perceived threat. Anger was great in a firefight, but back home it’s likely to get a veteran divorced or land him in jail. Aggression is part of a warrior’s armor for self protection. Self protection is the autopilot’s most important duty, and the autopilot in the basement of the brain can’t be shut down by the control tower up above.  The autopilot can’t be commanded, you see. That’s why talk therapy isn’t very effective in helping veterans with post traumatic stress. The autopilot in the basement has to be reached by another means, through the body. This is where breathing training comes in. Remember, regulating breathing is one of the essential functions of the bottom and back of the brain. However, the pace and the intensity of breathing can also be governed by the thinking mind, located in the prefrontal cortex. So you see, breath serves as a bridge between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. Easterners figured this out a long time ago, and some westerners of a mystic strain did too.

By the way, you may be skeptical about the term, “unconscious mind.” I’m not talking about Freud’s subconscious. That’s not what is meant by the unconscious mind.  So, what is meant? Well, let me do my best to explain. My philosophy prof many years ago once spoke of non-thetic awareness, by which he meant an awareness without content. Huh?  What in the world is that? Awareness without content? My hand went up. I needed an example. O.K., he said. You’re walking in the woods and suddenly you notice that the crickets have stopped chirping.  You must have been aware that they were chirping before they stopped. Otherwise you wouldn’t have noticed their stopping. But you were not consciously aware of their chirping before. You must have been aware, but your awareness had no content. That’s what he meant by non-thetic awareness. I think that’s a good example of the operation of the unconscious mind. I don’t know where in the brain the unconscious mind resides. It may be related to intuition.  It may be related to what some folks call a sixth sense. There are lots of unanswered questions regarding the subtleties of consciousness. At any rate, that state of mind, that alert but contentless awareness, is what deeper versions of breath training aim for.

Why aim for that you may wonder? Why should anyone want to experience an emptiness of mind, or to put it another way, the complete silencing of thinking? Well, it’s a very valuable experience, actually, because it frees you, albeit temporarily, from anxiety about anything. For a moment at least your ego completely evaporates, and all the worries related to it. Even though it’s very difficult to keep from thinking for very long, just reaching these brief moments of quiescence seems to have some long term benefits for one’s mind and body.  Some regular practitioners of deep breathing meditation report sounder sleep, increased calmness, alertness, and creativity. Cardiovascular vigor sometimes increases (I have experienced this myself, climbing hills while hiking), and blood pressure may also be reduced. One IVW veteran who meditates regularly says his doctor is about to take him off his blood pressure meds.

Perhaps the biggest benefit for veterans transitioning from war is that by practicing a few very simple deep breathing exercises, which oxygenate the whole body and expel toxins through deep exhalation, emotions that have been locked in the body for a long, long time can be released. My wife and I saw this on two occasions involving two different combat veterans. Resting deeply after the exercises were over, each veteran cried, and neither could figure out why. “This is weird,” each one said. “I can’t figure out where that came from.” They couldn’t connect the emotional release to any particular memory. I suppose we might say that the release was related to something that happened in the unconscious mind. After the release the affect of each veteran was improved. Both were relaxed, easier in their own skins and in our company. They acknowledged that this experience was only the beginning of a long journey home.  But after trying other treatments to no avail, including drugs, they were very grateful for this hopeful breakthrough.

I must annoy my instructors because I always want to know how meditation works. After witnessing these events I asked, “How do long trapped emotions get released simply by slower and deeper breathing? My instructor replied that he didn’t know exactly, and probably no one knows yet. Science is still looking for the answer. But maybe this will serve as an explanation for the present, he said: When we’re not stressed, when we feel safe, our breathing is relaxed, and we are emotionally calm. However, when a threat to our safety is perceived, and this is usually picked up first by the unconscious mind, the chemistry of the brain and the whole body begins to change. We begin to breathe more rapidly and shallowly. Our digestion slows to allow more energy for fighting or fleeing. Our blood vessels constrict. Our muscles get tense, ready to spring into action.  All this happens rapidly and automatically, before we have had time to think. Remember what I said earlier: the mind and the body are intimately and reciprocally related. Well, when these changes occur, so does our mood. We feel unsafe and very tense. If the danger passes, all these physiological benchmarks slowly revert to normal, and we feel safe and calm again. But if the danger persists, as in a war zone, the nervous system gets stuck in high gear.

Breathing meditation can help get it unstuck.  How? Well, by deliberately breathing deeply and slowly one is able to bring about physiological changes. The blood vessels begin to open up. The muscles begin to relax. The pulse rate slows. By these changes the body is signaling to the mind: It’s O.K. now, control tower.  We’re safe now! And indeed, the thinking brain recognizes the significance of these bodily changes and feels the difference emotionally. Something like this could explain how deliberately altering our breathing can change our mental states. Sometimes such changes are felt as emotional releases. Thus, a vet cries after the breathing regimen is finished and he’s resting; and he’s completely mystified by what just happened.

I have a colleague, who is a master fund raiser. He has benefited himself from mindfulness based stress reduction, another approach to deep breathing meditation.  He’s so enthusiastic about its benefits that he wants to make Delaware the first state to implement a widespread mindfulness meditation program. I heard that Sam’s running into difficulties, though, promoting the idea among faith communities. Evidently some people of faith are wary of trying a new approach to healing. I guess to them it feels foreign, and perhaps subversive.

As a person of deep faith let me respond to such fears this way:  First, the breathing meditation methods I’m familiar with, sky breathing and mindfulness based stress reduction, are not religious alternatives to well established faith traditions. There is nothing religious about them, and my own experience convinces me that they do not endanger one’s religious grounding at all.

Secondly, since some veterans have never bonded with a religious community, faith approaches to healing may not work for them. However, breathing meditation has truly saved some veterans from committing suicide who were not religiously inclined. I’m all for saving lives. Aren’t you?  

And lastly, I’d say this: If taking up breathing meditation yourself scares you, don’t do it! The whole purpose of this training is to instill an assurance of safety, for it is out of safety that we all can flourish and feel deep joy. So, if breathing meditation makes you feel unsafe, don’t do it!  That would be against the whole purpose.

I must confess that I’m a neophyte in all I’ve spoken about today. Like Sam, I’m very enthusiastic about using breathing for healing. There are folks here today who know much more about this than I do, and I’m eager to keep learning. So, let’s stay in touch. Thanks for coming!  And breathe!

Last night five other members of the Interfaith Veterans’ Workgroup and I sat for the film recording of conversation between us about what is was like coming home from war, some stages in our recovery, and what we found most helpful along that journey. I will share the film when Serviam Media, the local production company is ready to make it public.

Meanwhile, today I’ll post some reading notes from Tyler E. Boudreau’s book, Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine. He expresses very well the feelings that we six veterans shared last night, especially concerning moral injury:

From Packing Inferno: the Unmaking of a Marine, by Tyler E. Boudreau:

To believe that there could be psychological injuries sustained from the violence we inflicted would be to acknowledge its inherent immorality. A commander must never go walking into that moral field of fire, for he will surely fall. So I traversed around my own conscience and denied the existence of remorse.

Only through genuine acknowledgment that combat stress is an injury, not a disorder, can we ever give uninhibited affection to our wounded.
We don’t have generals on horseback leading the charge anymore. We don’t have commanders pushing waves of assaulting troops across trenches onto enemy strong points. Everything is decentralized. The method of issuing orders had to change to suit the times. You can’t tell a guy when to zig and when to zag. He’s out there alone, making his own choices. He’s zigging and zagging according to his own interpretations of the events in front of him. So we give him what we call “mission-type orders,” which means we don’t tell him how to do his job. We just tell him how we want things to look when he’s done.

To shoot or not to shoot—that was the question. That was always the question in Iraq. To preemptively fire on a person or a vehicle that looked like a threat was not only a tactical problem, it was the central question of the war.
What was particularly disturbing about the IED was that when it detonated, when it killed someone, it really wasn’t a random or detached instance of violence like a falling shell. It was personal. If a Marine looked out into the darkness, he might not see anyone, but he would know just the same that someone—an Iraqi—was out there watching. He’d know because he understood the tactic. He’d know someone was out there watching at that very moment as he collected up the bloody remains of a mangled friend while his ears were still ringing from the blast.

Embracing the violence was not a choice; it was a necessity. On the battlefield, a soldier must befriend the darker side of his nature to participate in the fight, to survive, to win, to pull that trigger—he must degrade his own humanity.

That is why I use the word disparity. Because we were there to demonstrate our humanity, not stuff it down inside. We were there for a liberation. We were there to do good deeds and to be a friend to the Iraqi people. That’s what we said. But then we got there, and with every casualty we took our humanity was overwhelmed by a yearning to kill. It is surely difficult to help a people who you would prefer to shoot.

Killing is the culture the soldier has entered. But when folks back home want to glorify what he does for a living, that fact is often forgotten. He defends, they say. He sacrifices. He supports. He secures. But he never kills, not in the posters, not in the speeches, not in the news, nowhere. Nowhere back home does the soldier kill. But within the gates of any base or any fort, the notion of killing is mentioned so frequently, and with such nonchalance or even zeal, that it becomes a completely acceptable element of every soldier’s consciousness.

Books About Moral Injury and Resilience After Moral Injury

Boudreau, Tyler E. Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine. An autobiographical account of an Iraq veteran’s growing awareness of his own moral injury and what he did about it. Boudreau’s superb prose will give you a visceral taste of combat and its moral ambiguities.

Burke-Harris, Nadine. The Deepest Well. This book is about the long term health damage caused by ACES, adverse childhood experiences. I include it in this bibliography for two reasons: 1) because some researchers suspect that the veterans who have the most difficulty adjusting with resilience to PTS were already severely traumatized as children. (In the brain and body, injury inflicted by trauma is cumulative.) 2) In a late chapter the author makes six recommendations for resiliency which may prove useful for returning veterans.

Chivers, C.J. The Fighters. Stories about six U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are: an F-14 pilot, a Green Beret sergeant, a Navy corpsman, a helicopter pilot, an Army infantryman and a Marine lieutenant. Their stories cover the 18 year history of these wars.

Davis, Thomas C. Double Exposure: A Veteran Returns to Vietnam. In this Kindle ebook the author recalls his own moral injury which wasn’t apparent to him until after the end of the war. Religious faith was important in his recovery.

Dean, Chuck. Nam Vet: Making Peace With Your Past. This is a self-help guide from one vet to another, written in simple language.

Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. The author spends considerable ink proving that in past wars many riflemen refused to shoot at the enemy, because they couldn’t bear taking another’s life. This is a challenge to military trainers, but good news about human nature! Grossman examines how training can desensitize soldiers to killing, and how the act of killing can plague them afterwards.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, a collection of excellent short stories authored by veteran writers, mostly from the Vietnam and Korean wars.  The stories are largely hopeful and inspirational.

Marlantes, Karl. What It’s Like to Go to War. Marlantes was a Marine captain in Vietnam. He wrote a fictional best seller called Matterhorn which was informed by his combat experience. This book gives the factual details of that experience.

Meagher, Emmet and Jonathan Shay. Killing from the Inside Out. This author digs deeply into western history to dispute the moral validity of just war theory.

Moon, Zachary. Coming Home: Ministry That Matters With Veterans and Military Families. Guidance for Christian churches who want to help veterans and their families.

Nakashima Brock, Rita. Soul Repair: Recovering From Moral Injury After War.  Professor Nakashima Brock has established a Center for Soul Repair at the Brite Theological Seminary, dedicated to research and public education about recovery from moral injury.

Sackett, John G., Major USAF. Guilt Free War: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and An Ethical Framework for Battlefield Decisions.  Moral injury is a challenge to military trainers, he writes. If human beings have an inborn reticence to kill, how can they be trained to perform the job of killing without morally injuring themselves? Major Sackett proposes guidelines for preparing soldiers ahead of time to not hold themselves morally culpable for battlefield decisions they may be forced to make. His book is based on just war theory, which other authors in this bibliography reject.

Sheehan, Dan. Continuing Actions: A Warrior’s Guide to Coming Home. A former combatant who experienced moral injury describes his own road to recovery in a style that will appeal to other warriors.

Sherman, Nancy. Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers.

Sites, Keven. The Things They Cannot Say. Stories about moral injury told by grunts.

Tick, Edward. Warrior’s Return: Restoring the Soul After War. An early author in the field of moral injury, Tick’s book is based on clinical work with many combatants.

Van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body Healing of Trauma. Not just about moral injury, but trauma in general, and not just trauma experienced in combat. Van der Kolk explains that all trauma injures the body and the brain, so treatments must address both. He also explains that trauma is cumulative. It is stored in the body, and each new trauma is added to the sum of previous ones. Soldiers who experienced traumas as children have injuries to their bodies and brains which may make it more difficult to recover from more recent traumas. This is a seminal book in the field of PTSD research.

Wood, David. What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars, by war correspondent, David Wood. Chronicles his considerations of “moral costs” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yocum, Cecilia. Help for Moral Injury: Strategies and Interventions. A fairly short book with concise descriptions of evidence based treatments helpful for treating veterans with moral injury. It is written for professional psychiatric and medical practitioners, and it involves mainly one-on-one techniques.

Yunger, Sabastian. War. A war correspondent’s deeply honest account of the harrowing experiences of the 2nd Platoon, Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Afghanistan. Yunger organizes his book in three long chapters: Fear, Killing, and Love.

Web Resources On Moral Injury and Resilience After Moral Injury

The very best of these web resources are the last listed, the three articles by war correspondent, David Wood.  You might do best to start there.

Arrow, Holly; and Schumacher, William M. “What is moral injury in veterans?” published in The Conversation.  A good, brief introduction to moral injury.

Barno, David; and Bensahel, Nora. “How to Talk to a Veteran,” Published by the University of Texas.  “Thank you for your service!” may not be a helpful greeting for a veteran troubled by moral injury, because he/she is not proud of what he/she did, and therefore shouldn’t be thanked for it. This article provides guide for what is most helpful in talking with a veteran.

Clear, James “Make More Art: The Health Benefits of Creativity.” Moral injury arises in the top and front of the human brain, the pre-frontal cortex. The non-conscious part of the brain, at the bottom and back, is where trauma hypes-up the fight-or-flight mode of consciousness for self-protection, and the nervous system gets stuck in high gear. That non-conscious part of the brain can be calmed by deep breathing meditation, but also, it seems to this veteran, by making art. Making art is a partly reflective process, but it’s also a not totally conscious one, an intuitive one, we say. So, like deep breathing, making art can be a bridge between the reflective part of the brain and the non-conscious part. This integration brings a peace which neurologically is not yet fully understood.

Cramer, Tom. “Can Spiritual Therapy Heal Your PTSD Symptoms?” Published through the Veterans’ Administration in Virginia. Mentions Dr. Nagy Youssef who is researching how faith communities can help veterans with moral injury.

Dickerson, Caitlin. “On Family Separation, Federal Workers Often Agonized Over Enforcement“, Published in the New York Times. Often moral injury occurs when one feels personally responsible for the death of another human being, or more than one. This author writes that when some I.C.E. employees were ordered to separate migrant children from their parents they suffered moral injury. This is an instance where there was no evident loss of life involved, yet the responsible officials felt morally trapped between a call to follow orders and their own consciences.

Gessler, Paul. “PTSD and Moral Injury Are the Hidden Wounds of Veterans,” a letter to veterans on the campus of Rocky Mountain College.  Published under the auspice of Veterans for Peace and the Adult Learning and Veteran Services Office of the college.

Jones, Diana Nelson. “‘Veterans’ Breakfast Club’ offers help to heal from moral injuries.” Published by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. In her six recommendations for promoting resilience after trauma, author Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris notes (#6) that getting connected to a supportive community is essential. This article illustrates her point.

Kniggendorf, Anne. “Kansas City Veteran and Physician Treats the ‘Moral Injury’ of War Through Poetry.” From an interview at WCUR 89.3 FM.

Mighty Visual (a blogger at Vimeo), video entitled “Hunter in the Blackness: Veterans, Hope and Recovery,” Vietnam vets and younger veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars talk about their post traumatic stress and moral injury and what’s been helpful to them in recovery.

Press, Eyal. “Wounds of the Drone Warrior,” published in the New York Times Magazine.  In his book on the psychological effects of killing David Grossman observes that distance from the enemy tends to decrease a combatant’s moral sensitivity to killing. However, the visual preciseness of recently developed aerial cameras has made it possible for attack drone pilots to see what’s happening to their human targets quite clearly. Some are suffering extreme stress and moral injury in this line of duty.

Talbot, Simon G. and Dean, Wendy. “Physicians Are’t ‘Burning Out’. They’re Suffering From Moral Injury.” Many physicians enter that profession because they have high ideals and want to save lives. But the complicated demands of modern medicine frustrate that desire, and leave some feeling deep moral failure.

Turner, Jon Michael. YouTube video of him testifying at Iraq Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier gathering.

Woolston, Chris. “Writing for Therapy Helps Erase Effects of Trauma.” Perhaps the title of this article exaggerates. While writing for most veterans will not erase the effects of trauma, it does help to remove much of the emotional power of troubling memories.

Wood, David. Moral Injury: “The Grunts: Damned If They Kill, Damned If They Don’t.” This is the first of a 3-part series published in the Huffington Post. War correspondent Wood has authored some of most poignant short articles on moral injury available on the web. The second in this series is entitled, “The Recruits: When Right and Wrong Are Hard To Tell Apart.” The final article is “Healing, Can We Treat Moral Wounds?“

Recommendations for Resilience After Suffering Trauma

Recently I reviewed an excellent book by Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris called The Deepest Well. Dr. Burke-Harris explains how early trauma damages children’s brains, and how this damage degrades not only their mental health but also their physical health long term, even into adulthood. In her concluding chapter she lays out six ways that adults injured by childhood trauma can be more resilient:

1. Get adequate sleep
2. Get good nutrition
3. Get regular exercise
4. Practice meditation
5. Get professional mental health treatment if necessary
6. Connect to a supportive community in order to establish positive social relationships.

These are recommendations for sufferers of many kinds of trauma, including those experienced by military veterans.

The Importance of Getting Adequate Sleep

This IVW blog post offers a learning resource for the first of Dr. Burke-Harris’s recommendations, getting adequate sleep. Many people don’t realize how important this is. That’s why researcher Dr. Matthew Walker published Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. It turns out that for the vast majority of human beings (except for a very few who possess a rare gene) getting from seven to eight hours of sleep a night is essential for maintaining mental and physical health. Sleep cleanses the brain of toxins. It helps to regulate all of the body’s functions. Adequate sleep keeps us on an even keel in so many ways. It helps to regulate our blood sugar and blood pressure, tunes up our immune system, helps us concentrate, improves our memory, calms our nerves and moderates our moods. Scimping on sleep increases the likelihood of developing diabetes, cancers, and dementia. The human brain is the command center for all the organs of our complicated bodies, and adequate sleep is absolutely essential for that command center to run efficiently. Human beings can survive a deprivation of food longer than a depivation of sleep. Staying awake continually for about eleven days will kill you, writes Dr. Walker.

Veterans returning from combat often suffer insomnia. Their nervous systems have been on high alert for so long that they can’t easily be tuned down. So how is a veteran who is suffering from insomnia and disturbing nightmares supposed to obtain adequate sleep? Well, all of Dr. Burke-Harris’s recommendations are interconnected. Getting good nutrition and regular exercise, Dr. Walker explains, will help one sleep better. Taking up meditation will help calm the sympathetic nervous system, that is, the unconscious fight or flight mode of consciousness which living in a theater of war instills. And finally, seeking help from mental health professionals and supportive communities will help a veteran find safety of body and mind.

Whether or not you’re a veteran trying to come home and find calm, you may benefit from reading Why We Sleep. If you’ve been taking sleep for granted and shaving your bed time too thin, stop! Get the refreshment that not just your brain but your whole body needs.

— TCDavis