Waiting for night
THE NATURE OF US writings on the earth community, love, body, embodiment, interconnection, our planetary moment, music - and the creativity and possibilities inherent in being human.
For a very long time, our connection with nature, and the circadian cycles of day and night, has been disrupted by our modern lifestyles. The invention of the electric lightbulb made much of this possible. Our world was transformed, and our health has been impacted—affecting our mitochondria, our eyes, our sleep cycles.
I didn’t sleep well for years. I had trained myself to stay up late to dj, saturating myself in the lights of the dance world. Years after that career ended, I was still a night owl, reading or watching videos til midnight. For me it took becoming aware of waking with the sun and honoring the dark of the night for my body to learn to sleep, by aligning with nature’s rhythms.
Fortunately I had never adopted LED lights, my eyes immediately rejected them. I went to great lengths to find incandescent lights even though they were banned in California. My body knew something was off with LED light. I even noticed a certain coldness in the newer Christmas lights, a harsh brightness.
Here’s a summary of a brief conversation between Bill Maher and Dr. Andrew Huberman:
Dr. Andrew Huberman confirmed a “conspiracy theory” about incandescent vs LED light bulbs. The long wavelengths found in incandescent bulbs increase your metabolism and “charge your mitochondria.” Conversely, the LED bulbs that most of you have in your house are “causing disruptions in mitochondrial function.”
This applies to the LED headlights on newer cars, office lighting, most of home lighting, and the light from our computers and phones. We are not receiving the full spectrum of light to our eyes, thus being outside in natural light becomes even more important.
I found this poignant description of life under artificial light on X, from Yungkingmito.
There is a particular emptiness that only appears under artificial light, and once you notice it, you begin seeing it everywhere. You see it in cities after midnight, in bright eyes and exhausted nervous systems, in restaurants full of noise where nobody looks fully present. You see it in bedrooms lit by blue screens at 2am, while the body waits for a darkness that never properly arrives. The strange thing is that it does not feel dead at first; it feels alive, and that is what makes it dangerous. The city gives you enough dopamine to keep searching, but not enough darkness to let anything finish.
At night, the human system is supposed to close: melatonin rises, cortisol softens, temperature falls, and the nervous system stops scanning. Night was never just the absence of light; it was biological closure, the signal that allowed pursuit to end. But artificial light breaks that architecture by pushing blue-heavy signal into the retina, where non-visual photoreceptors send timing information beyond sight. That signal travels through the retinohypothalamic tract into the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the clock that coordinates sleep, hormones and reward timing. From there, the body receives the wrong command: stay available, hungry, social, unfinished, at the exact hour biology was trying to withdraw.
So dopamine rises and the pursuit system stays online, but the deeper closure signal never lands. This is where the depression link becomes serious: artificial light at night, circadian disruption and late-night wakefulness all press on reward, impulse control and future prediction. Deep in the brain, valuation circuits adapt to a world where pursuit no longer guarantees return.
This is not just tiredness. It is a young brain being pushed toward an old biological state: less repair, flatter reward, weaker future-simulation and lower belief in arrival. Artificial light does not extend the day; it prevents the day from ending, and over time, a brain that never exits pursuit starts losing its ability to feel tomorrow as a charge. The body keeps waiting for night inside a world that keeps pretending it is day.
Food for thought, especially if you have ever tossed and turned in bed at night, longing for sleep. And then felt exhausted the next day.
Artificial light does not extend the day; it prevents the day from ending, and over time, a brain that never exits pursuit starts losing its ability to feel tomorrow as a charge. The body keeps waiting for night inside a world that keeps pretending it is day.
The light of us, our natural alignment with this beautiful planet, is under siege. No doubt you have noticed it. My delight in living in my body, connected to nature, is increasingly challenged by the synthetic that is creeping into our lives.
Here are a few things I have been trying:
While I am not an expert in a Circadian lifestyle, I have learned to wake with the sun, and go outside immediately. Even though I cannot see the sunrise from my home, I stand outside grounding into the earth and soak in the infrared form the sky overhead. Without contacts or glasses, natural light to the eyes.
I try to be outside in natural light as much as possible, not wearing sunglasses unless there is glare on the water, or road. Sunbathing is highly recommended to absorb light through the skin.
I am learning to wear blueblockers for the computer, have red filters on my phone and other screens. I drive with a red glasses in the dusk and dark once the headlights take over, though dark orange when I find them may be better. At night in my home I use red incandescent lighting or candlelight and go to bed around dark.
I loved being a night owl, until it took a toll. When the Covid years disrupted my life, I began going to bed earlier out of boredom. Surprisingly, I did make the transition back to being a morning person.
If you want to explore more about aligning with natural light, I highly recommend this substack. Zaid has much information on the topic.
Thank you for reading today.
With love,
Sabrina
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Sabrina Page, MA in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness
You can reach me at sabrinapage@earthlink.net. I assist you in focusing on the deep knowing of your body, aligned with the earth and all life - embodiment - to support you in living life fully, freely, and fluidly, intertwined with nature. Optimize your self-healing ability and embody presence and love by embodying your innermost nature.
My background includes having studied meditation, movement, dance, and astrology with some of the leading individuals in their fields. Sessions are individually tailored to your current needs.
More information is available on my website, sabrinapage.com
These are good ideas, Sabrina. I’m already incorporating some and will try others. I’ve always got up and gone straight outside as well. And I started direct sunlight (only very early light) in my eyes years ago from reading Carlos Castaneda when Don Juan made his disciples do it. Then found Ayurvedic recommended it as well. Thank you for this! The truest healer is the natural world.
Interesting. In suburbia it's too-often more solar lights for the driveway and the front of a house sometimes i've seen like those kitchen ceiling flood lights on a porch like 5 or more, how much light does one need?! Even regular electric light indoors stimulates a mental buzz energy, i think sometimes people's minds are wired (no pun intended) from that. With the Tao, the dark can be the "cave of impressions" where one can 'see' stuff.