Good morning and welcome to your weekly dose of Mindful Monday.

The mystery of sleep
How’re you feeling? Did you sleep well? Sleep could well be the final frontier of health science and, for many people, a key component that may be neglected in their healthy lifestyle strategy. Impaired sleep has been linked to many health challenges – including mental health – and yet remains largely a mystery to not only health professionals, but to all of us.

Rich Roll dug deep into sleep with Matthew Walker in this episode where they explore the evolutionary benefits of sleep, sleep’s different phases and, most importantly, how we can all take steps to improve the quality of our sleep and our brain health. I can’t recommend it strongly enough, along with Matthew’s book Why We Sleep.

Zzzzzzzzz…

As easy as riding a bike
Have you heard of a backwards bike? Well, it’s a bike that when you turn left, it actually goes right and vice versa, and it’s a real brain bender. The relatively simple exercise of riding a bike becomes so deeply ingrained in our nervous systems that trying to override this bike-riding programme almost seems impossible! Here’s the story of one man’s struggle to master the backwards bike.

To learn more about the benefits of, errr, learning more, Tom Vanderbilt’s book Beginners is a great place to begin.

Lockdown adventures
I think we all spent some time during lockdown hatching plans for adventures we’d love to have when the world opened back up. I wonder if any of us came close to this young Aussie’s scheme to skateboard over 2,500 miles from Melbourne to Cairns? Perhaps adventure has no limits!?

The biggest flip book of them all
The humble flip book has been reworked and significantly upgraded by a collaboration of Japanese and British engineers, who created a hand-cranked contraption that shows a kingfisher diving into water. Super cool.

Listening to…
This week’s music recommendation is Blanco White’s album On The Other Side. Super-chilled folky vibes – a nice backdrop for a Sunday afternoon. Let me know what you think.

Have a super week – learn something, plan an adventure and, of course, sleep well!

Big love,
Luke X