Tahajjud: Waking Soul & Society
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Ep. 5: Benefits of a Tahajjud Habit | Tahajjud: Waking Soul & Society
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. When I read sleep studies, I really read them with wonder. I'm not wondering about the study. I'm wondering about what would happen. What would happen if we did a sleep study on the early ummah, the early community? What would it tell us about the need for sleep versus the need for worship? I know there are some studies out there because people have sent them to me around how meditation affects the heart and how meditation is healthy and replenishing for the body, if I'm not mistaken, equal to or even more so than sleep. And so what about tahajjud? Would not tahajjud be the same? That thing that the Prophet ﷺ spent so long in, wouldn't it also replenish us? Wouldn't it also be that thing that we need to give us the strength and well-being and spiritual health that we are all seeking and looking for? I believe so. I believe if we could do those tests and we could do a sleep study where we had those who did not pray tahajjud and we would look at how much sleep they actually need and then we were able to compare them later with those who prayed tahajjud and see how much sleep they need, I believe they would need much less sleep and I believe they would be more energetic. They would have more peace. Their temper would be less easily tripped. Tahajjud is a keystone habit. I learned about this term, keystone habit, from a book called The Power of Habits. A keystone habit is something
that you begin here and it's like a waterfall of other habits that follow it. So there is a really good story in the book The Power of Habit about a company that manufactured aluminum and a new CEO took over the company and he decided that the keystone habit of the company was going to be safety. Now you'd think that the new habit for success, successful sales, would be marketing or would be the product or would be something like that but he decided it was going to be safety and because of that keystone habit of safety in the factory for aluminum, everything came up roses as you can say. Their sales went up, their losses went down, everything really became in the business world exactly as he had hoped. Now in the spiritual world, what is that thing? It's tahajjud. People argue with me about this. They say, why tahajjud? No, it should be something else because if you pray tahajjud, you're not going to miss fajr. If you pray tahajjud and you pray fajr, you're not going to miss dhuhr, you're not going to miss asr. All of a sudden, the struggle to make the furood happen, that struggle isn't there because the keystone habit is tahajjud. With the keystone habit of tahajjud as well, if you have fasting to make up, now you're up. You can have suhoor and you can start fasting. If you're getting up at tahajjud, you become more organized in your day because the blessing of the ummah is in the morning and so now you're up early, you've prayed, you've prayed your fajr prayer, maybe you got a little whatever you needed to get done at home, maybe you got your exercise in, you took care of whatever you need to do, you're off to work. Maybe you cleaned the entire house, you went off to work.
I remember one of my teachers, she used to say by 6 a.m tahajjud, morning dhikr, morning wriddh, morning quran, clean up the whole house, six o'clock everything is done. Now you're ready to go out and serve the community or do your job or go to work or whatever it is, take care of the eight children at home, mashaAllah. Whatever it is that you have to do. That early morning time, that habit, that keystone habit, that habit will change your life. It will change your life and this concept of a keystone habit, so you start with this tahajjud time and now you can start with a short one like if you say to yourself, oh I can't do that, that's too much. Start with two minutes, start with, not two minutes, that's probably too short, but start with let's say 10. 10 minutes before fajr, jump up, make wudu, come pray two raka'as, make that a habit, set your alarm for that. If you're getting up for fajr anyway, it's just a short amount of time. Now in the beginning you might have jet lag of extra worship because you're not used to getting up that early, so be patient with your body as it changes. Be patient with it and don't say to yourself, oh I need the extra sleep. This is a, this is a trip, a trick or maybe a trip up, I can say, of shaitan, where shaitan comes to us and says, oh no, no, no, no, we need so much extra sleep. Now yes, go to bed early. I'm not, you know, don't go to bed at 3 a.m. and expect to wake up at 3.30 for tahajjud. No, but as you begin to change your habits and get up early, you'll start to go to bed a little bit earlier and this is going to help you get up even earlier. It's going to help you increase your, your tahajjud time, but be careful of telling yourself, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I need sleep, I need sleep. Unless you're sick or ill or something like that, that's a different story. But the need for sleep, that's, that's why I question sleep studies. Where is
this study that has examined the person who isn't heavy to the bed with sin? What makes us heavy to our beds? What makes us need to sleep? Exhaustion, physical exhaustion. We know this. This is, this is an indisputed fact that when you're exhausted you need to sleep. Spiritual exhaustion is a thing. Spiritual exhaustion is real and, but spiritual exhaustion, yes, sleep actually does help spiritual exhaustion, but what helps spiritual exhaustion more is tahajjud, is prayer, is dhikr, is recitation of Quran. All of these things we find in the night prayer. So when you're saying to yourself, I'm so tired, so tired, I'm, I'm so, I'm struggling, I'm hurting, I'm in pain, know that your religion has given you a beautiful solution, a beautiful balm. When I was young there used to be a commercial where a very stressed out woman, she would, she was so stressed out and she would say, Calgon, take me away, and it was, it was, she would go sit in the bath and feel all better after 10 minutes. Our religion has given us something much better than a hot bath that gets cold after 15 minutes. Our religion has given us something that warms the spirit. We can say tahajjud, take me away. A prayer that warms the spirit, a prayer that uplifts, gives energy, and is a keystone habit, it will help bring the rest of your life into the place you want it to be. The longing you have for God, the concern about what the things you're struggling with in life, go to tahajjud to find that solace and to find
the beginning of the better life that you're looking for for yourself.
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