Trapped

What is pride? What is taking myself too seriously? How do I get into that rigid, stuffy, suffocated state? How do I get out of it?
I suppose acknowledging there is a possibility there's such a state is the first step...
Then becoming aware that the nasty feeling I'm experiencing could be because I'm in that state.
And, finally, through acknowledging that I'm in that state... POP... and I'm out of it... maybe.
What about the word,
"ACKNOWLEDGING"
Is that how it's spelled?
Writing it twice got me turned around. Feels like it's misspelled with the "dg" but when I take it out it looks even more crooked.
And bedtime?
What's the right bed time?
How much sleep do I need?
How do I discover how much sleep I need?
Just sleep until I'm not sleepy?
Starve myself of sleep until I'm so exhausted that I fall over and then turn off all phones, lights, and other electrical things, close curtains, and sleep until I wake up? But what if I wake up to pee and can't get back to sleep? That does not necessarily mean I'm done sleeping. In fact, it sometimes means that, "Oh yeah, now I can go back to sleep and not be disturbed by my bladder." Ayurvedics prescribe 6, 7, or 8 hours of sleep depending on whether one is Pitta, Vata, or Kapha. Western docs say 7 -8 hours, but why that? What has to happen when we sleep? I heard it didn't have anything to do with resting the body. Rather, it's the mind that needs to check out and recharge. How do we even know THAT? Are the sleep investigator people any more knowlegeable? I mean, just because they hook people up to machines and have scads of data on sleeping patterns, how does that mean they know how much sleep we're supposed to get? And what about the different seasons? Different locations? Different times of the month? Different stressors in our lives at a given time? Jeeze. Jeeze.