How I Always Get Good Sleep and How You Can Too
Sleep is definitely the most powerful, natural health-promoting behavior that you can do. Every aspect of your physical and mental health is strengthened by sleep.
Here lies the conundrum: Knowing we need sleep can cause insomnia. As soon as you recognize the consequences of poor sleep, the result is poor sleep. Your brain begins to connect going to bed with insomnia. You feel anxious, almost as if you have to give a speech in five minutes, when in fact, all you’re doing is laying down in bed.
Most insomnia treatments or remedies encourage you to distract yourself, suppress your thoughts and feelings, or use substances to force the body to sleep. All of these are counterproductive; they will eventually decrease your ability to sleep.
My approach is a little different. The body wants to sleep. Why not simply allow it?
Rather than using an avoidance approach, I encourage you to use mindfulness and acceptance. When you allow the sleep-disrupting thoughts and feelings to be there, you diffuse their power. By welcoming your anxiety and fear response you can actually disarm it so that going to bed doesn’t feel like going into battle. As a result, you create a space from which sleep can emerge. Put simply, if you aren’t so worried about not sleeping, you’re body will sleep.
I’ve always been a good sleeper. I attribute this to my mother’s sleep training method. When I was old enough to soothe myself, she put me in the crib, said goodnight, and walked out. That’s it. As I got older, my mother stayed consistent about bedtime (9 pm) but she never created anxiety around sleep or encouraged me to use sleep aids of any kind, not even books or TV (it was the 80’s and while I had a TV in my room, I never used it to fall asleep). I could lay down in a dark room and drift off with no help.
To this day, I have no anxiety about sleep because I’ve had so many years of trusting my body to fall asleep. If I have anxiety about other things in my life, I don’t think, “I’m not going to sleep well tonight.” I simply don’t connect my anxiety to losing sleep. In fact, when I’m anxious, I welcome sleep even more. I look forward to the stillness it brings to my active mind.
Here are some tips for great sleep. (Yes, I do all of these things!)
60-90 minutes before bed, start sending messages to your body that you're preparing for sleep. Put on your pj's, wash your face, fix a cup of soothing herbal tea, and dim the lights. Cozy up under a blanket and wind dooooooooooooooown.
Give yourself permission to set aside the to-do list. Tell yourself it's time to give your body the rest it needs. Stop all activity that stimulates you, including exercise, computers, phones, TV, etc.
Head to bed about 30 minutes before you would like to be asleep. Work towards falling asleep without using a "tool" to help you. For now, if you need something to hold your attention so that it doesn't wander to all your responsibilities it's okay to meditate, read, or listen to an audiobook or soothing music. Bring an attitude of peace and tranquility to your experience. No screens at this time.
As soon as you feel like you're getting sleepy, give yourself permission to sleep. Willingly invite the stillness.
Don't force sleep.
Your body wants to sleep. But when you get anxious about not sleeping, you begin to stimulate your body with worry, and then it won't calm down.
Instead, ALLOW sleep.
If you struggle to fall asleep and find that you are caught in anxious thoughts and to-do's, practice a mindfulness or defusion exercise. Bring your attention to your body and thoughts. Notice them without getting caught in the content of them. You can try putting your thoughts into bubbles and watching them float away. Or simply labeling them like this: “there’s a thought about my meeting tomorrow.”
Be okay with being awake. One of the biggest things that cause people to remain awake at night is their struggle to get to sleep. Be willing to be awake. If it’s ok to be awake, then you create the mental and physical landscape from which sleep can emerge.
If you fall asleep but then wake up too early, don't get caught up in worry about it. Remind yourself that one night of poor sleep won't hurt you, and give your body permission to rest some more if it wants to. Stay in bed a little longer. Shift your position or use the bathroom if you need to. If you don’t fall back to sleep, don’t fight it. Just get up.
Other tips:
Don't nap unless it doesn't interfere with your nighttime sleep cycle.
Go to bed at the same time every night, give or take 30 minutes.
Don't use an alarm. If you depend on an alarm, you are not getting enough sleep. Train yourself to never need it.
Avoid caffeine after 11 am. I know most experts say to avoid caffeine in the afternoon, but many people are sensitive to caffeine and don’t know it. I stop caffeine by 10:30 am.
Know that you may sleep 30 minutes to one hour less during the summer months. This is normal.
