Would you like to fall asleep easier and have a more restful night? I have 10 simple tips for you today that I hope you'll enjoy, because there is nothing like a good night's sleep.
Do you have trouble falling asleep? This is something that I hear over and over again as I work with women, whether in coaching or in counseling. Today, it actually came up in our membership community about how to have routine for bedtime, as well as how to make sure that you can fall asleep more easily. You know, sometimes people have trouble with falling back asleep after they wake up in the middle of the night. Sometimes people have trouble falling asleep to start with. Sometimes people have trouble staying asleep early in the morning. So, they can mean different things and be for different reasons.
Sometimes anxiety will wake you up in the middle of the night. Sometimes depression will leave you sleeping longer than you would normally want to sleep. Some people have the absolute reverse. Then, there are people who are just in between for whatever reason, whether it's a bathroom break in the middle of the night, too much caffeine before bed, or too much blue light.
Today I'm going to give you my top 10 tips for falling asleep as simply as possible. When we think about the routine, notice what is ideal for you. Your routine is going to be customized for your needs. If you work nights, it's going to look different for you as far as a routine than somebody who works during the day. If you're a new parent who has to get up with an infant in the middle of the night, or several times in the middle of the night, it's going to look different for you. These are adaptable and they need to work with your routine. Don't try to fit into somebody else's.
Top 10 Tips for Falling Asleep
- Consistent Bed Time Routine: Make the routine yours, not based on what you think it should be or what somebody else's might be or what you've heard could work. I want you to make this yours. You know when your body is tired, and you know when you're pushing past those limits. So, first notice your needs and then make this be customized to you. Be aware of whether you are tired or not, whether you're pushing past your point of where sleep would be good, and whether you're trying to do too much at a time where you should be winding down. Go to sleep at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning. This regularity is what's going to help you. So even if your days and nights are reversed, making a routine that works with that so that you have predictable times of going to sleep and predictable times of waking up as much as possible can really help so that you don't have a sleep deficit and your body knows what to expect so that it can work with your natural rhythms and customize it to you.
- Pamper Yourself with a Sensory Routine: The second tip is to have a routine that you do once you head to your bedroom. Perhaps it's starting with a nice cup of tea before bed or brushing your teeth. Something that just signals, okay, I'm winding down. Once you get into bed, turning on the lighting to be soft or putting on some music that you enjoy. Some people like worship music or putting on something nice and relaxing to listen to, like a meditation on an app or something like that, then you might want to bring in other senses. You might like to spray some lavender on your pillowcase or to have your favorite hand lotion or foot cream...something that allows you to have a sensory experience that you enjoy whether it's the smell, the feel, or the texture. Make sure your bedding is comfortable and your room is cool. Kind of notice those things about the aesthetics. So, number two is to have a routine and build in a physical experience that makes going to sleep something you enjoy.
- Protect Your Eyes from Blue Light: Number three starts before you even get there, and you've probably heard this like crazy, and yet you may be an offender. Please realize that it is good to be off of your phone and devices. That iPad could be tucked away until the next day during business hours, right? There is no need to be on your phone late at night. Now, if you have your Bible on your phone, as I do, or you like to read from the library (Libby app) or from your Kindle, get yourself some blue light glasses or go into your settings and switch to the filter for nighttime so that you actually are not affected by the blue light trying to keep you up. This is the same for television, electronics, and things like video games before bed. Oftentimes, that's more men who do that, but if you happen to be a gamer, that might be something that you want to wear the glasses for or to wind down. If you can do this an hour or optimally 2 hours before bed, where you turn down the blue light and the exposure, that can really help.
- Control Body & Room Temperatures: If you want to take a shower at night, take it, but don't do it close to bedtime. Make sure that you do it a couple of hours before bedtime so that by the time you're ready to go to sleep, your temperature is in a good place. Take notice of the temperature of your skin, the temperature in the room, the way you feel in your skin, and is it a good place to be able to sleep? Along with this is to make sure that the temperature of the room is cool enough to sleep, but warm enough for you not to shiver.
- Relax Muscles: Remember that you feel tension in your body whether you realize it or not, so what we want to do is to help you release that tension. You can do that by progressive muscle relaxation. Start at your feet or start at your head. Notice where you have tension and consciously release each body part to relax so that the tension goes out. If that is too hard to do, you can go ahead and actually tighten your muscle before you release it. If you tighten the muscle that's already tense, but you can't seem to relax it or can't seem to feel whether it's tight or relaxed, you can intentionally tighten it, hold, and then release it. So, tighten it, hold it for a few counts, and then release it, and then move on to the next one. For instance, tighten your face, scrunch your face, hold your face real tight and scrunchy, and then release it. Notice the tension drain out of it and relax so that you can feel so much better about yourself.
- Breath Cycles with Longer Exhales: Do some breathing that can help you. Breathing should be slow, deep, and relaxing. Breathe from your abdomen, breathe in slowly and deeply, and breathe out slowly and deeply. If you want to ramp this up a bit, go ahead and breathe in and hold for a couple of counts, and then release for longer than you inhaled. It'd be like inhale for a certain amount until it's nice and full breath taken in, then hold for maybe three or four counts, and then release for double how long it took you to inhale. If you inhaled for four, exhale for eight. If you inhaled for three, exhale for six...something in that proportion. Slowly, slowly exhale.
- Breath Cycles with 2 Inhales and Holds: Here's another breathing technique I absolutely love. This is where you breathe in as much air as you can breathe in from your abdomen, hold it, and when you think that you're holding it and can't take in any more air, breathe in another couple of counts of air. You might breathe in for six, and then when you hold it and you think you're at the top of that breath, take in another breath for a couple of counts.1, 2, hold again, and then slowly, slowly release. For some reason, that is the one that gets me to sleep nearly every time. I usually do about three of those cycles of repetitions, and then I wake up the next morning and I'm like, oh, I guess it worked. I only remember doing that about three or four times.
- Exercise Earlier in the Day: Do not exercise later in the day. If you exercise earlier in the day, you have that energy to use and burn throughout the day, but you don't want to get wired at night.
- Limit Caffeine at least 6 Hours Before Bed: Stop caffeine around dinner time so that you don't end up with the receptors in your brain that are like, hey, we're wide awake. Be careful of caffeine and be careful of taking in too much stuff that your system is going to have to digest. You don't want to have too much on your stomach so that you're uncomfortable. You don't want to have the caffeine in there that's keeping you awake and messing with the. What is, what's the word I want? Do I want neurons, I don't know in your brain. You don't want it to not let you go to sleep, and it very much interferes with that. Now, you may have had a tolerance built up, and that's normal when you are quite used to having caffeine, but you can slowly reduce that over time and hopefully that will help. (Now, people do say that they have natural remedies, such as, you know, instead of sleeping pills, it might be something like melatonin, which our bodies naturally make. I am not one to speak to that, but I do know that I have heard that if you do that, your system can sometimes stop making enough of its own. So I'm not sure if that's true or not, but please look into that, if that could be something that is causing you issues in any way.)
- Visualize: If you can visualize, if you can see things in your mind's eye, visualize someplace that makes you feel like you are absorbed in that picture. Maybe it's being at the beach, and you imagine what the water feels like, imagine seeing the bubbles as your feet go from the sand into the shallow water, and then imagine walking more deeply and what that feels like. Imagine smelling the salt air. Try to bring in all of your senses, as many senses as you can to make this a vivid experience and just focus as if you're feeling those sensations of this imagined place. Maybe you dream of heaven, or you go back to a favorite place you went on vacation, a favorite relative's house, or something like that, and you try to remember everything that you can remember or bring in the feelings of being there. You can also make up something imaginary that you've never experienced. Maybe you saw something on television or read it in a book and try to call that into your mind's eye with as much felt experience as possible. Oftentimes we can drift off into dreams with just keeping our eyes shut and just letting our mind do the thing that wanders until we lose consciousness and get to sleep and get the rest we need.
Have you ever had a hospital "waiting" room experience?
I've had several in my life, and I've found that the worst waiting experiences for me have been the waiting on news regarding how a surgery or other procedure has gone. Waiting to hear if it's a boy or a girl, waiting for someone to be discharged, waiting for paperwork, or waiting for a procedure is fine. But, waiting to find out if things are okay or not? It's a prime time for thoughts to run amok... That's when the questions start to come... What if...? What would...? How will...?
My husband needed a brain scan...an MRI... Yikes, right? It doesn't get much more "real" than when they want to take a look at what's going on up there! Concern for whether or not a brain injury caused some eye related issues was the reason it was prescribed. (In January, he had eye surgery, and they wanted to make sure there was nothing more serious going on than what he had already experienced. So, he was in a tube with dye injected into him, and I was, well, waiting).
To keep my brain from imagining the worst, when, in reality, we did not know anything more than that he needed a scan, had had eye issues, God is in control no matter what, and we can trust Him, and that this was the extent of the "real/actual" information that we had at that point, I had to make a specific decision. It was something I had to consciously choose to remember:
There is nothing scary based in fact and truth that I am aware of right now.
The techniques that I used were as follows:
- Thought stopping of the imaginary "what ifs;" staying in the here and now truth
- Consciously relaxing my body muscles to be at peace in the present moment
- Sending my cares up to God and asking for His help; remembering that He has good for us
- Finding something more productive and in my control to distract myself with
I had to reign it in. Sometimes, we all need to do that to grip onto present moment truth.
