Getting to Sleep. 20 Tips

Remember to Practice. Pick out two or and apply for seven days

1. Slow down. From the time you get out of bed and until the time you get back into bed. Regard rushing around and being busy as a significant condition to sleeplessness.

2. Regard your bed as a place of rest which can lead to sleep. Deep sleep goes deeper than the dream world. Remember to appreciate the opportunity for relaxation.

3. Engage in mindfulness practice in bed, such as mindfulness of breathing. Give extra attention to relaxing the outbreath. Come back to the breath when the mind wanders.

4. Stretch all the parts of the body in the evening. This helps loosen up tension and any pain in the body.

5. Examine diet. Reduction of sugar, salt and fat – all three impacts on body and mind. Minimise spices, HPFs (highly processed food). Salt dehydrates your body causing an increase in blood pressure and you will make more trips to the toilet. Sugar triggers spikes and crashes in blood sugar levels. Fat makes the body work harder to digest. Sugar, salt, fat affects sleep.

6. Engage in a daily reflection. How do you spend your evenings? Do you spend time on the screen which stimulates the brain cells through force of habit? Minimise time.

7. Develop a regular sleeping time for bed. Late nights and then early nights unsettle the rhythm of sleep. Don’t stay up late or out late just to please others.

8. Any light in a room can inhibit sleep. Remember to ensure your mobile phone or clock on your bedside does not emit light. Avoid checking the time during the night. It can increase restlessness.

9. Stress in daily life disrupts sleep as well as making it difficult to get to sleep.

10. Significantly increase your time outdoors. Walk in the park, along your local streets or on tracks in the nature.

11. Exhaustion. If you experience a long and arduous day leaving you exhausted, then give sleep a priority rather than socialising.

12. Experiment with your sleeping posture – on your back and on your side. Experiment with pillow and the direction you sleep in. Do you share your bed? What is the understanding between the two of you?

13. Drink. Do you drink in the hours before sleep? You are much more likely to wake up during the night needing to go to the loo.

14. Room temperature. Turn the heating off so it does not go beyond 18 degrees. We can become unsettled in the night if we are too hot. If a hot summer’s night, then wear little with only a sheet to use.

15. Find ways to relax during the day and especially in the evening. Music, silence, reading which nourishes, engage in small tasks without pressure.

16. Meditation. Sit still in an upright chair. Two feet firmly on the floor. Sit tall. Experience the body. Relax the body. Feel the silence and stillness around you. Make it a regular evening practice for at least for a few minutes.

17. Intense conversations. Such situations can leave impressions that can make getting to sleep difficult. Avoid shouting, arguing, interrupting or contracting in the face of the words of the other. Consider having important conversations elsewhere than at home.

18. Happiness during the day contributes to deep sleep.

19. Reflect on who and what you appreciate in life. Know your blessings.

20. DNA. You may be a person who finds it difficult to sleep, even if you follow all the above reminders. The makeup of the body/brain/mind affects sleep. Accept this. Remember to take rest.