If you didn’t know, March is National Bed Month. It’s the reason we’re doing Yin & Nidra Yoga on the 31st and the reason why I wanted to write about sleep hygiene and how it can help you get a better night’s sleep – naturally…
If you have children, or if you recall your own childhood with any clarity, you’ll be familiar with an often protested ‘bedtime routine’. This is however, the basis of establishing good sleep hygiene and the route to a better night’s sleep.
What follows are my tips, some of which are also recommended by the NHS, but you may find some here that work for you:
Tip 1: Put down the device
Sleep hygiene starts outside of the bedroom and that means starting to reduce the amount blue light you absorb close to bedtime. Ideally you should avoid looking at a device screen for an hour before you intend to go to sleep, and that includes a last minute doom scroll through the news/weather/social media!
Try this: Plug in a podcast, listen to some music while you do a final tidy up in the kitchen (just me?), read a book, take a bath, meditate, or have sex.
Tip 2: Practice being mindful
One of the major disrupters to sleep is worry, anxiety and stress (or dis-tress as it might be better named) and a really easy way to try reducing that is through mindfulness. If you’ve ever had anything preying on your mind, you’ll know that it invades every thought and every waking moment – not to mention muscling in on when you should be sleeping too.
Try this: Be present in the moment by taking careful notice of the sights, sounds, smells and feeling of an activity or place. In yoga we quiet the mind by acknowledging invasive thoughts and figuratively putting them aside to be dealt with at the appropriate time. Try talking about your worries, listing triggers so you’re prepared for them, or reframing unhelpful thoughts.
Tip 3: Make your bed every morning
Actually, this one’s more about creating an environment conducive to sleep, but I do like well-made bed to retire to! Partners often have different requirements for sleeping, but overall try to make the room cool, dark and quiet. It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people fall asleep with a podcast or tv on. And while we’re on the topic of the environment, how old are your mattress and pillows?
Try this: Set a nighttime routine on your phone so it switches to darker settings after a certain time and automatically puts on ‘do not disturb’. This prevents pings and lights in the middle of the night. Are your curtains good enough? Mornings will get lighter soon and it won’t be long until we’re greeted with bright sunshine, if not can you sleep with an eye mask? And what about that bird song at 5am? If you can’t have the window open because of the noise, can you switch to a lighter weight duvet?
Tip 4: Don’t force it
Why is it always 3 o’clock in the morning when we wake up and feel more alert than at 6:30?! That’s a subject for another blog, but if you find yourself lying there thinking, ‘if I fall asleep now, I’ll get 3 hours sleep’ or singing a random theme tune, just get up.
Try this: Before giving in and getting up, try some of the breathing exercises we practise in yoga – be mindful of your body position, focus on each small body part for a moment and shift focus around the body. Do some box breathing, but don’t try for more than 20 minutes before you allow your body to behave as it wants. Get up and make action lists or read a book instead.
Tip 5: Go to bed at the same time every night
And for that matter, get up at the same time every morning, and that includes at weekends! This is all about regulating your circadian rhythm and establishing the right hormonal responses at certain times of the day and night.
Try this: Set an alarm for sleep time – and don’t allow yourself to keep pressing the snooze in the morning. Maybe put your alarm further way, so you have to get out of bed to reach it… It won’t take long to shift your mindset, although it might feel alien to get up straight away first.
And on a final note about sleep…
Not everyone needs the same amount. You don’t have to have a full eight hours to be healthy. Some feel fabulous on six hours, others need a solid ten… It’s all individual, but if you’re struggling there are other things you can read that might help:
NHS – Insomnia advice
Sleep App – Calm
Sleep Foundation – The circadian rhythm