Sleep, we all know we need it, so why can at times it seem impossible to obtain?
Do you know how many hours of sleep you should be aiming for a night?
What is more important sleep quantity or sleep quality?
All creatures great and small require sleep, it’s part of life. Yet humans have come up with ways to delay sleep. From coffee, sugar, adrenaline and waking pills, we are always coming up with ways to keep on going to power through. This all has a rather negative effect on our general health and wellbeing.
Our bodies need sleep, good quality sleep. In this modern world, we seem to be evading it at all costs. From having ultra bright lights on in our homes, tv’s, phones, alcohol, long working days, drugs, late night eating, high caffeine and high sugar diets to name a few! This all has an impact on our sleep quality. For many of us, we spend so much time indoors stuck to a computer screen or working in the office that we are not exposing ourselves to natural daylight. Then we come home in the evening a switch all the lights on in the house, preventing ourselves from being exposed to natural nightlight. This constant cycle of pushing past sleep and tiredness can have a massive impact from weight gain, to depression, anxiety, cardiovascular problems, learning issues and so much more.
Many accidents happen every year as a result of being sleep deprived. The underlying cause of many symptoms such as brain fog, impaired attention or memory, irritability, disturbed mood, behavioural issues, decreased motivation and increased mistakes can often be found to be due to a lack of good quality sleep.
Have you ever noticed how having a rubbish nights’ sleep can lead to an exasperation of sadness or anxiety symptoms. How great would it feel to improve your sleep and wake up feeling refreshed and not needing a coffee to get the day going?
Here’s a few things you can start implementing right now to help you and sleep become firm friends again.
1. Dim the lights – In the evening start getting in the habit of turning off any uneccessary lights and using lamps and lower wattage bulbs.
2. Bed is for sleeping – Rather than lying in bed tossing and turning, get up and start doing an activity that will slow your brain down, puzzles and reading are great ways of doing this. As soon as you feel sleepy, go to bed.
3. Stop clock watching – This activity is one of the most self-sabbotaging things you can do when it comes to sleep. Turn the clocks away or remove them from the room.
4. Keep the phones away from the bed – We’ve all been there playing candy crush or scrolling social media through the wee hours of the night, this is not useful or helpful because when we lie in bed awake we are not teaching our brains that bed = sleeping. Plus your devices emit blue light which can delay sleep.
5. Stop talking about sleep – Stop making sleep the center of conversation, take the focus away from I don’t sleep well, or I’m a poor sleeper, it just compounds the problem even further. Try using positive statements like every day I am sleeping better and better.
During our sleep cycles we go through different phases of sleep, the final phases are where physical and emotional healing happen. When we sleep we dream and our dream can bring to us more information about what is going on at a subconscious level too. During dreams our subconscious is trying to resolve things, sometimes it needs some intervention to resolve fully and other times the dreams can resolve an issue the subconscious mind is experiencing.
I encourage you to allow and accept sleep into your life, leave the stimulants alone or at least stop them by lunch time and allow yourself to fall into a deep a restful slumber where your dreams can take you on journeys of all sorts and your body and mind can allow healing to happen.
If you are still struggling to sleep and would like to make changes, remember, hypnotherapy can help you to sleep better. I work with client’s on a one to one basis and I also run workshops. To find out more book a free no obligation call with me at www.mindset-for-change.com/call