Whenever you have a busy, stressful day, the mind does tend to hold onto the stress which makes sleeping very difficult. There are a few ways to rest without resorting to sleeping pills.
Steps
- Develop or improve your existing sleep regime. Often small things can disrupt or prevent sleep quite easily.
- Make sure your bedroom is a good environment for sleep. Your bedroom should be dark, a pleasant temperature and peaceful place dedicated only to sleeping. As this is not always easy, since it can be the only place you can personalize or have private space if you are not in your own house, if it has a lot of distractions, including media devices, posters, lights and electronics it can actually help to keep you awake.
- Finishing any jobs on your "to do" list also helps as they won't be used by the mind as a way to stay awake. This may be as simple as doing any outstanding housework such as tidying the kitchen, putting away your papers or finishing your homework.
- Consider a gentle exercise sometime before bed. It should be something soft and gentle such as stretching exercises that can relax the body. Doing an exciting or intense type exercise can flood the brain with adrenaline and keep you up. Tai Chi and Yoga can help some people.
- Avoid eating too much or too little. Having a full stomach can keep you awake for hours, so can hunger pangs.
- Consider if you are actually tired. Sometimes the mind is stressed, but it wants to continue to explore the issues you are currently facing that can make you restless. For these cases, it is best not to try to sleep, but to do some other activity to calm the mind down, such as reading, listening to calming music or doing some catchup chores such as paperwork.
- Take a warm shower or bath before you sleep.
- Peaceful music in the background, or aromatherapy can work for some cases, but it can also distract others if it has not worked for you in the past.
- Meditation can help in some cases. But it can also allow the mind to become more active as it can enter a dreamlike state, or make your dreams more vivid. This is nothing to worry about at all as the mind often uses dreams to "data-dump" its issues and worries. Some who have stress and meditate before sleep sometimes wake from intense and disturbing dreams as the mind has been allowed to express itself better - something you possibly may not have been allowing it to do in the first place. With understanding, you can use this as a highly valuable tool as the dreams show what the mind is concerned with - either directly or symbolically - and you can then use that insight to address the issues, or like an intense aerobic exercise, the mind can relax more in day to day life if you allow it.
- When you lie down, start with a progressive muscle relaxation. You should spend about five minutes or more to do this, but do not tense each limb for more than 5 or 6 seconds.
- Start by spending a few minutes just watching your breathing, or something else such as the feeling of the bed linen or mattress.
- Focus on your arms and hands and tense them as tight as you can for a few seconds. Do not tense them if they are painful, or if they will cause you pain. Spend a few seconds watching the tension, then, as you breathe out, relax them. Feel the arms slowly relax and feel heavy. If your arms feel pleasant, spend a few seconds or minutes focusing simply on that pleasant feeling. If you wish, you can move on to the next part:
- Next focus on your legs, ankles and feet and tense them. Spend time watching the tension and how it feels. Then relax them. Let go of any tension. Allow them to become heavy and relax into the mattress. Feel the bed linen and be aware of it is time for sleep.
- From here, focus on other body sections such as the buttocks, the back of the body, the front of the body, the shoulders, and the head. Tense each group, then on an out-breath, relax them, each time allowing them to become heavy.
- If your mind is still racing, spend some time watching the mind and let go of any thoughts or feelings that arise. Allow the mind to relax, each time it tenses which each thought that occurs in the same way as the muscle relaxation.
- You can also use a mental repetition exercise. Counting is a good one, or mentally noting "breathing in, breathing out". You can use a mantra if if works for you, such as "relax" or "peaceful".
- You can also use imagination. You can use anything that works for you, but here are two simple examples.
- Imagine finding a box with a sleeping potion in it. As you imagine drinking it, feel your body relax, your mind become tranquil and feel sleepy from your stomach and throat spreading through your limbs as the potion spreads through your system.
- Imagine a lake of water or warm fog with a set of steps leading into it. As you walk down each step you can feel the fog start to make each part of the body it touches relax, and become sleepy, until you allow the fog to close over your head into peaceful and pleasant sleep.
- If restlessness remains, start to examine that feeling of restlessness and let go of that as well. Consider if that restlessness is healthy for sleep, or if it is worth relaxing and letting go of it.
- Give yourself time, by relaxing and by letting go of stress and tension in the body while keeping your mental agenda clear can help a lot in aiding sleep. Its now time to sleep. Those worries can wait.
Tips
- You may at some time notice that these methods are designed to occupy or distract the mind. This is exactly what the method is about as occupying the mind with a more peaceful object or theme eventually allows it to relax in its own time, where focusing on the stressful issue simply keeps you awake and stressed.
- Relax your entire body and just go limp. Don't tense up when you're stressed.
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