Are you struggling to sleep? Find out why, and how you can find solutions to sleep being your friend again. 10 Top tips for glorious sleep. Bed, what a heavenly place! But really should only be entered when tired. It should be a no screens area, a sanctuary for us when we are ready to sleep or read. We shouldn’t hang out in bed watching programs or checking social media as “blue screens” really affect how our brains work, and do not make us feel restful and relaxed, but alert and active. Be reassured by having an alarm set if you need one, so you don’t need to check the time during the night. Having an air vent or window open, fresh air and a cooler temperature will improve your sleep quality. If your head starts to swirl with thoughts, jot them on a piece of paper, knowing you can deal with them tomorrow. I like to go to sleep after writing down tomorrows to-do list, what I have achieved today, and writing down anything I feel grateful for. This routine gets my head in a happy but empty place ready for oblivion. Give yourself between 6 and 9 hours to sleep, adults all need around this amount to function. Any more or less can really start to alter how we feel in our daily lives. It is also important to try and wake up at the same time every day. While it may seem like a good idea to try to catch up on sleep after a bad night, doing so on a regular basis can also disrupt your sleep routine. It is better to take small cat naps of 20 mins during the day, if your sleep is disturbed and you feel exhausted. If you wake in the night and can’t go back to sleep, get up, make a drink, read a book. Don’t lie there worrying about not sleeping. Insomnia can become quite obsessive. As we lie there panicking about missing sleep, we are adding to the problem and creating more stress. It is always better to distract your head with a different activity (that doesn’t have a screen) and allow ourselves to become sleepy again. We sleep in cycles during the night, experiencing rest sleep and dream (REM) sleep. Some of the sleep we have is deep, and some is more shallow. It isn’t a disaster if we wake up and go back to sleep as the quality of sleep is varied anyway. Dream sleep is important for our brains, as we use REM sleep to process the actions of our day. It is when we decide what has been important to store in our libraries, and what we can throw away. If we have too much going on in our lives we have too much to process in one night. Our brains feel overloaded and can wake us (usually around 4am for me!). This is a sign that we have too much stress in our lives, and need to find ways to reduce our anxieties. Our bodies can feel encouraged to sleep too much to empty our stress using dreams, but this will leave us feeling exhausted, and wanting to sleep even more. This is why it is important to stick to 7-9 hours of sleep a night. If your head is full of noise at bedtime, try listening to a calming meditation, or some tranquil sounds like rain or the ocean. Choosing what we think about is an important factor of how stressful our lives can become. Making a choice not to dwell on the thoughts that are still churning round is a great way to train our brains to be quieter. Choosing our thoughts is empowering and a deeply effective way of improving our mental well being.

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