MONTH OF SLEEP CONTINUED...

Yet more, slightly obscure, tips to help you sleep

Hello there, lovely readers

I hope you are well and enjoying the change in the seasons. Apart from the odd few dull days, we’ve had a taste of hopefully good weather that is to come, and with it, the advance of all the Spring colour in the flower beds, which is just delightful. It lifts your heart, doesn’t it?

And hopefully, with the lighter and longer days, those of you who are struggling with good sleep will find that the change in the days gives you some respite. But, that’s not always the case.

If your sleep problems have been part of you for quite a while, then an increase in daylight won’t help. Often, when poor sleep has been around for a time, this becomes ingrained in the brain as your “normal” sleep pattern and it can be very hard to change this very intrenched pattern.

Your sleep pattern is commonly what’s referred to as your circadian rhythm.

So, because of my fairly recent episode of 4 long years as an insomniac, I’ve done a deeper dive to see if I can find some more, slightly obscure, tips that might help you to repair your poor sleep.

Here goes….

TRY A COLD SHOWER

Yes, I know, normally that’s the last thing to recommend as it’s considered something to stimulate you and on going to bed for hopefully a good night’s sleep, that’s the last thing you need. But surprisingly, there is a lot of scientific evidence coming to the fore to say that the actual change in temperature has been shown to actually improve the time it takes for fall asleep coupled with the quality and length of sleep.

I think might need a bit of trial and error - the studies have shown that it doesn’t suit everybody - but if you’re struggling, it might be worth giving it a go. This is a fairly new one on me, but I seem to be the body type where it DOES help. I can’t say I leap straight into a cold shower - I get into a warm shower first and do the soaping etc - then once I’m clean, I turn the temperature down as far as it’ll go and force myself to spend at least 2 minutes under the cold flow of water. Yes, it’s difficult at first - you certainly catch your breath a bit - but once you’re done and out of the shower, your body starts to warm up, you feel MARVELLOUS! And it does help me relax and have a great night’s sleep.

LIE ON THE FLOOR

This might seem a bit weird, but one of the latest ideas I’ve seen (and backed up by science) suggests that, right before bed, try spending 10 minutes lying on the floor in a different room can provide a change of scenery and help alleviate discomfort.

Now, I can honestly say I haven’t tried this, but I can see the sense in it. If you spend 10 minutes lying flat on your back, I know from experience that you will activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is part of the nervous system that is responsible for allowing you to rest etc.

And, if you were to combine this 10 minute lying down period with listening to either some relaxing music or a meditation in your headphones, I would consider this a bit of a double whammy.

The idea for this tip can be found here and if you try it and it works (or doesn’t work) I’d love to hear about it. You can reply to this newsletter, and it will find me :)

As I mentioned at the start of this newsletter, this the second in a series of newsletters I’m doing about my favourite topic of sleep (!) and if you’d like to recap on the first one I did, you can find it here

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Now, such is my interest and sincere wish to help all those who are in the same situation as I was for 4 dreadful, long years, that I’m putting together a live webinar that will be held on Thursday 24th April at 19.00 (GMT). In this webinar, I’m quoting even more of the tips and hacks I know to help get your sleep back on track. And I’ll be covering what I did to get back to good, refreshing sleep :)

I’m hoping that the webinar will help as many as you as possible who have every struggled with getting a good nights sleep. And it might be that only one of the many tips and hacks I cover, unlocks the key for you to start to sleep well again.

If you’d like to book onto the webinar, you can find more details here - https://buy.stripe.com/00gcPzchPfGa7JK7sD.

Would be great to have you along

So, that’ll be a wrap from me on this glorious sunny afternoon as I type.

Wishing you health and many, many nights of good sleep

Take care

Una x