![]() It’s best to give your devices a break before bedtime.Ģ. Not only will a phone or tablet lighting up your bedside table disturb your sleeping patterns, but these screens also emit blue light, which affects your brain by increasing alertness and reducing levels of sleep-inducing melatonin. Say goodnight to your devices: Falling asleep means eliminating distractions, and smartphones are a likely distraction culprit. The more you do this and accept that you cannot force sleep, the easier sleep will come.ġ. Notice your worries about being unable to sleep, your noisy mind, and visualize them floating by. As every insomnia sufferer knows, the more you lie there trying to make yourself sleep, the more it won’t happen. When you’re having trouble drifting off in the wee hours, try to let go of the struggle. “You shouldn’t need to rely on anything to fall asleep-what happens if one day your phone is out of juice or the app doesn’t work?” “A lot of people use them as a sedative, but that’s not ideal,” says Harris. The point isn’t to fall asleep in the midst of your practice, but afterward when you return to bed.ĭon’t rely on those ubiquitous sleep apps. Staying awake in bed for longer than 20 minutes creates an association that the bed is for other activities as well as sleep, says Harris. If sleep still doesn’t arrive, you can do a mindfulness practice, but get out of bed and do it elsewhere. In this case, you might just try a body scan while in bed, to relax any tension you may be holding in your body. If you’re the kind of person who wakes up at 3 am a daily mindfulness practice might not immediately change that. Maintaining a regular, daytime mindfulness meditation practice will help you sleep better and stay asleep longer at night. Four Mindfulness Dos and Don’ts for a Good Night’s Sleep Studies have shown that mindfulness may be at least as effective as other highly recommended insomnia treatments. Mindfulness meditation prepares your mind for drifting off to sleep, and it can also improve sleep quality. “Strengthening your ‘mind muscle’ through daily practice helps you better recognize the negative insomnia-inducing thoughts and let them pass.” Mindfulness can set the stage for sleep by allowing you to be more aware of your thoughts and to be able to let go of those anxieties instead of getting stuck on them, says Harris. “That thought process makes you stressed, worrying-often unnecessarily-about the next day’s effects. They worry, she says, that they “won’t be able to do X, Y, Z the next day” if they don’t sleep. One of the biggest problems her clients share is dreading the night as it comes and growing anxious about trying to make themselves get sleepy. ![]() ![]() “Mindfulness can quiet the brain and allow for deeper sleep,” says Shelby Harris, PhD, a clinical sleep psychologist in private practice in White Plains, NY.
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