Points discussed in this episode:
In the 2nd episode of the Anxiety Slayer Restful Nights series, we explore the power of meditation in promoting deep and rejuvenating sleep.
Mindfulness Practices
Mindfulness has beneficial effects on both our body and our mind:
It helps calm the body by encouraging slower breathing, and a relaxed heart rate, which can help us drift off to sleep.
And it helps the mind by drawing it to focus on peaceful awareness. When we don’t harness the mind, and we’re trying to sleep, it will start bringing up different “what if” thoughts, or scenarios, which keep us awake.
Mindful meditation helps us settle into acceptance of what is. Especially if it means accepting, rather than resisting, the fact that we can’t get to sleep. If we resist it and start worrying about being tired tomorrow or get caught in thought loops of things we need to do, it only makes us more wakeful.
Acceptance is relaxed, we’re not using any energy to resist, or object to, the experiences we don’t want. It’s neutral. It also helps to add the word “yet” to our statements about sleep.
If we find ourselves saying “I can’t sleep”, it can be helpful to change that phrase to “I can’t sleep yet”, and then focus on what you can do that’s relaxing and restful.
To become as relaxed as we can means that we are resting, even if we’re not sleeping. We’re much more likely to settle into sleep from that state than by picking up our phone, or watching TV, or letting our mind spin out going back over the day or projecting into tomorrow.
Incorporating mindfulness into your evening routine to ease into sleep naturally
Taking a warm shower and being present with the sensations and sounds while standing under the water.
Trying some gentle yoga and practice being as present as you can with your breath.
Following a guided meditation, or breathing practice, or a body scan practice. Listening to somebody else guide us through the process can be helpful, we might choose to do it on our own.
Tapping for letting go of daily stressors
EFT Tapping can help stop the running dialogues in your mind and calm stress and specific concerns. You can find our Tapping diagram here and we have guided tapping sessions for sleep on our Patreon..
