Sleep Listening
How’s your sleep these days? Our sleep is often telling us something. It’s a beautiful, mystical, mirror of sorts, revealing what we might want to dial up or down in our lives. Sometimes the answer is obvious and sometimes it isn’t. And even if our sleep falls off the rails because of a stressful event (job loss, grief, move, pandemic life) we can often support our sleep even when that stressor is still present in our life.
If your sleep has not been great these days, you are not alone. And, there are shifts you can make to nudge your sleep along, without trying harder.
Feed Your Sleep
Like something that’s alive, your sleep is nourished from the moment you wake to the moment you drift off. Consciously or unconsciously, as you go about your day you gather up ingredients that feed your sleep.
Mindset: take the trying out of it! Sleep loves when you say things like “The sleep I get is the sleep I need,” rather than, “I’ll be a wreck tomorrow if I can’t get 8 hours.” The latter one was me for most of my life but I’ve turned it around.
Stillness: finding pockets to ‘down-shift’ during the day is a way to tend to your nervous system.
Steady bed timing: your sleep system loves regularity – grooving out those predictable sleep – wake times allows your body to let go with more ease, and stay down.
Rituals: creating pleasurable rituals to invite sleep allows our bodies to transition from ‘doing’ to ‘being’ before we drop in.
Nutrition: what we put into our bodies can boost the hormone chains which support sleep processes, or hinder our body’s natural ability to drop in and stay down.
Movement and sweat: endorphins, lowered cortisol, and a dose of physical exertion all collaborate to boost sleep hormones and sleep pressure, to help you fall asleep and stay asleep more efficiently.
Light and dark: what your internal clock uses to sync itself to a 24 hour rhythm that guides your sleep-wake cycle.
Sleep is a puzzle and the elements are all connected. When we approach sleep this way, the changes we make are deep and lasting.
Dream sweetly,
