Creating an Optimal Sleep Environment

Over the past few months, we've been exploring various recurring practices we can implement into our routines. We've discussed stretching, the healthy benefits of reading ingredient labels, adding specific vitamins to our daily regimen, and keeping a detailed wellness journal. With the new year upon us, we have a wonderful opportunity to reflect on many habits, patterns, and lifestyle choices!

Since everyone needs sleep, but not everyone gets enough sleep, this is an excellent topic to explore at the beginning of a new year.

In nature during evening-time, various plants and flowers close their blooms and retract their leaves in anticipation of the dark hours when they'll be deeply asleep. As the sun rises the following day, they open and stretch to greet the light and increase their oxygen while beginning interactions with numerous wonders in nature (dew, breeze, rain, insects, birds, and more).

We likewise need to prepare for a night of restful sleep so we can rise to greet the following morning. Our daily activities take so much of our energy and attention mentally and physically (as well as emotionally and spiritually). It's easy to feel drained within minutes of waking up because of stress or other factors. If this has been our experience, I'd like to invite each of us to reach for and create a new reality in our ability to get true restful sleep this year.

In the past month, as I've circled through positivity accounts I follow on social media, I kept seeing references and correlations to winter being a time for things to hibernate, sleep, and even 'die' and 'become buried.' Winter can be a time to be less active, quiet, reflect, slow down, and do some extra-intentional resting and healing. Just as trees and flowers, and animals and insects 'hunker down' while it's cold and dark outside, it will do us humans good to pay special attention to how we are resting and recovering from a few seasons of more vigorous Existing.

The opportunity to sleep when the body needs to is a gift! Sometimes, resting may feel like a luxury. We know we deserve to sleep, we NEED to sleep, but sometimes, we don't fully allow ourselves to rest and sleep when we need to. Sometimes, the trouble lies among other factors, but often, the trouble could be within ourselves.

Here are suggestions for creating an environment that can help us achieve more days and nights of the rejuvenating, refreshing, and regenerating rest/sleep we need.

Evaluating Sleep

How much sleep do we actually get between our heads, touching the pillows, and our feet standing on the floor when it's time for us to rise again?

Reflecting on the two previous blog articles, the practice of keeping an overall wellness journal was the theme. I found various sleep tracker apps and health journals available for purchase in looking for additional resources. We could keep track of our sleep in a notebook or our wellness journal. Each of us must certainly want to get that good sleep that we know must be attainable! A good way to start should be reflecting on/recording facts about our sleep:

What is the time frame I am usually getting to bed? (Is there an ideal time I'd like to get to bed and actually be asleep?)
Does my sleep time range widely from one night to the next?
Is there a specific amount of sleep I know I personally need?
Can I take steps toward targeting an intentional sleep time from now on?
Are there external factors keeping me from sleep? If so, how many of those factors are within my power to improve?

Regardless of what Google or social media says, some of us have bodies that need more sleep than others. If we don't get that needed amount of sleep, we could wake feeling nauseated, dizzy, have headaches, get brain fog, or have a poor appetite, among other challenges and setbacks that can burden our day. During childhood, I heard my dad say, "If you can't get at least 8 or 9 hours of sleep, make sure you at least get that horizontal time to rest." He would have his kids lie down to read or listen to music and ensure we'd get at least 45 minutes of a break in our day.

The following page from SleepFoundation helps us understand what happens during sleep, including the four stages of sleep (and why each is important).

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works

It's so interesting to learn about sleep!

I'll share challenges my family has struggled to overcome when evaluating the our bedtime environment and setting the stage for quality sleep.

Screen time/Technology: This is the number one distractor from focusing on a solid bedtime routine that begins at an appropriate hour. If we want to change our sleep quality, we should consider how much time we've spent on a screen on any given day. If applicable, we should try to reduce minutes or hours spent on a phone, tablet, computer, Virtual Reality headset, or TV. Flashing lights and constant stimulation of graphics, colors + sounds can keep our brains too active when it's time to settle down.

Our family doctor encouraged my kids to turn off screens a minimum of one hour (preferably two) before the time they needed to be asleep. Being intentional with the amount of time we are spending with our eyes focused on a screen actually starts from the first time we pick up our smartphones or turn on our computers in the morning. We can do a quick check-in at lunchtime to see if we've already spent the majority of our waking time looking at screens. If our jobs or studies require a full day of screen time, it would be wise to choose other non-screen activities for our breaks or as soon as we are done with daily work or educational activities.

Our whole Self will thank us by feeling better, resting better, and being more able to concentrate if we catch our unhealthy tendencies and change our habits.

Technology is amazing! And with it, the world of possibility and convenience is open for us to enjoy. Instead of reading a paper paged- book, we can read everything on a tablet or Kindle! We can turn pages by touching the screen with a fingertip! But if we are already looking at a screen for the majority of our day, it may be a much-needed and wonderful wake-up call to steer away from digital books. I often listen to audiobooks so I can drive, rest, exercise, or clean my house and enjoy a great book at the same time.

Eating Late at Night

Nighttime eating is also a roadblock to sleep better. If we are eating late, we have the potential to feel bloated and uncomfortable before/at bedtime. We may need to interrupt our rest/sleep to spend time on the toilet. We may force our bodies to work too hard on metabolizing what we've eaten. We could very likely program our brains to expect a meal or significant volumes of snacks at that late time every night, forming a habit that can be challenging to break. We could wake constipated and bloated, uncomfortable, with no appetite or even more of an appetite since the hypothalamus may expect to eat again without properly digesting the previous food.

It's wise to change gradually when we find that we aren't making the healthiest choices regarding screens and late eating. Cutting back little by little, consciously and intentionally, may have much more permanent effects than making an abrupt effort to change.

Light/Darkness

Another roadblock to a peaceful, intentionally prepared sleep environment is the number of flashing or constantly-on LED lights in the home, the resting space, and the bedroom. Turning off, or at least covering up, such lights will invite the brain to do its job of relaxing us into slumber. 'Too much' light or dark varies for every person. I'm not a fan of pitch black because it's too sensory-depriving for my comfort. Others may prefer pitch black and find it impossible to sleep unless it is so. Installing a lighter or darker shade/curtain may help. Wearing a breathable eye mask could be a nice addition for some.

Pets

What is the routine or arrangement involving our beloved pets in relation to where and when we sleep? Do we have hungry cats who constantly meow when bored and want to eat in the middle of the night or early in the morning before the sun wakes up? (I'm raising my hand here. I use a pink noise ambient sound to drown out the cat so I can keep sleeping even when he keeps talking!) Is it possible to get a bed for the fur babies near the bed so they aren't hogging a big amount of bed space?

Sometimes, we shake our heads and think something is impossible, so why entertain the thought of changing? But sometimes, just having the thought to change a situation or practice that is not ideal is enough to inspire change.

Turning to Western medicine sometimes helps us find the missing link to an issue we've been facing for a long time. But sometimes, it only prolongs our discomfort because a synthetic chemical forces the body to believe what's been missing is functioning properly. However, we frequently don't look deeper into our lifestyle habits to pinpoint what factors could change if we are willing to make the effort.

Exploring Other Barriers to a Good Night of Sleep

Temperature and noise in the room/outside the window or walls: Switch a distracting ticking clock to another room. Get the pets on a more favorable meal schedule. Add music or ambient noise to enhance your sleep. Experiment with the airflow.

Bedding and Clothing: Change pillows, mattresses, linens, or sleep clothes if necessary. Just because someone has always done something a certain way doesn't mean it can't change now. If we were raised wearing a long nightgown, a big sleepshirt, a full set of pajamas, or skin only, perhaps it's time to discover a different sleep wardrobe. Sometimes, all it takes is changing the material we wear to feel more comfortable when awake or asleep. (I was raised on natural fibers and fabrics, as my skin was very sensitive to synthetics and wool in my earlier years.)

Consumption or use of substances: Avoid stimulants a healthy number of hours before you'd like to be resting/asleep.

Movement: Many find it hard to get daily exercise before bedtime. While that is understandable, trying to see if any other time to fit workouts in can help us truly wind down at bedtime. Having warm muscles and our blood flowing with energy fresh from a workout often exhilarates us and pumps us up to remain active later into the night.

Routine: Saving dirty dishes and other chores until just before bed can be a habit. I know people who pride themselves on doing their sink full of dishes right before lights out. This allows them to look at their kitchen sink and counters with pride, knowing they won't be greeted with a mess in the morning. But what if we make an effort to do the cleanup earlier so we can focus on creating a very inviting and relaxing bedtime routine instead? A good soak in the bath, a book, a cup of tea, relaxing by the fire, connecting with a loved one or pet if we haven't had the chance earlier in the day... Nighttime stretching or a bit of calming yoga can prepare us for sleep. Deeper breathing and meditation or prayer are also excellent practices for connecting the body to the mind and spirit before our nighttime rest.

Matter on the Mind: Actively thinking, ruminating, worrying, grieving, regretting, being angry, dreading, and many more negative emotions or moods can keep us from settling down to rest. Feeling depressed or anxious can keep us up all night every night for months or years. Seeking support during the day can replace having too much on our minds at night.

What's the bedroom for?

A bedroom can be useful for storing or keeping many items, desks or stations for purposes related to journaling or writing, body and hair care, planning a wardrobe, etc., but the main reason we have a bed and call it a 'bedroom' is so that we have a place designated for our sleep. Connecting with yourself, your spiritual source, or a pet, with a family member or partner is appropriate pre-bedtime behavior. This can be a time to do things we can't do during our day when offices are open, phone lines are active, roads are congested, technology is blaring, and people need our time and attention constantly. Quiet time is a gift. It's a blessing. We will benefit from embracing a curated bedtime routine that steers us toward a healthy and renewing sleep period. Mini-hibernation every night is such a smart concept! I hope each of us will discover the right recipe for sleep as we go through this new year.

Remember, if something does not work after we apply a decent effort, we have the freedom to make changes again...and again. May this year be the year we notice less yawning, less dark eye circles, and more mindful eating. May we enjoy more ease of movement and more retention of short—and long-term memory. May our aches and pains, brain fog, confusion, and doubt fade, giving way to more clarity and peace of mind, body, and spirit.

May this year be the year we crack our own code and obtain the reward of the kind of sleep we've been longing to experience. Good Luck and Sweet Dreams!

By

Kaari Branham