6 Quickfire Sleep Tips!

In this brief talk, I'll share with you 6 tips you can use to try and improve your daily sleep. You can always start by trying out each one once or in combinations, before then seeing what happens when you incorporate the more effective ones into your usual sleep routine. I'd also like to add that I've tried and tested all of these methods I mention, so you know they can work if that's what's right for you! I hope this helps!

Transcript

So,

Hi there,

Welcome to the session today.

So,

Today we're just going to be going over six quick fire tips for sleeping better.

This won't be a big in detail thing,

It won't be a big kind of lecture or something.

I'll explain them a bit,

Each one as we go over each one in turn,

Just so that you have an idea of how to apply them and how they work and all of this stuff.

So I'm not just reading you a list of things.

But it won't be in big,

You know,

Full deep detail.

So the idea of these tips is that you can just increase your likelihood of being able to get a good night's sleep.

Unfortunately,

Sleep is just one of those things where you can't sort of guarantee this will make you sleep,

This will,

You know,

Not anything like that.

It's just something,

It's a matter of chance to be honest.

And it's a matter of you've got to do all you can to kind of maximise your likelihood of being able to get a good night's sleep.

So let's just dive straight into the tips now.

So our first tip today is,

Now I don't like this one either,

So my apologies because it's not a fun one,

Nobody wants to hear it.

Turn off screens,

All screens,

One or two,

At least one hours before bed.

Okay,

So turn off screens one or two hours before bed,

And I'd say about at least one hour before bed.

Why is this?

It's not just being kind of petty or something.

Basically,

Screens tend to kind of emit this blue light.

And the eyes,

As I understand the eyes pick up on this and interpret this as kind of daylight.

And so they send a signal to the brain saying,

Well,

It's daytime,

We better wake up and the brain goes,

Oh,

Is it?

Alright,

Well,

We'll start waking ourselves up again.

And so the brain becomes active,

The body gets ready to carry on moving.

If you want to try and sleep after this,

It's not going to happen very easily.

So turning off those screens at least an hour before you want to go to bed,

That is,

Again,

It won't guarantee anything,

But it will increase your chance of being able to sleep well.

So our second tip today,

The first one is quite straightforward.

Our second tip today is to use a pillow spray before you go to sleep.

Now perhaps you've heard of a pillow spray already,

Perhaps you haven't.

As I understand,

Quite a couple of companies do them.

Essentially,

It's just a little bottle of sort of fragrance,

Relaxing fragrance,

Maybe it's lavender,

Sandalwood,

Chamomile,

A mix of it,

And you can just spray it on your pillow and it'll obviously kind of emanate this lovely relaxing scent.

Very often,

Because obviously pillow spray,

They're designed for helping you sleep,

These will be scents which do just that,

They're designed,

Or not designed,

But they are there to help you sleep and they will help you sleep.

So the pillow spray with these scents obviously is going to make you feel more ready to sleep,

Sort of physiologically as well as mentally.

They're going to relax you,

They will increase your chances of sleeping.

It may not work for everyone,

Certainly when I started using it I was a little bit doubtful,

But I realised after quite a few months at least of using a pillow spray that actually I've never had the trouble sleeping since I started using this that I used to have before I started using it,

If that makes sense.

So I think it really does work and obviously it's not a miracle if someone's banging bin lids outside your door all night,

It's not going to help you get off.

But at the same time it is,

If you're in a good environment for that sleep,

It will help you to sort of drift off much more easily.

So the next tip is to try drinking a herbal tea before bed.

Bit strange perhaps,

But again it's a similar vein to the pillow spray.

The things in herbal teas,

If you select the right kind of tea for this kind of job,

The herbs and things in the tea,

The plants in the tea and all of this will help you sleep better.

Camomile is one,

That's the one I've mostly used,

I think others work as well.

I'd advise you look into that yourself,

I don't know enough about it to be able to recommend any specific teas apart from chamomile,

But I certainly know for me chamomile has worked quite well.

There are definitely others out there which work just as well if not better.

And it will sort of help you again,

Like the pillow spray,

To kind of physiologically calm down,

If that makes sense.

It's not just psychological,

It's not just kind of making you feel calmer,

It's actually calming your body with those sort of compounds and things inside those teas.

Obviously if you have quite a small bladder then drinking a whole cup of tea or something before you go to bed probably isn't the best idea.

So this maybe won't work quite so well for people with small bladders.

But if that's not a problem for you then that is fine,

I would recommend giving it a go just to see if it works and see how it goes.

So our fourth tip today is to use an audio sleep aid.

Now that's quite vague I appreciate but that's deliberate.

So it could be for example chiming a singing bowl once or a few times before you go to bed and then it resounds as you drift off or as you start to drift off.

That could be one of them.

You could listen to ambient sounds through headphones.

Personally I don't like wearing headphones when I'm trying to fall asleep but it doesn't have to be through headphones.

Some people have a light headphone,

Some people you could do it through a small speaker if you're not disturbing anybody around.

You could do it however you want.

But lots of people find that the ambient sound,

Whether it's waterfall sounds,

Rain on a meadow or anything,

It could be an airship or something I've found or a pirate ship.

It could be a wind howling through a cave,

Anything like that.

Just listening to the ambient sound sometimes can really really help people just to drift off.

So that's sort of another way which may work for some people and may not work for others but generally will increase your likelihood of drifting off.

There is of course another sort of the other side of that which is that if you live somewhere quite loud and you need a bit more quiet for sleep rather than sound,

Again this isn't quite an audio aid but it's still the audio aspect of sleep,

You may want to try ear plugs or perhaps ear defenders if you don't want to actually stick something in your ear.

Obviously these are different levels of practicality.

Some people don't like to sleep with ear plugs in,

Some people don't like to sleep with ear defenders in or any headphones to be honest with a little noise a little bit.

So it's really up to you if it's something you feel you wouldn't,

You know,

You don't initially feel terribly,

Terribly not keen about then go ahead,

Give it a try if you want to sort of,

As I say,

If you live in a kind of a loud place,

A loud environment then some kind of ear protection exactly but some kind of sound dulling thing could be always,

Could be good,

Could be useful if you're not,

As I say,

Straight away averse to that,

Averse to the idea of trying that.

So different things work for different people and for me sometimes I currently live on a university campus so it can get quite loud on certain nights and I have a pair of industrial ear defenders next to my bed and if it gets too loud I can pop them on generally for sort of half an hour or so and then I'll sort of still be a little bit awake and I can take them off again and then drift off normally without having to be wearing them.

They just allow you,

For me they just allow that extra level of drifting off that I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't have them.

I'd still be all sort of wired up and all,

So I wouldn't be able to drift off as easily.

So you won't drift off fully with them but they'll help you just that little bit more than not having them.

So that's the audio aspect of falling asleep.

Some unconventional options there,

Some things you may want to try,

Some things maybe straight away you know you don't want to try but as I say all of these things could potentially increase your chance of sleeping better.

So just have a bit of a think about which ones you think might work for you.

So our fifth and penultimate tip for today is sleep when you feel is natural for you.

Perhaps you haven't heard so much about this one.

You've probably heard maybe a bit about pillow spray,

Maybe a little bit about the audio stuff but you probably haven't heard so much about sleeping when you feel is natural for you.

So different people have different sleep patterns so it is important that you find yours if you want to be able to kind of get the best quality of sleep for your system to be honest.

So some people will go to bed very late,

They'll sleep for a few hours then they'll get up about the same time as everybody else does in the morning.

Other people will go to sleep about the same time as everybody else does,

Wake up early but then nap for an hour or two in the afternoon.

So understanding your sleep schedule and listening to your mind and your body and your physiology and everything are really the best way to find out how you will sleep the best.

Different people have different patterns,

What's yours?

So finding that about yourself and finding which is the best pattern for you can really really help you.

I know for me,

Going to bed sort of when other people go to bed isn't the best for me.

I will feel very very tired the next day.

Even if I've got a good 8 or 9 hours of sleep,

If it's at the wrong time I will feel out of it the next day.

So it really is important to find actually when is it for you that feels right and there's an important distinction to make between when feels right for you to sleep and when you want to sleep.

So for me I might want to sleep at 1 or 2am but if I do sleep then my body is already tired,

My brain,

Everything is already very tired and I can tell that by the time it hits about midnight,

Half midnight.

So when my body wants to sleep is different to when I want to sleep.

So it's important to listen as it were to the body,

See what that's doing,

See if it's maybe flagging a bit,

Maybe if it's feeling a little bit heavier and you're starting to want to go to sleep.

That'll be when you want to sleep and when you wake up see if you want to go back to sleep or if there's something somewhere inside you saying actually no I want to get up now or something like that.

So as I say generally it is just important to be able to find when is natural for you to sleep and try and stick with that if you can.

Obviously don't force it,

I might advise if you are forcing it maybe that's not quite when is natural to sleep for you or if you feel like you're forcing it that is.

But in any case see if you can find that best time,

That optimum time for you and then try and sleep with that.

So our final tip today,

Tip number 6,

Again a little bit like the last one,

It's a little bit unconventional perhaps and this is make yourself mentally comfortable.

Make yourself mentally comfortable.

So what does that mean?

Essentially it means do whatever you need to do before you go to sleep,

However crazy,

However weird you think it might be,

Doesn't matter,

Whatever it is that can help you feel that sense of mental security,

That peace of mind,

That's the kind of buzz phrase,

Peace of mind,

Whatever it is.

So you might want to hang charms about the room,

Put crystals places or it might be something more simple,

It might be wanting to make sure everything is back in its place,

Everything is tidied up correctly,

You know maybe everything is sort of washed up,

Something like that.

It might be making sure the door is set right,

Maybe you want it slightly ajar,

Maybe you want it closed,

Maybe you want it completely open,

Whatever it is just doing that little process,

That little procedure to make sure everything is just how you want it as you go to bed and then you can drift off comfortably without having to worry unnecessarily about things that you can do something about essentially.

So as I say it doesn't matter if it feels weird or if it feels silly or anything,

The idea of this tip is to do whatever you need to do to make sure you can sleep soundly with that peace of mind.

That is the focus of this stage.

And with that,

Thank you very much for listening,

I hope this has been useful,

I hope these tips are useful to you,

I hope they provide you something new that you perhaps didn't think of before and I hope that they can ultimately get you a better night's sleep because that's what this is all about.

So thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time.

Bye bye.