Sleep Hygiene: Boost Your Quality Of Rest

Welcome to the sleep hygiene course! I’m excited to be your guide on this journey towards better rest at night and more energy in the morning. In this first lesson, we’re going to discuss some tips and tricks for making good habits stick, especially as they relate to sleep. By being intentional about the habits we want to add and the ones we want to avoid, we are laying the foundation to add practices which will aid in our quest towards good rest. We’ll cover habit stacking, the ways we can make habits easy to stick with, and how to see the benefits of your habits accumulate over time. In the next lesson, we’ll begin looking at some specific habits which can help the nervous system wind down before bed.

Welcome back! In this lesson you can expect to learn a variety of end-of-day rituals to help you wind down for a good night’s sleep. Making rituals and practicing them regularly can improve your quality of rest and help you to get to bed easier each night. The hygiene habits we talk about in this lesson when combined with the habit stacking from the previous lesson make for a wonderful recipe. You can always come back to this lesson to add a new habit to your routine one at a time, that way you aren’t overwhelmed trying to build a dozen habits all at once. In the next lesson, we’ll follow up with more tips and practices which can be practiced in the morning to build energy first thing.

Welcome back! Following up from the previous lesson, today we will discuss rituals that can be used to energize your mind and body in the morning. Every body and mind is beautifully unique, and this practices can be modified to fit your personal ability. The three different practices we will cover will help to awaken energy in your physical body, your mind, and your spirit. These three aspects will be fundamental in the future lessons when we discuss how to bring them to rest. In the next 3 lessons, we’ll dive deeper into relaxation practices which will help remove the three tensions that are accumulated during the day.

Hello and I’m glad to see you returning to this commitment to self-care. In this lesson we will be discussing the first of the three tensions that are accumulated during the day: physical tension. Often times, the activities we expect to relax us such as watching videos on our phones, or even taking naps can leave us just as tired or aching as when we began. This lesson teaches practices which methodically relax the physical body and prepare it for mindful rest which will leave you feeling rejuvenated. The practice we will learn today is called progressive muscle relaxation. In the next lesson we will discuss the next tension to be resolved: emotional tension.

Hello again! By now you’ve learned lifestyle habits that can prepare you for better sleep, and a practice to eliminate the physical tensions from your day. Now we are going to turn inward and begin to resolve emotional tension that has come into our energetic body. The purpose of relieving emotional tension is to let the mind be open towards sleep when it is needed instead of running through the thoughts which keep us up at night. If you’ve been following the habit stacking process, you can add this ritual to the end of your practice of progressive muscle relaxation. Some parts of this lesson will ask you to jot down your thoughts. If you recall from lesson 1 the light we use after sunset should be intentionally avoiding blue light such as that from your phone, so using paper and pen with a soft lamp is highly recommended. Having a sleep notebook will come in handy in a future lesson as well. In the next lesson we will relieve the last of the three tensions: spiritual tension.

Congratulations on making it this far, you’re almost to the end! To relieve this last tension I will introduce you to a practice called yoga nidra. Spiritual tension is the stress that accumulates closer to the soul than the physical body. We will start by taking a look at the thoughts and actions that make up our personality and our desires. With this practice you can start to shift your life in whichever direction that you can put your mind to, but first you must have a direction. Yoga nidra can be practiced in combination with the previous two practices, or as a total practice to relieve all three tensions. Anybody can benefit from the practice of yoga nidra. It can help to reduce stress and anxiety, manage pain and headaches, relieve you from struggles with insomnia, and set your personality towards transformation in the direction of your intention. In the next and final lesson you will learn further about tracking your sleep to help make a long-term habit of caring for your sleep hygiene.

Welcome back. Take a moment to appreciate the changes you’ve made in your journey so far! I’m glad to have made it this far with you. In this lesson we will review some of the habit-forming practices that we discussed in lesson 1 and elaborate on how to make them stick more effectively. The purpose of this lesson is to develop a system of tracking your sleep quality so that you can see for yourself the benefits of your efforts. A sleep journal takes commitment to stay regular, and the insights gained from it can help you to notice patterns in your sleep, your emotional life, as well as your growth towards the person you want to become. The prompts that are provided are by no means fixed, and as you learn your sleep habits, you will find edits that work for you and your unique circadian rhythm. With this lesson completed, I’d like to congratulate you on the efforts you’ve taken to improve not only your sleep hygiene but also the direction your new-found energy is taking you in life. Thank you for taking this course!