Your Guide to New, Healthy Sleep Habits 

Welcome to our Better Sleep guide! We'll be sharing hints, tips and tools to help you maximize the quantity of sleep you get and to help you improve your sleep quality.

Better nights = happier days!

It might be obvious that sleep is an issue for you—perhaps it takes what feels like forever to get to sleep, or you wake up regularly in the night. But sleep issues can also manifest in more subtle ways. Perhaps you’re feeling a bit more sluggish than usual or need that extra cup of coffee to kickstart your day. Or maybe you feel more stressed and are struggling with challenging or unwanted emotions like anger or sadness.

If any of this sounds familiar, then kudos to you for recognizing that you could use a little help with your sleep—after all, the first step in shifting habits (and outcomes) is to acknowledge the issue! We’re happy that you’re joining us on this journey towards better sleep.

You are not alone

It’s easy to think when you’re lying awake in bed that everyone else is blissfully asleep. Or that there’s something ‘wrong’ with you. But there’s really not! 60-70% of adults worldwide struggle with sleep. By joining Insight Timer you have become part of a global community all making their way towards better nights for happier days.

Each month sleep content is played over 10 million times on Insight Timer. So remember, you’re in good company.

So what is ‘good sleep’?

It’s important to acknowledge that sleep quality and sleep quantity are not the same. You can have 7-9 hours in bed, but still wake up feeling exhausted because you’re tossing and turning all night or experiencing disturbed and interrupted sleep patterns.

Tracks to get you to sleep tonight

Sleep better to feel better

Poor quality or inadequate quantity of sleep can affect how we feel and function during the day. By making a few small changes in the short-term, you can improve your sleep health in the long-term, and reap the rewards of better health, mood, skin, sex, memory, weight control….the list goes on!

But first: let’s get serious about sleep

In an increasingly fast-paced world, functioning on less sleep is often seen as a badge of honor. If we’re used to getting too little sleep, over time we ‘cognitively’ adapt, which means that although we may not feel particularly sleepy (‘I had four hours sleep last night but I feel totally fiiiiinnnnne’) our body and mind will start to show signs of real decline.

What experts say

Research shows that getting fewer than seven or eight hours on a regular basis seems to increase the risk of developing a number of medical conditions.

We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but here’s the honest truth: a continual lack of sleep can seriously wreak havoc with our health. It can increase our appetitie (and weight), kill our sex drive, age our skin, impair our coordination and balance and increase our risk of developing mental health disorders like anxiety and depression. Longer term, not getting enough quality sleep is linked to conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and cancer.

So what does healthy sleep look like?

Quality sleep is just as essential for our survival as oxygen, which is why we spend 1/3 of our lifetime sleeping. Healthy sleepers go through 4-6 sleep cycles, which last between 90-110 minutes. One full sleep cycle consists of non-rapid eye movement and rapid eye movement sleep in four stages.

• Non-REM stage 1 is when we doze off, the transition from being awake to falling asleep. The brain starts unwinding, bodily functions such as heart and breathing rate slow down, muscles begin to relax. While the consciousness starts withdrawing from the surroundings, it is easy to wake somebody up. This first stage should only last a few minutes (unfortunately, this is what many people struggle with.)
  
• During Non-REM stage 2 the heart and breathing rate, muscle and eye movements slow down even further, the body temperature drops, and we enter a deeper sleep. Brain activity occurs at a lower frequency. Stage 2 sleep lengthens with each cycle and healthy sleepers spend about half of their total sleeping time in this stage.
  
  
• Non-REM stage 3 is the deepest and most regenerative sleep. As we move through the sleep cycle, this stage gets shorter and we spend more time in the next stage, REM sleep.
  
  
• Healthy sleepers enter the REM stage 90-110 minutes after falling asleep. It reoccurs about every 90 minutes after. During REM sleep, brain activity, breathing and heart rate picks up again. Eyelids flutter and muscles get temporarily paralyzed, so we can’t act out our dreams.

Each sleep stage is responsible for different brain activity for physical and mental restoration and development. Going through all sleep stages in a healthy cycle at night directly impacts brain and immune functioning as well as bone and muscle health. Sleep disorders interrupt the healthy progression through this cycle causing various negative effects for physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. By adopting so-called sleep hygiene habits, you can do your part in becoming a healthy sleeper.

I can just catch up! Right…?

Afraid not. It may seem like sacrificing a little sleep here and there to study, or work a bit longer is ok (or maybe you’re just having too much fun), but sleep debt is cumulative and adds up over time. In fact, after chronic sleep deprivation, it can take a person six months to a year to reset their sleep patterns.

Ok, you got me. So what can I do?

The good news (finally) is that there are changes that you can make TODAY to change your habits, change your sleep and change your life! Here are a few super simple and effective things you can try now:

• Be consistent with your morning alarm and set it for the same time every day. Meanwhile, set a realistic bedtime that can slowly be brought forward by 10-15 mins every other day until you’ve reached your optimal amount of sleep.

• Try keeping a sleep diary that helps you keep track of your sleep patterns and identify habits affecting your sleep. You can use this Insight Timer Sleep Diary.

Remember, when changing habits, consistency is key.

Sleep music people love

Your body's stress response

When you are stressed, your body's nervous system sends out what is termed a ‘sympathetic’ response, where your whole physiology gears up to improve your chances of survival in an emergency. Your HPA axis, composed of the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands, trigger stress hormones to  flood your body and affect everything from heart rate to muscle tone. Prolonged or chronic stress keeps stimulating this response which can lead to the dysregulation of your HPA axis. In other words, it keeps your stress hormone levels constantly high.

Stress and sleep

This response was handy back in caveman days when we had to run for our lives from the saber tooth tiger (and it still is a handy response to time-limited, physical threats). But in modern life, our stress tends to hang about throughout the day and seep into our evenings, keeping stress responses active and alert—and usually when they don’t need to be.

We get to sleep when the HPA axis activity is at its lowest, when we let our bodies rest and feel safe. Feeling stressed at night affects how and when you get to sleep as it can take up to 90 minutes for your HPA axis to restore balance. So give yourself enough time to unwind.

Inhale. Exhale. Unwind.

Help your body into a state of relaxation and choose from thousands of free guided practices on Insight Timer, which will help to calm body and mind in preparation for sleep. Here are a few suggestions:.

Yoga nidra is a popular and restorative type of meditation practiced lying down that induces brainwave patterns associated with ‘rest and digest’ nourishment. Attention is focused on the breath and guided through the body, activating a state of effortless non-doing. It is one of the most popular sleep practices on Insight Timer.

Mindfulness meditation can help you to arrive in the present moment and let go of stressful thoughts (either about the past or about the future). This lowers the levels of perceived stress and, in turn, lowers the activity of the body’s stress response.

Body relaxation: Practices such as a body scan, where you are guided through focusing on different parts of your body, can help you drift off to sleep by shifting your focus from mind to body.

Guided visualizations for sleep take the listener on a meditative journey to a relaxing place. Often nature sounds and soft music accompany the guidance. The listener does not need to focus on a specific technique, but simply follow the guidance into a dream-like state, eventually drifting off into sleep.

Breathing practices: Deep and slow breathing triggers the relaxation response and helps to calm down the body.

Sleep music: Simply listening to some soothing music can help to put you in a more relaxed frame of mind. Sleep music can calm the autonomic nervous system, drown out noises that keep you up at night, and distract from anxious or worried thoughts.

Turn off, tune in, sleep tight

If you tune into your body, you’ll recognize that at some point in the evening it’s telling you that it’s time to go to bed. But many of us will just ignore these cues and carry on watching TV, playing video games, working away on our computers or trying to get a million-and-one things checked off our to-do lists.

These late-night activities can mess up our circadian rhythms, the 24-hour cycles that run as part of our internal body clocks. When properly aligned, our circadian rhythm can promote consistent and restorative sleep. But when we ignore these internal cues, our sleep will pay the price. Here are a few things you can do to make sure your internal rhythms are primed for a blissful night’s sleep...

Stretch out at night with yin yoga

New sleep habits start here

Start your bedtime routine at the same time every night (you might want to set an alarm for it). Give yourself 30-60 minutes to unwind and choose one of the above elements that appeals to you (and be realistic, your routine shouldn’t feel like a chore or be too elaborate!)

If you are seeking help to relax in the evening or fall asleep, mindfully open your phone, ensure ‘Night Shift’ and ‘Do not Disturb’ modes are enabled and pick a sleep track or join a yin yoga class on Insight Timer. Easy!

Try one of these popular tracks to unwind for your evening routine

Once you’ve got your simple pre-bed routine, the challenge is to stick to it! When it comes to developing new habits, consistency is key. By doing the same thing every day, your wind down routine will soon become second nature and you’ll soon find that you’re reaping the benefits of better sleep, and more energized days.

The more you are able to be consistent now, the more likely you are to develop healthy habits that will stay with you for life.

What is sleep reactivity?

If you find it difficult to fall and stay asleep, you may be struggling with a high level of ‘sleep reactivity’. Sleep reactivity is the degree to which your daytime stress disrupts your sleep—highly reactive people can experience major sleep disturbances when stressed, while those with lower sleep reactivity can sleep through the night without any problem.

Choosing our response to stress

When you're deprived of sleep, your sympathetic nervous system activity increases, which makes you more prone to stress during the day. Not only does that impact your wellbeing in daily life, but it also causes a tricky cycle: the more stressed you are during the day, the more the quality of your sleep suffers and the less time you’ll spend in deep, restorative sleep.

How you handle day-to-day stress is one factor influencing the level of sleep reactivity that is in your control.

Your stress response is constantly triggered by daily hassles—from sitting in traffic to having too many things to do, misplacing or losing things to worries about your physical appearance. Long-term, these ongoing niggles can seriously affect our health and mood, without us ever really realizing it.

Life—in all its weird and wonderful (and sometimes challenging) randomness—happens. Try as we might, there are many things that are simply out of our control. So we have to make the commitment to choose how we respond to life, both the big events that swing out of leftfield and the smaller, daily hassles that we have to contend with every day.

Get connected, feel supported

While changing behaviors, forming habits and overhauling specific areas of your life such as your sleep, it can feel helpful to know that you have a community behind you cheering you on.

Changing habits: Beyond self-care

We’ve probably all heard of self-care and the importance of making time to look after ourselves. But we need another form of compassion alongside self-care—one which enables us to support one another via collective caring.

Your journey towards better sleep may involve some lifestyle changes and incorporating meditation into your day and evening. It can be easy to get trapped in old patterns, lose motivation or feel like you’re the only one having difficulties. That’s where teachers and fellow meditators come in!

The role of our teachers

For many, a lack of guidance or feelings of uncertainty can be what stands in the way of making new healthy sleep habits. And often what is needed is simply a good teacher. A teacher offers guidance as how to apply certain practices and how to deal with any obstacles along the way.

You can benefit from the enormous collective knowledge and wisdom shared by 10,000 teachers around the world here on Insight Timer. Find the ones that inspire you in your journey to better sleep and wellbeing, connect with them by joining their live events and get insights and questions to your answers directly from them.

The role of our community

Community care is about being there for each other, and showing each other compassion. Use Insight Timer as a place to connect with and learn from sleep experts and meditation teachers, as well as a place to team up with and feel encouraged by a global community. This also adds a new level of accountability to your commitment to improve your sleep habits. Research shows that people are more likely to stick to their commitments if they

1. tell somebody about it, and

2. share their weekly progress with that person.

Use Insight Timer Groups to check-in with friends, family members and other people on similar journeys to yours and share your sleep quality progress as well as your favourite sleep content with them.

Trending sleep tracks on Insight Timer

Daytime choices, nighttime benefits

When you’re busily engaged in your day, sleep might be the last thing on your mind. But as we’ve already seen, what we do in the day can have an enormous impact on how we sleep at night. Here are a few more things to consider.

Light up your life (but pick the right light!) 

Light is arguably the most important external factor affecting sleep. It plays a key role in regulating our body clocks, helping us to register when to be alert and when to rest. Research shows that increasing your exposure to natural light during the day (particularly in the morning) and reducing your exposure to artificial light (laptops, TVs, phones, room lights) during the evening will result in better sleep. And it’s a pretty simple fix!

Keep it moving

Moving your body during the day has been shown to increase your sleep drive in the evening.

In the evening: Slow, meditative movement such as Yin or restorative yoga can be a great way to unwind and stretch your body in preparation for sleep. Try these gentle classes for a perfect end to your day.

Make conscious choices

Maybe you like to kickstart your day with a coffee and wind down with a glass of wine. If you struggle with feeling drowsy in the morning and too alert at night, this ritual can feel appealing. But it can also create a vicious circle that interferes with our ability to get quality sleep.

Nap wisely

If you’re struggling with nighttime sleep and find yourself exhausted during the day, you may be tempted to take a cheeky afternoon nap. But for some people, sleep during the day can compromise your ability to fall or stay asleep at night. According to scientists, it’s all about timing: for most people, the ideal nap lasts up to 20 minutes, and the best time to take a nap is early or mid afternoon.

Not asleep yet? Learn to accept it

Ever spent hours tossing and turning in bed in the hope that if you just give it time you’ll fall asleep? Then this one’s for you. 

Sometimes we just have to accept the situation rather than fight against it. So as a general rule, if sleep isn’t coming to you, get out of bed. Yes, you read it right. Try to fall asleep for no more than 30 minutes. After that, although it might seem counterintuitive, it’s time to get back up and out of bed for a while.

Maybe you could read something (pick something boring!) or do some gentle, low-impact chores. Keep the lights low and the activity low-key. When you start to feel a bit sleepy again you can head back to bed.

If sleep isn’t coming easy for you, or you find yourself awake in the middle of the night, try one of these meditations:

Create the ultimate sleep haven

SH: An often overlooked but easy way to improve your sleep is to make some simple tweaks to your bedroom:

• Keep it dark and quiet: It might sound obvious, but aim to keep your room dark and quiet (and if that’s tricky, you can opt for an eye mask and earplugs!) You can also consider listening to ambient sleep music or white or pink noise. Ambient music has been shown to reduce stress by lowering cortisol levels while the steady sound of white or pink noise can mask any outside noise that keeps you up at night. 

• Keep it cozy: Help your brain to link your bedroom with sleep by creating a cozy and inviting space that is free from clutter, such as work, laundry, gym equipment and toys. If you can't move these into a different room, try to hide them when it's time for sleep.

• Keep it cool: You can also optimize your bedroom for slumber by keeping it cooler. The ideal sleep temperature for most people is 60-72 degrees Fahrenheit (16-22 degrees Celsius). Although sleep temperature is often a personal preference, anything above 72℉ / 22℃ may disrupt sleep.

• Keep it comfortable: Turn your bed into a sleep haven with a comfortable mattress, fresh pillows and soothing sheets.

Let's wrap this up: Top ten tips for sleep success

We’re so pleased you joined us on this journey towards better sleep. As we near the end of this guide, here’s a handy recap of everything we’ve covered so far.

1. It’s not just about clocking up the hours

If you’re looking to improve your sleep, you’ll need to consider both how to maximize the quantity (time spent asleep) and the quality (how restorative the sleep itself is). Both elements need attention!

2. Better sleep for better health

Sleep has a range of knock-on effects on our physical and mental health. By addressing your sleep issues today, you can improve your health, mood, skin, sex life, memory, weight control long into the future. What’s not to love? 

3. Consistency is key

Set your morning alarm for the same time every day alongside a realistic bedtime that can slowly be brought forward by 10-15 minutes until you’ve reached your optimal amount of sleep. Keep a sleep diary if that helps! 

4. Relax to the max! 

At the same time every evening, give yourself 30-60 minutes for your body and mind to unwind. You could consider writing a to-do list for the following day to stay on top of those night-time niggles, journal to help clear your mind or take a relaxing bath or shower. Some gentle, restorative yoga stretches can also be helpful.

5. Create a bedtime routine

Find a routine that works for you, and then stick to it! You can try body relaxation, breathing practices or sleep stories and songs. You can find more sleep resources here.

6. Take control of your days

Stress is a part of life, but it’s how we respond to it that counts. Consider building in some stress-relieving practices during your day and you’ll soon reap the rewards at night. You could try mindfulness meditation, mantras or gratitude and compassion practices.

7. Make conscious choices

There are a number of ways we can maximize our chances of a good night’s sleep. Getting plenty of natural light in the morning, and minimizing the amount of artificial blue light (such as phones and laptops) at night is essential for a restful night of sleep. Remember to get moving too! Exercise and sleep go hand in hand—opt for higher intensity exercise during the morning and gentle, system-calming movement at night such as Yin yoga. Remember that caffeine and alcohol can end up impacting both the quantity and quality of our sleep.  

8. Learn to let go

Sometimes, as hard as we try and as much as we feel we need it, sleep eludes us. If that happens, learn to be ok with it. Consider getting up and doing a gentle activity such as small chores or a simple guided meditation.

9. Create a sleep haven 

Turn your bedroom into a cozy, clean and inviting sleep environment by decluttering, turning down the lights and temperature—and investing in good bedding if you are able to. 

10. You are not alone! 

The decision to improve your sleep of course starts with YOU. But remember that with Insight Timer you’ve also got a community behind you cheering you on! You can connect with and learn from teachers and experts, and team up with and feel encouraged by a community of people on similar journeys to yours.