Are you sleeping well?
We all know how important is to get a good night’s sleep. Waking up refreshed and full of energy, in a good mood, ready to tackle absolutely everything. It’s a great feeling, right?
When we do manage to wake up rested and regenerated it also shows, we can definitely see that we look better, they call it beauty sleep for a reason. From time to time though, no matter what we do, it seems that getting a good night’s sleep becomes a challenging task rather than something we can achieve naturally.
SO, WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
As we have experienced the issue first-hand, we have done a bit of research and there is a vast amount of material available on the web. Many articles and books as well as help offered on NHS website and various mental health organisations.
Given that sleep influences so many aspects of our life and our health, we think is important to get to the bottom of the matter and – if we can’t by ourselves – be ready to reach out to someone who can help.
Here are a few things that we’ve been practising, we hope they can be useful for you too.
1. Set realistic goals. Sometimes, we may think that we need a certain number of hours to feel rested and we become anxious if we think that we haven’t hit our target and slept enough. So, first tip is to remove expectations. Instead, keep track of you wake/sleep patterns and briefly record how you feel when you wake up every morning. By doing this for at least a month, you can see when you felt best, check how many hours you had that particular night and try to make that amount of sleep time a regular occurrence.
2. Be consistent. Having consistent sleeping patterns is really key, and if you monitor your habits, you’ll be able to see if the problem lies in a lack of regularity and start adjusting things from there.
3. Adopt an evening wind down/ bedtime routine. Every time I hear bedtime routine it brings back memories of my first child who took an incredibly long time to learn to sleep through the night. All the books we read, the people we spoke to, all the things we tried... while carrying on in a zombie state for months. While, it was a major struggle, it did eventually work and we are big fans bedtime routines, which are as useful for adults as they are for children. The act of preparing for sleep can seriously make a difference in the amount and quality of sleep you eventually get. Winding down a couple of hours before your bedtime with a good book, a relaxing aromatherapy candle and an herbal tea is a good start. Listening to soothing music or sounds can help too, even better if you do it in the bath. Try to create a softer atmosphere and dim the lights, use blackout curtains or blinds in your bedroom to fall asleep faster and enjoy better sleep quality. Another thing you can do is to spritz an aromatherapy mist with relaxing essential oils in your bedroom just before bedtime, the relax mist in our range contains bergamot, lavender and chamomile, 3 of the most calming essential oils you can find. It will help you relax as you lie down and you'll get to sleep faster.
4. Avoid the usual suspects. Light and especially blue light (switch your devices to night mode, if you can’t put them down completely) are probably on top of our list, but there are other things that can also be detrimental such as excessive alcohol consumption and of course caffeine. Try to switch to chamomile, peppermint or valerian root tea.
5. Listen to your body, the answer lies within. We can read and try all sort of things, but if routines and tips do not resonate with us it is unlikely that we’ll successfully stick to them. If we stop and listen to ourselves, we usually know where to direct our efforts to improve our sleep and our life in general. So, our last tip is about being forgiving and being compassionate toward ourselves, discover our needs by listening to our body and building our very own routine by picking and choosing the steps that we feel we’ll enjoy taking and creating our own ritual.
We would love to know what you think, drop us a line at hello@schoneorganics.com
