Has it been another night without sleep?
Are you sitting up in the middle of the night struggling to sleep?
Are you sitting here during the day barely able to keep your eyes open?
Are you screaming out, I Cant Sleep?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, than these tips will hopefully help give you some relief or at least provide the spark to additional ideas that may help you. At times, I suffer from not being able to sleep and I have a very close friend that struggles very hard with sleep at times.
So here are some tips that may help you get to sleep.
- Take stock of your life by looking at what goes in to your day. If you are spending all your time, working or stressing out, then your body is staying in a heightened state of alertness and no matter how many hours you lay in your bed, your body is not going to stop and sleep. So take a very hard look and inventory of your life. Be honest in your evaluation because the more honest you are, the better it will be in finding a solution.
- What are you doing in the hours before you go to bed? Are you eating a late supper or doing activities that keep your mind racing? How about stimulants like sugar and other substances that will speed up the body systems. Even some medications and over the counter products we take could have your body racing at full speed. Even taking too many stimulants during the daytime can have a harmful effect at night. Pay very close attention to all these things.
- When was the last time you just had one of those mental health days where you had fun, laughed, played and just enjoyed life? All too often, we think we are too busy to take a stress break when in reality we would accomplish so much more if we did take a stress break. Even getting a massage can do so much for helping you sleep.
- If you work in an office or spend much of your day working on your computer, getting some rays of sunshine is almost out of the question! Yet, our bodies need the sun not only to help produce vitamin D but help regulate our body clock. If we aren’t getting at least 30 minutes a day, we may be short circuiting our body clock and causing difficulties for us. If you live in an area where daylight and sunshine is hard to get, there are products that you can buy to create artificial sunlight indoors. Even taking your lunch outside at noon can help give you some much needed sunlight.
- Our mental health and the mind body connection are essential in helping us sleep. All too often, we carry so much baggage along with us in our bodies and the stress, day after day, builds up to the point where our body is nothing more than a frazzled set of nerves. It is like we are in a constant state of alert. If we don’t learn how to discharge these things and release this energy from our body, than it is like we are on alert being chased by a lion 24 hours a day. In that scenario, it would be difficult for anyone to sleep.
Of course, I know that some of these things may still not yield the results to help you sleep. I know when I cant sleep, it doesn’t seem like anything will help in those moments. However, let them be a springboard into further examination so that you will find the right solution that works for you.
For me, I spend more time in daily meditation, relaxation and using the sounds of my Ocean Waves CD to sleep too at night. When I wake up at night and I cant sleep, just hearing the ocean waves play on my iPod speakers is sometimes enough to help me drift off to sleep.
Whatever it is that works for you, just try to search for the thing that helps you the most. What works for one person, may not work for another because we all have different experiences in life. The key though, is to keep searching for the solution that works for you!
