You may have heard of mindfulness, but do you know much about how it can help you sleep and what benefits the practice can bring?
In this blog, Dr Lindsay Browning explore what mindful meditation is and why it can help you to sleep better at night.
Mindfulness versus Mindful Meditation
Mindfulness is the practice of being “in the moment” where you pay attention to your environment and use your senses.
For example, you can practice mindfulness by putting down your phone and going for a walk. In addition, whilst walking, you really focus on where you are, looking around at the trees and birds.
Mindful meditation is where you might sit or lie down and use a mindfulness technique to focus your mind on a particular stimulus or thought to help you become calmer. It often involves focusing on the present and welcoming thoughts and emotions that come into your mind with an open-mind and without judgement.
The benefits of mindful meditation
When you use mindful meditation, it helps you to see worries and anxieties as separate thoughts in your mind that can come and go, rather than reacting to them, emotionally.
Mindful meditation, sleep and relaxation
Mindful meditation can help you become more relaxed – and we are more likely to be able to sleep when we are relaxed. In addition, meditation helps to slow the heart rate and breathing, which also aids relaxation and sleep.
In contrast, when we are stressed or feeling anxious, falling asleep is much harder.
Anxiety is a physical state where we have an increased heart rate, we breathe faster and have increased levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Anxiety is our body’s response to a threat (triggering our fight or flight mechanism) which enables us to better fight or run away from a problem…but it’s not much good for getting to sleep.
When we use mindful meditation practice, it helps to separate our anxious thoughts from our emotional reaction to them. We can practice recognising a worrying thought in our mind (such as, “ I am worried that I might catch covid”), but not allow ourselves to become anxious as a result of the worry, by reminding ourselves that that is just a thought and we don’t have to react to the thought. Let it ‘come and go’.
By practising mindful meditation before bed, you may also find you physically become more relaxed, as well as being more mentally relaxed too. Relaxation in all forms is good for sleep.
Techniques and support
There are many techniques and recommendations I can suggest to help you sleep – from relaxation practices to bedtime routines.
If you are worrying about your sleep and lack of sleep is making your feel more anxious, don’t let this spiral. Book a consultation call today and let me see how I can help you.