Sleep hygiene is a variety of different practices and habits that train and maintain a regular sleep cycle. Hygiene is derived from a Greek word meaning “health.” Humans are biological organisms that depend on REGULARITY to function well. A host of processes in your body kick in automatically when you live on a routine. If you eat your meals at the same time every day, your body will know to begin to prepare to digest food at that time. If you eat meals at irregular times, your body will not know when to get ready for you to digest food.
Sleep is the same. Your body needs to know when to make you sleepy. Many things interfere with your body’s ability to know when to get sleepy. If you have lived through high stress or trauma, your body was retrained by your mind to stay alert at all times to survive danger. It may no longer know that it is safe to get sleepy. You then have to retrain it.
The beginning of falling asleep is relaxation. Relaxation requires safety. Relaxation can feel dangerous if you have learned to be hypervigilant. Cultivating a sense of safety while remaining alert can be the beginning of learning to feel safe enough to fall asleep. Different things help people feel safe.
In addition to feeling safe, it is necessary to both allow and encourage your nervous system to calm down. The following list of things helps this to happen. If you follow the same routine at the same time every evening, or nearly, you can rebuild your body’s ability to get quality sleep. Not all of these practices have to be followed at one time, but any and all of them help with the sleep process.
1. Avoid stimulation starting at least two hours before bedtime.
Stimulation includes all screens and media with the possible exception of dull reading material. Definitely avoid distressing media content, which increases cortisol and adrenaline, both of which are anti-sleep. Also, generally avoid stimulating substances and all difficult-to-digest food as well.
2. Increase calm and relaxation:
Things that increase calm:
- Rubbing the scalp and feet with sesame oil and/or wearing a hat and socks
- Taking a hot bath
- 10-60 minutes of slow deep breathing and/or counting 100 breaths
- Remembering things that make you feel safe and happy
- Communing with a higher power
- Blocking out light, heavy curtains, etc.
- Warm drinks, especially calming tea and/or warm milk
Calming herbs:
Passionflower, kava kava, ashwagandha, blue vervain, poppy seeds, hops, chamomile, valerian root, jatamamsi. Different herbs have different properties, so it is important to find the herbs that work well for you. Sometimes, a strong dose of one herb is more effective. For some people, a combined formula may be more effective.
There are also calming supplements that are not herbs. These include magnesium, L-tryptophan, GABA, theanine, and melatonin. Melatonin makes some people very depressed, and it is not what I personally would start with, but it works well for some people.
Plants can work very well, and unlike most synthetic drugs, they don’t poison you in the process of helping you relax.
Passionflower – “Passionflower is known to transfer Christ properties and vibration of Christ consciousness. This term is not associated with religious practice, it is often used to describe the type of download the plant or energy might be. In this case, it means the plant supports the repatterning of consciousness to attain wholeness again.”
Passionflower relaxes the muscles of the physical body, alleviates pain, helps the mind calm down and feel safe, and has been shown in research to ease withdrawal symptoms from opiates.