My guided meditation for sleep helps to calm the mind and creates excellent conditions for sleep. I have recorded a guided meditation for sleep, which is available for purchase for $10. It is 12 minutes long. You can find samples here.
Calming your system and lowering your heart rate decreases stress hormones and allows you to get to sleep faster (and stay asleep).
However, the advantages of sleep meditation are so much more than just going to sleep quicker. Here are some key benefits:
Reduced Anxiety and Stress
It can help reduce anxiety and stress.
Eventually suppresses the secretion of stress hormone (cortisol) into your bloodstream, again beneficial in settling your body and enabling it to enter sleep mode faster. Hence, there is a decrease in hormone stress levels and your sleep is much improved.
Improved Sleep Quality
Using sleep meditation will cool down your brain from an anxious state to a place of peace.
This means that it increases your deep sleep — the sleep stage that restores both body and mind and gets you ready for the new day.
Personally, my sleep becomes negatively affected when I am in a chronic pain flare, and that leads to a never-ending compromise between the lack of rest and physical pain.
Meditation tricks your mind into believing you are in less pain – which then helps you have better sleep at night and more of it.
Creating the Perfect Sleep Environment
While guided meditations are fabulous, combining them with better sleep hygiene will put your sleep quality over the top.
It is better to make a small change – to in some way change your sleep habitat. Here are my tips:
Maintain a Cool, Dark, and Quiet Room
Cool: The ideal temperature for sleep is between 60 and 67 F (15 and 19 C). Your body begins to cool down before bed (as in the natural process of falling asleep).
During the hotter months, you should have fans or a/c or something to lower room temperature, and in the wintertime, you can adjust the quantities of blankets you want to sleep with.
Dark: When you are in the dark, your body thinks that it’s time to relax. Eliminate all light from outdoor street lights or the bright early morning sun that will come through the window with a blackout curtain.
If blackout curtains are not an option, consider buying a sleep mask. Any light produced by electronic devices perturbs your sleep. Therefore, the best you can do is to make your room as dark as possible.
Quiet: Sleep and silence are synonymous. Earplugs work if you live in a semi-loud area.
The number 1 one thing I find people can do to improve their sleep, and the easiest, fastest way to accomplish it, is to get your sleep into a rhythm.
Be consistent. It is also very important that you keep a regular sleep-wake schedule.
It is what effectively regulates your circadian rhythm (your internal clock) and thereby determines when you are most alert and mentally competent throughout your day.
It is important in the regulation of circadian rhythms and controls the sleep-wake cycle, and hormone production.
Establish a Routine: I cannot tell you how much this helped me. As much as it has gotten tiring and monotonous, following a routine has actually made the biggest impact on my circadian rhythm by forcing me to sleep and wake up at the same time every day (even on weekends).
You need to slowly start shifting your bedtime earlier and the time you wake up – about 15 minutes each until you get to your perfect bedtime/wake time.
Pre-Sleep Routine: Establish a bedtime routine like a hot bath or a mini-meditation session. Avoid mental work for at least one hour before going to bed.
Limit Screen Time
Exposure to blue light has been shown to trick a nerve pathway from the eye to parts of the brain that regulate melatonin production.
These are my tips on how to reduce screen usage in the night:
Set a Screen Curfew: Turn off all screens one hour before bedtime. Promise yourself not to spend this time on other digital, non-relaxing activities.
Night Mode: Night mode is inbuilt in many of the devices which reduces the emission of blue light from the screens. If you have to use your devices after 20.00PM, please enable this feature.
I’m Bulgarea Candin Stefan and I have started Spiritual Whirlwinds to pass my learnings from my spiritual journey. Spiritualwhirlwinds.com provides a space of spiritual awakening with guided meditations, e-books, mantras, and pendulum readings.
