The Insight-ful Blog
Suggestions and stories to help loved ones and caregivers.
How to Get Better Sleep
To be honest, I’ve been dancing with insomnia for almost a year now. I was never much of a dancer unless I waltzed with my dad. Now, he knew how to lead a girl around the dancefloor. This insomnia, though, doesn’t really care if I want to dance or not. It jerks me back from sleep’s edge to the middle of wide awake. Figuring out how to get better sleep keeps eluding me.
I hav never liked taking pills for a headache and I feel the same with trying to get to sleep. *I am not a doctor so if you, too, are dancing with insomnia, I encourage you to seek medical advice to find out what is right for you.* I turned to herbs and teas, and then I tried one thing that I never would have guessed would help me sleep better at night.
REST
How often do you take the time during your day to rest? I’m not talking about sleep. I mean, how often during your day at work, whether at home or at the office or on the road, do you take a break?
The practice of taking a break during our workday is typically frowned upon. Our culture is one of go, go, go. We worry about not getting it all done. We don’t want to waste time. Many of us have internalized this to the extent we feel guilty when we take even a few hours off. I know I was one of those. Even when it was the weekend, I would not to stop because my house to-do list would keep growing.
What if I told you taking anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes during your workday would actually help you get better sleep at night?
Rest is a shifting of attention with the intention of softening the activity of our brain.
Rest is different than sleep. A complex biological process of regeneration when we sleep helps us heal physically and creates mental clarity. As for rest, by stepping away from the computer screen or whatever has our brain tied up for a bit, we relax our mind. When we relax our mind, we lower our stress.
One of the ways I take a short break during the day is meditation. Sometimes all I need is to shut my eyes for 10 minutes, focus on my breath, and I’m refreshed for the next few hours. Our breath is the best way to down regulate our nervous system. Breathing with your eyes closed removes visual stimulus. Counting gives your brain something easy to focus on as nourishing air circulates through it.
If you aren’t always up for a meditation, here are some other ways to take a rest break.
DAYDREAMING
Remember daydreaming as a kid? Daydreaming is another activity that has gotten a bad rap over the years. Daydreaming is playtime for our brain. During this playtime, stress and anxiety levels drop. Taking a rest by daydreaming also expands your creativity. It is now considered “a natural, health resting state of the brain.”
Here are three steps to daydreaming:
- Give yourself permission
- Make a list of topics you’d like to ponder
- Pick a good time and a comfortable place
Then let your gaze drift and your mind shift!
TAKE A WALK
Movement breaks, like taking a walking, increases blood flow. When your limbs and brain are nourished with better blood flow, your mood improves. Our brain is engaged in a might lighter form of thought. Moving is definitely good for creativity and you’ll get some exercise, too.
GET A DRINK OF WATER
Drinking water throughout the day keeps our organs and blood flow nourished. Dehydration leads to sleepiness, confusion, and frustration. When it comes to sleep, the right amount of hydration is important. Too much can lead to interruptions in sleep. You’ll have conduct your own self-study and find out the right amount of water and when to drink for your body.
My dances with insomnia are shorter now. I’m not completely through this period but it gets better as time goes on. I think we have to continue to do our own inner work. That’s a different dance partner entirely and a topic for another day.
May you sleep well and be well.
With appreciation,
Robin
What is destressifying?
SODA or POP?
If you’re from the Midwest like me, your eyes probably went straight to the word POP. But this blog isn’t about fizzy, sugary drinks. This is about two techniques for destressifying. (Please note the “d” in destressifying and in davidji are always lower case.)
destressifying is a term coined by davidji, an internationally recognized stress-management expert, meditation master, and creator of Masters of Wisdom Meditation Teacher Training program. In his book, destressifying – The Real-World Guide to Personal Empowerment, Lasting Fulfillment, and Peace of Mind, he defines destressifying as “our ability to easily adapt to stressful situations and to adversity without experiencing the physical and emotional negative repercussions of stress.” If we can allow ourselves to deal with daily stresses as challenges to grow from rather than threats, we can more easily manage major crises.
Short term experiences of stress can be a good thing. The term, eustress, refers to good stress where hormones flood our system for a short duration to achieve a goal. It’s what we feel when we’re working on a project and we’re “in the zone.” Those hormones grow a part of our brain called the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning, memory, and special orientation. It’s when those hormones constantly flood our brain that good stress turns to bad stress.
Chronic stress forces the body to keep the hormones flowing, especially cortisol. When we are repeatedly faced with difficult situations, such as the loss of a job, bills to pay, kids to care for, a traumatic event, our nervous system can’t pause long enough to relax our body. Our body stays in a fight or flight mode revving up our fears which interrupts our clarity. Continuing high levels of cortisol hinder can create anxiety and depression, headaches, memory problems, and trouble sleeping. We tend to be more impulsive, reacting instead of responding. Reacting can lead to regrets. We need to be able to calm the nervous system to determine an appropriate response to a given situation. This is where the destressifying techniques come in.
First, I’ll talk about Reaching for SODA, davidji’s technique. Reaching for SODA is a way to interrupt an automatic reaction to something that irritates you. What is the first thing you feel when something irritates you or angers you? Is it heat in your chest? A clenching of your jaw? The moment you notice this physical reaction means it is time to Reach for SODA.
Stop
Observe
Detach
Awaken
Stop what you are doing.
Observe your surroundings. See if you can look at the physical environment, whom you’re with, where you are, from above.
Detach from the drama of the moment. Take a deep breath and move back a few inches. As you exhale release the tension.
Awaken to the calmer version of you. Ask yourself, What would the best version of me say or do in this situation?
Reaching for SODA helps you deactivate your automatic reactions to stress. Your emotional intelligence grows and your physical body destressifies.
POP is an adaptation that I have created. I have no research to back up my technique other than I’ve presented it to some fellow mediators and received positive responses. The premise is the same, to interrupt our automatic reactions to stressful situations and give our body time to calm so we can have more clarity.
Pause
Observe
Presence
Pause before your say or do something that is not the true you. Just like Stop in Reaching for SODA, you are interrupting the momentum of the scene.
Observe where you are and whom you are with. Take a forty-thousand-foot view to temporarily distance yourself from the situation.
Presence involves coming back to the situation with more awareness to be the best version of you. From this stance, you can choose the appropriate response. Sometimes that means not responding at all.
With appreciation,
Robin