At The Center, we put a lot of attention on both waking and sleeping dreams. We explore how to dream bigger and how to engage those wild, nonsensical dreams that happen when you’re asleep. But you may fall into the category of a non-dreamer simply because sleep eludes you. That certainly makes it difficult to dream at night, much less to have the energy to dream big during the day.
Sleep is important for so many reasons:
- Your body heals and detoxifies when you sleep
- Your mind consolidates and retains memories while you sleep
- Your emotional self has the opportunity to come back to center after being frayed or swayed in one direction or another
- You quite literally recharge after having been in use all day (strange that we don’t think twice about allowing our phone to rest and recharge overnight, yet we can get into patterns withholding this same care from ourselves)
- You dream! And those dreams provide a world of symbols to mine for messages, questions, and maybe even some answers see our Get Centered YouTube vodcast on dreams or check out our blog here.
So often at The Center we hear folks say that as evening approaches, an anxiety emerges at even the thought that sleep might not come. We call this “layering” because when we do this we are placing one issue over another pre-existing issue – and it tends to best be dealt with head on by calling it what it is. Saying to yourself, “I might not sleep enough tonight. Yep, that’s right. I might have a hard time falling asleep. I might wake up after I fall asleep. It’s okay. It’s a temporary pattern. I know deep down my body knows what to do.”
But what about all the other practical things you can do to help sleep come? Whether you have young children who require a bedtime routine or you can remember having one yourself as a child, it’s funny to think that we should age out of this routine. Why do we do this for children? Because it works. We shouldn’t deprive ourselves of the same gift.
Try applying the tips below to your evening routine and see if, over time, your body slips into sleep more easily. Important awareness note: give this time. Your mind and body have been in a pattern that needs to be unwound so that it can be replaced with a new one. Want to press fast forward? Schedule a session with us to incorporate acupuncture and herbs to your routine.
Routine for a better night’s sleep:
- Stop all caffeine after 2pm (for some of you it might have to be 12pm or even 10am). A great replacement for afternoon caffeine is using an Emergency-C packet in your water.
- Eat dinner no later than 8pm to give your body some time to digest before lying down.
- Minimize or eliminate alcohol intake
- Lower the overhead lights or turn them off completely, replacing entirely with only lamplight and/or candlelight.
- Finish all screen time on devices before dinner, meaning do not return to your computer screen or read your book on a tablet (this takes some planning, but is well worth it).
- Take a warm bath and apply warm sesame or coconut oil to your skin lovingly afterward.
- If you are desiring background noise, choose calm sounds like classical music or another genre that is calm and quiet or try searching for bineural beats on YouTube or Spotify.
- Diffuse or apply some lavender oil or spray one of these (need hyperlink to items on a la carte page) incredible flower essences on your face & pillow
- Make sure your sleeping space is super dark (you may need to place a piece of masking tape over small lights attached to certain fixtures that you can’t move)
- Quiet is key, but sometimes quiet can mean you hear every little creak so consider a Dome sound machine which delivers consistent, quiet white noise to drown out the little noises that might be catching you on your way to slumber.
- Research supplements that might be safe for you to use like Magnesium, L-theanine, Ashwaganda, Holy Basil, Reishi mushroom, etc.
- Grab a Psyche-Soma remedy kit for sleep filled with items to help you transition into a peaceful slumber.
Here’s to a better night’s sleep and the big dreams that can come from a rested soul.
