How Can I Get More Sleep Without Taking Medication?

Be Healthy

I recently got this question:

Hi my name is Yvonne and my question is about sleep. I take various pain medications and sometimes other medications so sleep at night can throw me off big time. Sometimes I have a hard time going to sleep. Other times I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t get back to sleep. And I’m curious what can I do without taking more medicine on top of what I’m already taken. I have heard meditation help maybe stretching or yoga but I don’t want to exercise before bed and wake up rather than go to sleep.

You can meditate

Meditation is a tool it’s a mind calming activity when patients are not able to fall asleep. It oftentimes is because they cannot turn those thoughts off.

They are thinking what didn’t I do today, what do I need to do tomorrow what is gonna happen tomorrow.

In meditation we learn to you have stillness in our body and when the body is still and the mind is still how do we cleanse inside how do we cleanse the clutter of thinking. The only tool that we have to do that is meditation.

Have a nightly routine

There’s a chance of more success if we if we incorporate meditation into the nightly routine.

The first thing would be to identify a place in your home where you feel safe where it is cozy, where it is comfortable.

Keep your spine straight close your eyes so that you can start your internal journey slowly.

Inhale and slowly exhale and just noticing what that feels like we’re not trained to be still and not do anything. So it’s gonna feel unnatural at first but that does not mean that you’re not doing it right.

Set your timer for three minutes and then just do that a few you know a few days until you feel comfortable that you can actually stay still for that long.

Once you have reached then you can go to five minutes and then you can go to eleven minutes and really by the time that you’re able to be still for eleven minutes you will have noticed by that time you will have experienced a different calm.