How To Improve Your Sleeping Habits and Enjoy More Quality Sleep!

 The sleep process and its benefits deserve a complete book. Sleep is one of the most important processes of the body that offers numerous advantages. Getting quality sleep is a habit you shouldn’t handle with levity. In this section, we will explore the benefits of getting restorative sleep and how you can improve your sleeping habit.

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Benefits of Restorative Sleeps

Below are some of the perks that come with good sleeping habits:

Peak Energy Levels

Many processes are taking place in your body when you’re sleeping. For example, many repair and maintenance works occur in the body during the sleep period. Your body needs you to be inactive so that it can carry out its tasks without interference. You need to give it enough time to perform these functions. If not, you’ll wake up feeling jaded and tired. However, when you sleep on time, you’ll feel like your “battery” has been fully recharged.

Consequently, you’ll have enough energy to carry out your activities during the day.

Enhanced Performance

Peak energy levels are the bedrock of fantastic performances. When you didn’t sleep well, you’ll feel tired and stressed, which can impede your preparation and eventual performance. It gets worse and obvious when you’re involved in mentally challenging activities such as writing and data analysis. You might struggle to come up with creative ideas, which can be frustrating. Whenever you have a crucial interview or presentation, ensure you’re well-rested to give yourself the platform to perform at your best.

Feeling of Contentment

Unknown to many, your sleep habit can affect your psychological health. One of the reasons some people feel disgruntled during the day and feel like life isn’t worth it is because they didn’t sleep well. When you start your day on the wrong note due to poor sleeping habits, you’ll find it hard to get into the groove during the day. You’ll not perform as expected, and you can start feeling frustrated about your life. It can affect your reactions to others, further compounding your woes.

Quality Interpersonal Relationships

Failure to sleep well can make you wake up in the wrong mood. Meanwhile, when you are disgruntled, you’re not likely to give good responses to your friends and family. Indeed, some people are emotionally intelligent enough to control their feelings and relate well. Yet, some people find it difficult to say the right things when they feel exhausted.

Remember that negative responses can cause fracas that cannot be mended between you and your loved ones. So, it is in your best interest to have a restorative sleep so that you can “wake up on the right side of your bed”. If you notice that you are arguing more with friends and families, you need to relax more and improve your sleeping habit.

Enhancement of Immune System

The body has its own “soldiers” that protect it against germ invaders. These fighters are part of a system of the body called the immune system. When this system is at its peak powers, it is going to be very difficult for any disease to attack your body. However, once it is weak, your body becomes susceptible to infections.

So, whatever boosts this system will help you to keep the doctor away. Thankfully, scientists have discovered that a good sleeping habit is an immune booster. This discovery was made by investigators of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In fact, the researcher claims that quality sleep makes vaccines more effective.

Quality Professional Relationships

Due to your calmness, emotional intelligence, and optimum performance at work, because you’re sleeping well, you will enhance your professional relationships. You’ll find it easier to get along well with both your employers and your colleagues when you’re well-rested.

Tips for Getting Better Sleep

You can improve the quality of your sleep by leveraging the following tips.

Have a Regular Bedtime and Wake-up Time

Your body has a way of adjusting to your habits to increase efficiency and save energy. If you don’t have a specific sleep and wake up-time, your body’s circadian rhythm will be disrupted, and this will affect you. This is one of the reasons you’ll notice that you slept but woke up feeling tired. Set specific times and let your body get into the groove. It might take a week or two, but once your body gets used to it, you’ll feel more energized after sleeping.

Avoid Using Bright Lights in your Room

When you’re exposed to the sunshine in the morning, your body soaks it up, and you’ll feel rejuvenated. The boost in energy enables you to complete tasks faster and more effectively. When the sun sets, you should avoid bright lights because your body will assume that it’s still daylight and want to stay alert and active. This exposure can prevent you from sleeping on time. So, it is in your best interest to ensure that your room is dark to lull your body to sleep on time.

Let your Bed only be for Sleeping

Many people have a practice of doing different activities when they are in bed at night, such as reading, watching TV, and pressing their phones. If you know that you’re not ready to sleep, don’t get into your bed. Your body might adjust to your refusal to sleep on the bed and start getting alert instead of sleeping. So, use other places for other activities at night. Once you jump on your bed, your body should know that it is time to sleep.

Avoid Napping during the Day

It’s natural that you feel tired and sleepy sometimes during the day. Nevertheless, you need to be careful with the way you do it so that you won’t set the wrong precedence for your body. Don’t take a nap unless you are sick because it will disrupt your sleep at night. If you must sleep, ensure that it’s up to fifteen to twenty minutes. Even if you have to do that, let it be in the late afternoon. Sleeping during the evenings will prevent you from sleeping on time at night.

Wind Down Late in the Day

Try as much as possible to avoid taking your stressors to bed with you. One of the easiest ways you can achieve this is by doing all your strenuous activities in the day. Wind down towards the end of the day to ease yourself to sleep. When you do strenuous tasks before you sleep, you’ll fall asleep out

of exhaustion, which isn’t beneficial to your body. Such sleep can make you wake up with a headache. Instead, do lighter tasks so that you can slow down until you eventually sleep to feel refreshed when you wake up.

Have a Bedtime Routine

Your body craves routines that it can follow consistently. You can take advantage of this fact to teach your body how to sleep on time. Have things you do when you are about to sleep. For example, you can take a warm bath before bedtime or listen to your favorite song or playlist. Once your body gets used to the routine, it’ll start preparing to sleep once you initiate the ritual. Ensure that it is consistent to get the best results.

How To Relax Fast and Reduce Stress?

 Why should you learn how to relax fast?

Because stress is more than just unpleasant. It's also dangerous.

Many diseases are now known to be caused by or made worse by stress, but you can do something about it.

Just try these relaxation techniques today, and use them whenever you feel that tension coming on.

 1. Have a hot shower. The hot water relaxes your muscles, and the break from more stressful activities helps too.

 2. Play relaxing music. Experiment to see which music relaxes you the most effectively. Then keep your favorite relaxation CD at the office, or wherever you'll need it most.

 3. Go somewhere else. This really helps if the things stressing you out are in the room or associated with it. Why not get out for a little while?

 4. Have a cup of chamomile tea. Chamomile seems to have a calming effect on the nerves, and hot drinks in general can help you relax.

 5. Watch your mind. If you can spot the stressors lurking just below the surface (hunger, worry, a phone call you need to make), you can resolve them and feel more relaxed.

 6. Have a laugh. Of course, you know from experience that this helps you relax, right? Find the guy that knows all the best jokes, or just find something funny in front of you.

 7. Breath deep through your nose. Just close your eyes and pay attention only to your breathing while doing this. Five slow deep breaths is like a mini-meditation.

 8. Take a walk. Walking is one of the best relaxation techniques if you have at least ten minutes to spare. Find a pretty place to walk while you're at it.

 9. Give someone a hug. As long as it's from somebody you don't mind hugging, this really can be very relaxing.

 10. Interrupt your routine. Stop to talk to that guy sleeping on the bench, or eat lunch on the roof. Anything that breaks you out of your habitual patterns can relieve stress.

Over time you can change yourself, and be naturally more relaxed. Of course, if the thought of the work involved in this just stresses you more, you might want to take it slow.

In the meantime, the relaxation techniques above really aren't difficult, so why not try a few, and learn today how to relax fast.

10 Best Relaxation Techniques for Busy People

It’s important to find the right relaxation technique that works for you and brings you a sense of ease, release from tension and hopefully physiological benefits into the bargain.

Here is a list of 10 Best Relaxation Techniques for Busy People.

 

1.   Progressive muscle relaxation was developed by the physician Edmund Jacobson in the early 1920s. Jacobson argued that since muscle tension accompanies anxiety, one can reduce anxiety by learning how to relax the muscular tension. Recent research has demonstrated many long-term benefits of progressive muscle relaxation, including decreased blood pressure, heart rate and even headaches. Those of you who find exercise a good way to ‘switch off’ may also find progressive muscle relaxation techniques suit you. If you would like to give this a try, Tamar has an intro to this here.

2.   Guided imagery has been component of ancient medicine, religions and cultures for thousands of years, but was first presented in an academic context in 1982. It involves exploring the image of a safe, comfortable place (specific to you) using all your senses and linking aspects of this image to your relaxed physiological state. There is research demonstrating its benefits for a multitude of health concerns including depression, stress reduction, asthma and pain management. Take a 20-minute Guided Imagery trial with Tamar here.

3.   Diaphragmatic breathing, ‘belly’ or deep breathing is marked by expansion of the abdomen rather than the chest when breathing. Daily practice in inhaling and exhaling more deeply and slowly will have immediate benefits to calm you down, and help you feel more grounded and ready to tackle the next thing in your day. The longer-term benefits are a reduction in anxiety, asthma and hypertension. If you can master concentrating on your breathing, then meditation and mindfulness might also be beneficial. You can try Tamar’s process here, or alternatively we recommend Breathe2Relax.

4.   Autogenic training is a self-relaxation procedure in which the individual learns a set of directions/exercises that command the body to relax and control breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat, and body temperature. There are six standard exercises that – with the use of visual imagination and verbal cues – make the body feel warm, heavy, and relaxed. Studies have shown the technique to positively impact tension headache/migraine, mild-to moderate hypertension, coronary heart disease, asthma pain disorders, anxiety disorders, mild to-moderate depression/dysthymia, and some sleep disorders. There is a practice to experiment with here.

5.   Relaxation response is a simple practice that, once learned, takes 10 to 20 minutes a day to achieve relaxation. It involves: a) repetition of a word, sound, prayer, thought, phrase or muscular movement, through which concentration is achieved b) passive return to the repetition when other thoughts intrude. During the process, the body moves to a state of physiological relaxation, where blood pressure, heart rate, digestive functioning and hormonal levels return to their normal state. The originator of the approach was Dr Herbert Benson and he explains how to do it here.

6.   Biofeedback is a process that teaches an individual how to change physiological activity in their body for the purposes of improving health and performance. Precise instruments measure physiological activity such as brainwaves, heart function, breathing, muscle activity, and skin temperature. These instruments rapidly and accurately ‘feed back’ information to the individual. The presentation of this information — often in conjunction with changes in thinking, emotions, and behaviour — supports desired physiological changes. Over time, these changes can endure without continued use of an instrument. Biofeedback has been used successfully for the treatment of headaches, the control of high blood pressure and type II diabetes and cardiac disease. This technique is done with a trained practitioner and equipment. For more information see here. Audrey has been experimenting with one bit of tech using EEG neurofeedback during meditation and enjoying this!

7.   Mindfulness-based stress reduction reduction is a structured 8-week group program employing mindfulness meditation to alleviate mental and physical suffering, associated with physical, psychosomatic and psychiatric disorders. It has been used successfully in the management of anxiety and depression, diabetes, in chronic disease and in chronic pain. It may also improve patients‘ psychosocial adjustment to cancer and offer psychological and health benefits to cancer patients. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

8.   Emotional Freedom Technique has been shown to rapidly reduce the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed, the body can often rebalance itself, and accelerate healing. It involves the person tapping on nine acupoints on their body, while speaking aloud a specific, meaningful short phrase. According to the literature, this acupressure paired with imaginal exposure reduces brain hyperarousal and counter-conditions anxiety and traumatic memories. It can result in reduced pain perception and has been shown to be an effective intervention for some phobias, anxiety and depression, psychological trauma and PTSD. You can find out more here.

9.   Transcendental Meditation is a simple, psychophysiological stress reduction procedure, introduced to the West by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a scholar of the ancient Vedic tradition of India. The technique is simple and easily learned (from a practitioner): in effect it is a 20 minute practice twice daily, sitting with your eyes closed and repeating a ‘mantra’ – a meaningless sequence of sounds specific to you – to promote a natural shift of awareness to a wakeful but deeply restful state. Studies show that regular practice of TM has a positive impact on the brain functioning and attention and builds resilience to stressful situations. To watch a video explaining the technique in more detail, go here.

10.                   Cognitive behavioural therapy is an established, evidence based structured and time-limited psychological treatment for several health conditions such as anxiety disorders, major depression, and health problems such as insomnia, headache, and tinnitus among others. The individual works with a trained practitioner to gain awareness of detrimental beliefs and thought habits and replace these with life-enhancing thoughts and beliefs. Further information can be found here.

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