How to Sleep Through the Night
When can you sleep? Not all the time probably. You’ve got stuff to do. The world has demands. When you can sleep, you must sleep, so you’d better be ready to sleep. What prevents good sleep? Anything that’s bad. More precisely:
- Muscular tension
- Discomfort from your sleeping surface (typically a bed)
- Distracting noises
- Distracting lights
- Distracting thoughts
- Doing the wrong things
Muscular tension
- Body work: If you suffer from neck discomfort, be sure to hit your upper-thoracic region, roll out your lats, neck, the back of your skull and your pecs. If you can’t sleep comfortably on the floor, you’ve got some work to do on your body.
- Learn how to breathe right: nasally, diaphragmatically, lightly.
- Reduce inflammation: Before bed, take 1 mL of hemp oil and then drink tumeric milk with black pepper.
Discomfort from your sleeping surface
- Try a variety of sleeping surfaces: couches, chairs, the floor, the mattresses of guest rooms in the homes of people who’ve dared to let you in.
- If you normally have a bedmate, try sleeping alone.
- Test out different kinds of pillows.
- Avoid sleeping on your face.
Distracting noises
- Shut down noises. Squeaky bed? Tighten it up. Bedmate snores? Tape their mouth shut.
- Drown out the rest: get a white noise machine, run a fan or air purifier.
Distracting lights
- Get blackout drapes.
- Keep all screens out of your bedroom.
- If you can paint the walls a darker color, paint them.
Distracting thoughts
- After work, use exercise to break looping thoughts. Your brain runs on glucose and oxygen. Your muscles run on glucose and oxygen. When you exercise, you reduce the availability of these resources for your brain. Run this experiment. If you have access to a stationary bike, bring something to read, get on the bike and get your heartrate up. You’ll notice that you aren’t able to focus on what you’re reading after a little while. This is what I’m talking about. Get your heart rate up higher to disrupt fixations and they’ll won’t haunt you in your bed.
- Have sex with another person.
- Meditate. I like the Waking Up app. If you want a free month of it, ask me and I’ll send you the link.
What not to do
- Turn to booze
- Sleeping pills, unless you want to wake up in the middle of mowing your lawn
- Overdo the anti-inflammatories (your blood can get too thin)
- Eat too little (if you ain’t fed, your body thinks it’s time to go hunting)
- Eat too much before bed (if you feel like you’re stuffed, you ate too much)
- Read the news or watch the news before bed
- Do anything on your phone before bed
- Try to solve any sort of puzzle or problem before bed
- Sit in a bright room before bed – no, no, you must dwell in darkness