The Health Benefits of A Good Night's Sleep

I am now at the half-way point of outlining the eight essential areas of wellness for vitality! Today’s topic is one that alludes many… Sleep…Ahhh… doesn’t a good night’s sleep sound just delightful? Do you remember the last time you got one? Sleep is an area of wellness that can be the most neglected and the most difficult to grasp. With all of the foundations of wellness, when it is neglected it will negatively impact how you feel on all levels. Getting a good, restful night’s sleep is essential to living a healthy life of vitality and wellbeing.

If you suffer from chronic insomnia, waking during the night and having trouble getting back to sleep—or just struggle to fall asleep despite feeling exhausted—you are not alone. Sleep is allusive to so many and it is an area that many people spend a ton of money on to attempt to remedy with varying results.

Loss of sleep can cause an imbalance in blood sugar, which causes cravings. Lack of sleep can cause you to be a bit, let’s say, grumpy? Or even worse, super irritable, causing challenges in relationships and overall contentment. Lack of sleep will cause you to feel drained and not have enough energy to engage in the other areas of wellness needed to live a life of vitality. When you are exhausted, do you feel like preparing a healthy meal, getting in time for exercise or even a date night or something social and fun? Probably not.

On the other side, when you sleep well you feel refreshed, energized and able to make clear-headed decisions throughout the day. Here are some suggestions to help you get the zzz’s you need to feel vital, energized and prepared to take on whatever challenges come your way.

If your goal is to sleep through the night and wake feeling rested it can be helpful to attempt some of the following strategies to create a sleep plan that works for you:

-       Go to bed at the same time each night, your body thrives on routine and consistency for your personal circadian rhythm

-       Create an evening ritual that helps you focus on the transition time from the activity of your day into time for rest, this will signal to your brain and body that it is time to slow down and prepare for sleep

-       Find a good book, reading can help shift your focus from your thoughts or the long to-do list running through your mind and prepare your mind for sleep

- Avoid blue light exposure (cell phones, iPads…) at least an hour before you go to bed

- Avoid stimulating TV shows, movies etc… at least an hour before you go to bed

-       Take a warm bath before bed with Epsom salt and calming essential oils such as lavender and/or vetiver, ylang ylang, bergamot and sandalwood (my favorite!)

-       Have your room as dark as possible, the smallest amount of light can cause sleep disruptions, use a sleep mask if it is comfortable for you

-       Use a sound machine to block out any external noise that may disrupt your sleep

-       Keep a sleep journal, logging your routine in the evening such as what you had for dinner, when you go to bed and anytime that you wake up- this can help you notice patterns or triggers that disrupt your sleep- it also helps you recognize when you are making some progress and what helps you sleep well

-       Practice stress reduction techniques daily to help maintain a more positive mood and to create less restlessness at night, a great resource is the Insight Timer app with guided meditations, binaural beats and even bedtime stories to help you fall (and stay) asleep

-       When you are struggling to calm your mind, say to yourself “this is the time that I have designated for my mind and body to rest, I can return to my thoughts and worries the next day when I can actually do something about them”—use this or other coping thoughts that help return you to the present moment and away from the distracting and distressing thoughts, such as stating to yourself, “this is my time to rest, I can return to these thoughts later” etc...

-       When you wake up in the middle of the night, first try to do a body scan in your mind’s eye and notice if you are holding tension in any areas of your body—if so, with awareness, allow the tension to release—if your mind wanders away, come back to focusing your attention on your body—this may be a difficult process at first as it is the nature of the mind to wander, this takes practice and perseverance

-       Practice counting your breaths or use the so-hum breath (saying “so” in your mind as you inhale and “hum” in your mind as you exhale) to help keep a single point of focus to your mind until you drift off to sleep

-       Do not have any caffeine after lunch

-       Limit or avoid alcohol, try not to have any at least 2 hours before your bedtime as it can cause your body to not enter a state of deep sleep

-       Drink enough water throughout the day, when you are even a little bit dehydrated it creates disruptions in all of the systems of the body

-       Do some movement and exercise during the day, even a short walk or gentle stretching in the evening can help improve the quality of your sleep

-       Try some type of tea such as chamomile or other rest, sleep or calming teas to help induce a feeling of being sleepy, although this may not help you sleep through the night, it may help you get a few hours of deeper sleep

Did you try any of these and find that they improved your sleep? I’d love to hear what works for you! Have another suggestion that helps you? Share it with me so I can help get the word out! Sleep is so important and can create greater health in mind, body and spirit.

The Health Benefits of a Strong Social Support

As promised in my last post, I will be detailing the eight wellness essentials outlined in that post one by one. The first area of wellness to live a life of vitality is all about having a strong social support including friends, family and community groups. Spending time with friends and enjoying the company of others provides a tremendous amount of benefit to our lives.

From the wellness perspective, having a strong social support creates the best circumstances to live a long, healthy and happy life. When you share the company of friends, you might share a meal, a shopping venture, a walk, an experience or even a good cry. The benefit to your health comes in the process of sharing, of feeling connected, supported, heard and cared for. Having a support system where you can be your authentic self allows you to feel safe, valuable and secure.

By nature, we are social creatures. We have a need to create a sense of safety in our lives, and a solid social support offers just that. When you find your tribe, the people who unconditionally love and accept you, you feel supported, cared for and you can give yourself permission to be you. This can be a challenge to find as so many of us show up to life with a lot of social anxiety. This anxiety will cause you to worry about what people think about you, you may fear that you will be judged and this can cause you to feel as though you have to be *perfect* in order for people to want to be around you.

When you are ready to reconcile your perfectionism, release your anxiety and just be you. Inevitably, your social life will open up in a positive way. When this occurs you no longer attempt to hide behind perfectionism or people pleasing and you can be your true self. When you allow yourself to relax and become more confident in social circumstances, you become a better and better version of yourself through your relationships. In our current culture more and more people are connecting through social media outlets and yet more and more people are expressing feelings of isolation and loneliness. We all long for genuine, nonjudgmental connection.

If you find that you are feeling more isolated and lonely when it comes to a social network, know that there is always an opportunity to grow and expand into a social support that will be beneficial for you. If social anxiety is crippling for you, it might be helpful to seek additional support to work through your fears and automatic responses when it comes to social situations so that you can create more opportunities to expand both your social support and to feel more confident and less anxious. If you do not feel that you have overwhelming social anxiety but have become isolated for other reasons, there are many things you can do today to begin to grow your social support.

Having a strong social support is a wellness essential, and what that looks like, just like any wellness journey is absolutely personal to you. For one person it may feel best to have a small, tight group of friends where others may prefer to have a variety of friends across many social experiences. There is no wrong way to grow in your social support! If you feel as though you have a strong social support and feel really good about the relationships you currently have, then take some time to reach out to those people and let them know how important and meaningful their relationship is to you. If you feel as though you’d like to grow socially and strengthen your current or potential social connections, I put together the following list to help you think about how to expand your social outlet in a way that feels nurturing and healthy for you.

Try one or more of the following to grow your social support today:
-Take an in-person class on a topic that interests you
-Host a dinner party for an organization you are already a part of
-Join a book club
-Join a Meetup group
-Go to an event that sounds interesting to you and talk to one person you don’t know
-Go to a community meeting/religious service/open house event… and talk to one person you don’t know
-If you have kids, have a play date for your kids whose parents you’d like to get to know better
-Call an old friend that you haven’t talked to in a while and catch up
-Volunteer anywhere
-Participate in a committee at your work, kid’s school, in the community…
-Get your friends together for a potluck this weekend

From the list, what feels doable? What feels as though it would help you grow and strengthen your social support? When you try one, notice the impact of creating meaningful connections on how you feel about yourself.

Embracing Nonjudgment

Nonjudgment is a key concept within mindfulness. Mindfulness is paying attention from moment to moment with a nonjudgmental awareness. Nonjudgment means not having a reactive response to what is occurring, not responding—especially in a stressful manner—to whatever is true right now.

Nonjudgment can be a challenging concept to embrace because it is part of the nature of the mind to judge. However, this function of the mind/thought is not for the sake of beating yourself up or passing judgment onto others. The purpose of the capacity of the mind to judge is to engage the ability to make the best choices for yourself in the moment.

Unfortunately, judging and responding in an emotional way to that formulated judgement has become something that happens more rampantly. This internalized or passed onto others judgment is contributing to deep suffering on many levels. When you judge yourself, you create a feeling of being not good enough, unworthy and increase your stress.

When you judge others in a way that triggers a negative opinion of them, you are most likely activating your ego rather than your true self. In this ego space you are not allowing yourself to be accepting or compassionate towards their reasons why they have/do/are…whatever it is you are basing this judgment upon. This creates a limit to the connection you could experience with that person and also creates a cloud around a more clear decision to not subject yourself to that person.

When you embrace the concept and action of nonjudgment, you are not considering something as good or bad, right or wrong. You are not passing your internal opinions and values onto another but practicing the ability to deeply accept the truth of what is presented before you. When you practice nonjudgment, you are able to connect with a level of inner freedom and peace that allows you to experience less stress and an overall sense of lightness and wellbeing.

If you feel that you operate often out of a space of constant judgment, know that increasing your capacity for nonjudgment and deeper acceptance is a practice. It takes time, effort and focus to cultivate within. The most effective way to build your ability to practice and be in a state of nonjudgment and acceptance is through a consistent mindfulness practice. The second is through deep self-reflection.

While creating a consistent mindfulness and meditation practice has a number of benefits, today’s focus is specific to the ability to practice nonjudgment and acceptance. Your ability to accept others directly correlates to your capacity to accept yourself. If this feels like a little off-putting to consider, that’s ok, that’s just your ego responding and your ego is sensitive, guarded and most likely a little fragile. I know that mine sure is, which is why this practice is so, so very important. Without the internal barometer of mindfulness, meditation and self-reflection, we get stuck operating out of the needs of our ego. This will not increase our capacity of joy but will only create a temporary experience of survival and safety. But fear is always lurking out there—which ironically only breeds more judgment and nonacceptance. Nonjudgment allows you to release your ego based fears.

There are several mindfulness and meditation practices that offer the ability to grow in your capacity for deeper acceptance of yourself and others and allow the judging mind and ego to rest and feel safe. The most accessible is as simple as connecting with the rhythm of your breath. When you mind wanders, first, make note if it is a thought riddled with judgment (not to judge yourself, only to build awareness!) and then label it as a just a thought, then let it go. This will occur over and over and over again throughout the course of a minute. Initially this practice can be quite exhausting, but absolutely worth the effort. I recommend that you start slowly here, with just one minute and increase from there.

The second phase needed to build acceptance and the ability to practice nonjudgment is deep self-reflection. With deep self-reflection you are taking a closer look at your thought process. In this phase you become curious about your biases, your judgments, how they came to be and why they occur. Do you judge people for their appearance? Do you judge people for their material possessions? Do you judge people for their voice, their tone, their speech patterns, their words? Do you judge other people for what they do and the choices they make? These judgments may happen, however in deep self-reflection you can begin to understand why. This self-reflection practice gives you the ability to become aware that you are not your thoughts. Regardless of the emotional response that may or may not be conjured up by a thought, you can practice in the space of the witness to label it as a thought, or a process of your mind, and then let it go.

Earlier I may have triggered your ego by saying that your capacity to accept others is equal to your capacity to accept yourself. If you find that you judge others, how much time do you spend judging yourself? How much time do you spend commenting internally or out loud because of your appearance or your material possessions or for you what you say, do or the choices you make? Often the ego deflects this internal pain and suffering onto others and it creates this internal anxiety that is underlying, well, pretty much everything. It is deeply uncomfortable and unsatisfying, and I believe that most of us live in this space unconsciously much of the time. 

If you are ready to heal from these internal patterns of thought, feelings and behaviors, today is the day to begin a mindfulness practice. If you are ready to dig deep and understand how these patterns arose in order to ensure that they remain at bay, then today is the day to begin deep self-reflection.