Sleep Away Your Stress
There are many ways you can lower your stress levels and one of those is through sleep.
Sleep helps your body repair itself. It helps fight off viruses and infections. It reduces stress and inflammation, and it even helps boost metabolism. Now the goal is to aim for seven to eight hours of sleep.
Yes, this may sound impossible, but getting enough sleep will help you think faster, more clearly, and tap into your creativity. Can you think of a time you stayed up too late and then struggled to do basic tasks the next day? I know I have, even recently, and not getting enough sleep can make you feel almost like a zombie the next day.
Even if you absolutely can't fit in seven to eight hours of sleep, try to get as quality of sleep as possible. The quality sleep stages are the REM and deep sleep stages.
Now REM is short for rapid eye movement. This is when you dream. Deep sleep though is a little different. This is when you're breathing heartbeat, body temperature and brain waves reach their lowest levels. Your muscles are extremely relaxed and you’re most difficult to rouse. This is also known as the healing stage when our hormones are released to do their jobs and to restore our energy.
In order to get restful healing we have to get a combination of those two. It’s said we need about 60 to 110 minutes in the deep stage and 60 to 120 minutes in the REM stage. And what can help us get that quality sleep is having a nighttime routine. This typically starts about one to two hours before going to bed.
So some of those things that we can do to help us reach that quality sleep are:
dimming the lights,
turning off the electronics,
wearing blue light filtering glasses, and
go to bed at the same time every night.
I know, the electronics thing is really hard because sometimes downtime is watching TV or scrolling through stuff on a phone. But it's really important that if you are doing that to wear blue light filtering glasses, because when you're not, that light is actually messing with your circadian rhythm. It's altering your body's natural time to wind down to rest. So if you can put those electronics away, the body is already getting ready for sleep.
Another helpful tip to get quality, healing sleep is to go to bed at the same time every day. And this is really hard if you like to make plans on the weekends and sleep in on Saturdays or Sundays, and then stay up late. But it's easier to get into that quality sleep if our body knows each day when it's going to bed and when it's waking up.
You’ve heard before that sleep helps relieve stress, but it’s really that REM and deep sleep you need to aim for. Which tip above is one you might try for better quality sleep tonight?
Looking for more stress relief? Virtual Yin Yoga classes are open now for Fall and Winter. Get a new hour-Yin video each week and have FIVE days to watch it as much as you need to.