Tired of being awake hours into the night with no sleep? Here are three comprehensive techniques and a few other guidelines you can apply when you need to force yourself to sleep.
A large number of people all over the world are insomniacs who often find it hard to get at least seven hours of quality sleep. When you find yourself spending a lot of time tossing and turning in bet instead of just falling asleep, you know that it’s about time you did something about it.
Sleep is quite essential since it helps you relax to perform at your peak the following day. 70% of most problems that lead to lack of sleep are usually psychological, while the other 30% is physical.
So, before you go looking for the best prescriptions, what can you do to make you sleep better? Research has shown that there are several options you can take to ensure you sleep soundly at night. We're going to share some of the best and most accredited recommendations that you can apply in your life to force yourself to sleep and ensure that you get the full, relaxing number of hours of sleep that your body and mind desperately needs.
How to Prepare When You Want to Force Yourself to Sleep?
Before trying to force yourself to sleep, you should first make sure that you’ve done all you can to ensure that your environment is favorable for sleep. If you cannot do more than you’ve done already, don’t be worried. We’re going to make do with what we have.
Exercise
Working out or doing activities that require you to use your energy helps reduce the tension in your body and makes you feel more relaxed. It also calms down your mind and helps you eliminate some of the stress you experienced during the day. Combining this with some relaxation techniques will make you feel sleepy in no time.
However, you should make sure that you work out at least an hour before going to bed. Exercising induces the release of endorphins in your body, such as Dopamine, Serotonin, and Adrenaline, which could make you feel too energized for sleep.
Suppose you expel all of your surplus energy correctly. In that case, your body will have no other option than to relax, save its remaining energy, and re-energize for the following day- Sleep foundation.
Make Your Sleeping Are More Conducive for Sleep
For you to fall asleep more effectively, you should make sure your sleeping area is conducive to sleep. You should make sure that it's not brightly lit and that it doesn't have any distracting equipment such as televisions or any sound systems- Johns Hopkins hospital.
It would help if you switched your fluorescent lights with some incandescent alternatives that are not too harsh on the eyes. Please get rid of any electronic equipment such as laptops and smartphones since they emit specific blue light wavelengths that keep you awake.
After You’ve Done All This, What Next?
After you've made sure your sleeping area is as accommodating as possible, you should try out these techniques next to force yourself to sleep.
Unwind
If you’ve done all of the guidelines for making your sleeping area more accommodating and you can’t sleep yet, it may be because you feel wound up. Unwinding helps you to, generally, account for the actions and decisions you made during the day and disentangle yourself from these events- Sleepfoundation.org
It's like logging off from work. It would help if you thought about the significant decisions you made during the day, accounting for them, and then planning what you're going to do the following day.
Make the process as simple as possible while looking at the situation from the third-person perspective. Doing this will help you get detached from the person you were during the day, allowing you to focus on more essential parts of yourself rather than every other thing.
Unwinding is not so simple when you're starting; however, it can get more comfortable with time, and you'll start to reap its benefits. To achieve this, you should try your best and steer clear of any unnecessary entanglement in unimportant memories because they might instead keep you up for hours.
Try Some Breathing and Muscle Relaxation Techniques
If you've tried unwinding and still feeling anxious, you should try some breathing and muscular relaxation techniques that'll help you feel more relaxed.
When you are anxious, your body is on the fight or flight mode, which means that there is a constant release of adrenalin into your bloodstream, making you feel more energized. If this is done over and over again (anxiety), then it leaves you jumpy and tired at the same time.
Getting rid of this feeling involves balancing your reaction to situations, events, and memories, which will help you stay in control of situations and, most importantly, sleep better.
So, How Do You Go About It?
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Breathing Techniques Courtesy of the United Kingdom National Health Service
- Breathe in slowly by pushing out your stomach.
- Hold your breath for three seconds.
- Breath out slowly using your mouth and pursed lips as you relax the muscles in your mouth, face, jaw, stomach, and shoulders.
Doing this reminds your body and mind that there is nothing to be worried about and that it can let go of its survival stance and relax. You should repeat this process until you start feeling your body relaxing and your heartbeat going down, and you're good to go!
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Muscular relaxation technique
The muscle relaxation technique helps relieve muscular tension, which leaves you relaxed and ready to doze off- Scottish health information/NHS.
Here are the steps you can take to achieve this.
- First, make sure that you are in a comfortable, preferably sleeping position.
- Next, start with your facial muscles all the time, making sure that you're slowly breathing in and out.
- Quickly tense the facial muscles and relax them slowly.
- Next, try your shoulders, arms, chest, as you go down slowly until you reach your feet.
- Make sure you do this at least two times for each muscle and repeat the process if necessary.
You'll start feeling your body relax a few minutes after you start doing this technique, and once your body and mind are relaxed, you'll be ready for sleep.
The best thing about these techniques is that they are helpful in and out of the bedroom. Practicing them, especially for anxiety attacks, will help them feel less anxious and more in control of their bodies. Do this every night, and you'll be sleeping like a baby every time.
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