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Relaxation Techniques For Sleep
How often do you lie awake at night with your head full of random thoughts?
Do you find yourself worrying about things like the future, work, family, relationships, health and finances?
And perhaps worst of all, do you find yourself stressing about whether you’ll ever fall asleep?
If this sounds familiar, then it might be time to have a go at some specific relaxation exercises for sleep.
Finding ways to calm your over-active mind and unwind from a busy day can be an effective way of overcoming insomnia for many people.
And fortunately there are plenty of ways you can try to quieten your mind and relax you body. In this article you’ll learn about these popular techniques:
1. Guided visualization meditation
2. Progressive muscle relaxation
3. Deep breathing exercises
4. Mindfulness exercises
5. Additional relaxation techniques
1. Guided visualization meditation:
There are many different forms of meditation that you could do at any time during the day to help reduce stress and calm an overactive mind.
But you may find it particularly useful to practice meditation during the period of time just before going to sleep. It is a perfect addition to a bedtime routine.
An easy and effective relaxation technique for sleep is guided visualization meditation. This is where you listen to an audio track of someone talking you through a meditation. The following video gives you an example of this:
You can also find recordings which combine guided meditation with simple hypnosis for relaxation. The idea being that you listen to a soothing voice rather than have to do the relaxation process in your head. This is something I’ve personally found very helpful in the past. Have a look on Youtube and you’ll find plenty for free.
2. Progressive muscle relaxation
Progressive muscle relaxation works well because it helps relieve tension in the muscles, and the mind relaxes better when the body feels good.
It also helps distract the mind from unsettling or repetitive thoughts because you have to focus your attention on your body and not on your mind.
You can do progressive muscle relaxation exercises for sleep as part of a bedtime routine. And you can even do them while lying in bed at night.
A basic progressive muscle relaxation exercise you can try for yourself:
- Take a deep breath and tense your toes and feet for a few seconds (3-4 seconds is fine), then exhale slowly and release the tension
- Take a deep breath and tense your lower legs, hold for a few seconds and then relax again with the exhale of breath
- Breathe in and tense your upper legs, hold and relax
- Breathe in and tense your abdomen and lower back, hold for a few seconds and then breathe out whilst slowly relaxing
- Repeat with your chest and upper back
- Do the same with your hands, lower arms, then upper arms, shoulders and neck
- Then you can tense your face – screwing it up may help to tense it properly
- Finally you can tense your whole body, hold for a few seconds and slowly exhale whilst ensuring your whole body relaxes from the tension
- You can repeat the final part where you tense your whole body 3 times if you like
3. Deep breathing exercises:
Deep breathing is calming to do either on its own or along with other relaxation techniques for sleep. In fact most meditations will encourage you to focus on your breathing at some point.
You can also draw on deep breathing techniques at any point during the day or night to help you calm down.
Next time you feel yourself getting stressed, upset or angry, try doing some deep breathing and you should find it helps surprisingly quickly.
Deep breathing has 2 main components to it: learning to breathe into your abdomen rather than just the chest, and breathing at a controlled and slow rate. You’ll learn both of these in the exercise below.
A basic deep breathing exercise you can do straight away:
A) You can do this exercise wherever you like. Sitting in a chair, lying in bed or even standing up.
B) Take a minute or two to try and relax and release tension from your muscles.
C) Close your eyes, and focus your attention on your breathing
D) Place one hand on your stomach and one on your chest. See if they both rise when you breathe in, or just one of them rises. You do not need to try to do anything in particular at this time; just see which hand is rising and pay attention to it. This will tell you if you naturally breathe with your abdomen, chest or both
E) Breathe in slowly through your nose for the count of 4 seconds if you can. Try to breathe in such a way that the hand on your stomach rises, and the hand on your chest only rises a little. This is called abdominal breathing, and what you should ideally try to do. You may find it trick at first, but stick with it if you can
F) Once you breathe in, hold your breath for 4 seconds, and then breathe out for 4. If 4 seconds if too much or too little, then you can adjust the time to suit you. Continue with this cycle. Counting 4 – 4 – 4 in your head as your breathe in and out.
G) Once you have learned how to breathe with your belly, you can remove your hands and place them down by your sides, and continue breathing slowly and deeply
H) You can set yourself a goal to practice this deep breathing exercise for 5 or 10 minutes. You could also just keep doing it while you try to fall asleep if you find it helpful. And once you have learned how to breathe like this, you can add it to any other form of meditation you might do
Deep breathing is one of the most effective relaxation techniques for sleep for several reasons:
- It relax your muscles
- It can help slow your heart rate
- It can help slow your rate of breath
- It centers you in the moment instead of thinking about past or future problems
- By focusing your attention on your breathing you will reduce the quantity of thoughts on your mind
4. Mindfulness exercises
Mindfulness techniques are gaining popularity as a Psychological intervention as well as being a great self-help practice.
It is well regarded as being an effective way of treating stress, anxiety, depression, pain and importantly – an over-active mind.
Mindfulness exercises are based on certain Buddhist principles, such as living in the moment and the acceptance of how things are.
The good thing though is that you don’t have to be religious, spiritual or philosophical to practice mindfulness exercises. They are practical and work effectively without needing to attach any spiritual meaning to them.
Mindfulness techniques work well because they help center you back in the moment. So if you are lying awake at night worrying about the past or future, it will help you to stop doing that.
If you are being over-run by your own thoughts, then it will help you to learn to calm your mind. And most importantly in some ways, if you are worrying about the very fact that you are thinking to much, then it will even help with that!
It’s beyond the scope of this article to teach you mindfulness. But if the idea appeals to you, have a look at Mindfulness: an eight week plan for finding peace in a frantic world which is an excellent practical workbook and CD.
5. Other relaxation techniques for sleep
Hopefully nobody will ever read this far, having found a useful relaxation technique already!
However, if nothing has appealed so far then there are one or two other things you could try.
Firstly, don’t forget the importance of having a regular and peaceful bedtime routine to help you mark an end to the busy day. You can include one or more of the techniques described above in this routine.
Some people find that yoga is also a good practice to do before going to bed – it can be a powerful way to unwind and relax.
You may find that for you, simply spending time with family, a pet or a good book is relaxation enough. But whatever you choose to do in the period before bed, just make sure it is relaxing and not stimulating.
If you are a busy person that has a lot of worries in life you may find it helpful to write down on paper a list of things you need to do tomorrow or in the future.
It may not seem like a great relaxation technique to help you sleep, but the point is to remove worries and thoughts from your mind before you try to sleep. Putting them down on paper may help keep them from buzzing around your head.
And for those who have literally tried everything, then my final suggestion is the rather unusual acupressure mat. This is a fairly new concept in the world of relaxation, but is proving very popular because of its ability to promote relaxation and sleep. And they have the bonus of being great for relieving muscle tension and back pain.
Your ideas!
Do you have any interesting techniques for relaxation that may help other readers? And even if you’re just struggling with your busy mind and want someone to listen for a moment, feel free to talk about it in the comments below and I’ll see if I can help out.
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