It's About Sleep . . .

Sleep aids and the use of guided imagery have come up in assorted conversations this week - enough times that I decided to write a little about it.  I don't take drugs to fall asleep.  I think it works better to work with my body and give it what it needs to fall asleep. 

Easy for me to say, huh?  I mean, I got the Sleep Anywhere, Anytime Gene from my late mom.  I almost never have trouble falling asleep - but I do sometimes have trouble staying asleep.  I know that when my sleep cycle is disrupted, it usually means I'm stressed.  In addition, being a woman of a certain age, I usually wake up around 3 a.m. because I have to pee . . . Ahem.   And once I wake up to do that, I have found many times that my brain starts spinning and falling back to sleep for another three hours can be difficult. 

The most important thing for me to be able to fall back asleep once I've been awakened in the night is to NOT pick up my cell phone.  If I do that, all bets are off and I will likely never get back to sleep.  I also do NOT have a television in the bedroom.  Bedrooms are not for watching telly. 

Anyway, my sleep is much less disrupted now that I am no longer in a brutally stressful work situation, but over the years I have built bedtime routines that are now second nature to me and that help me fall asleep or fall back to sleep after awakening in the middle of the night. 

I call it "Falling Asleep Music."  I have a library of CDs from various artists that are ambient sound and/or music.  Some contain Delta Waves built in to the music.  I have an old-school clock radio with a built in CD player, so most nights I automatically just hit play.  One CD that I use a lot for this is called Sleepy Ocean - With Delta Brainwave Pulses. You don't hear the pulses but your brain registers them; you just hear the music or sounds.  Other CDs that I use for falling asleep or falling back to sleep include these two that are favorites:

• Dean Evenson - Healing Water
• Dan Gibson - Solitudes - Natural Stress Relief
  

These two and Sleepy Ocean are good starter relaxation CDs.  Dan Gibson's in particular is a good one because you can get an idea of what types of sounds you like best before you invest any additional money.  There is an entire series of Dan Gibson Solitudes that have all sorts of different ambient sounds and music.

A lot of these CDs are available through Amazon streaming as part of Amazon Prime, you can also check YouTube, but since you are wanting to fall asleep and their videos are full of ads, I don't think it's the best place - free isn't always better.  But you can certainly look for things there and give them a listen to see if you think you might like them. 

So - most nights as I'm getting into bed, I automatically hit the play button on my clock radio and turn out the light.  I keep the volume low so I can hear the music/sounds.  It's not so loud that it would keep me awake.  The music or sounds are soothing and because I've built this habit over time, my brain seems to know when it hears them that it's time to fall asleep.

The other thing I have found to be really helpful as a sleep aid, is guided imagery meditation.  I have an old iPod Nano that I have kept specifically for this purpose.  I have pulled meditations from an assortment of CDs into iTunes and then created individual playlists for each specific meditation so that once it's done, nothing else plays; i.e., I don't make one big playlist of guided imagery meditations.  Instead, I make multiple playlists with ONE meditation each. 

Some nights I feel like I need a guided imagery meditation rather than falling asleep music.  When that happens I have plenty to choose from, and because I am listening to one of these as I go to sleep, I use old-school headphones.  The old Sony ones that go over your ear. 

These are not all that easy to find any longer, so I look for them online and buy one when I see them so I always have one in reserve.  I've tried using earbuds, but have found that they are supremely uncomfortable.  The reason I use stereo headphones rather than the CD player for most guided imagery, is (1) as mentioned, I don't want a whole CD of meditations to play; and (2) some of the meditations have brain sync, or imbedded brainwave pulses that you hear better (unconsciously) through stereo headphones. 

It doesn't matter if you fall asleep before the end of the meditation - falling asleep is pretty much the point  ;-)  Your brain still hears the meditation.  I usually pull the headphones off in my sleep, but there are mornings I wake up with them still on  :-D 

I am finding that in this time of COVID-19 I am meditating much more regularly.  Let's face it, we are living in stressful times and facing things that most of us have never experienced in before in our lifetime.  I've looked for ways to release that stress and keep myself moving forward, and meditation is a really big piece of that.  I start my day writing Morning Pages, and then I meditate anywhere from 15-20 minutes.  This simple routine is a great way to start the day.

I'm a big believer in meditation because I know how much better I feel when I practice it regularly.  If you're new to it or have tried it in the past and felt like you didn't know what you were doing, Diana Lang has a good book called Opening to Meditation.  It really helped me, and I still use her morning and evening meditations from that book on a regular basis.  The book used to come with a CD, but now I think the meditations are downloadable from her website. 

But back to sleep  ;-)  I've found that if my "falling asleep music" doesn't knock me out (I'm usually out by the second cut of any CD), I turn to guided imagery meditations. Some of the guided imagery meditations that I use to fall asleep, include:

• Life~Works:  Meditations for Mindful Living.  I use the "Releasing" one.  By Aruni Nan Futuronsky
• Any of Peggy Cappy's CDs for relaxation and/or meditation.  She's the Yoga for the Rest of Us lady from PBS.
  
• Healing Journey - by Emmett Miller
  

Some other guided meditations that I like that are not really for falling asleep include:

• Max Highstein.  I like the ones where Jill Andre did the voice.  Healing Waterfall and Lightbeing are the two I like the most.  These are also available on Amazon music.  He has a Youtube Channel, but I don't think there's much there in terms of guided imagery.
• Emmett Miller has also done a lot with Steven Halpern.  I really like their Letting Go of Stress meditation, which I have linked below  :-)   
  

And now, it's time for me to fall asleep  :-)