GO 'N GET YA ZZZ'S ON

HELLO Ü One thing I never struggled with as a teenager was getting enough sleep. I could fall asleep in class, sitting up and mostly in moving vehicles. It did not matter, if I was tired enough I would sleep anywhere. I once convinced my mom to drive her and I to NYC from our hometown, a nine hour drive and I promised her I would "stay awake the whole time." I fell asleep 2 minutes into the drive before we even got on the highway. My mom woke me up at the boarder and was rightfully mad at me. I took falling asleep quickly and getting a real good nights sleep very much for granted when I was younger because as an adult I have struggled big time with those two aspects of sleep. There were days that I worked super hard all day and was excited to be tired to find myself laying wide awake in bed, mad that I was loosing precious sleeping hours. I tired everything and nothing but these few things worked for me: 1. No Before Bed Screen Time: try not to look at your phone for at least 30mins before going to bed. I know that sounds impossible but it will make the largest difference in your sleep. This allows your eyes and brain to relax from the strain and harsh light from our devices. 2. Yoga: a great way to stretch your aching muscles, practise deep breathing and meditation. Yoga has helped me big time when it comes to sleep. I do not do a crazy routine every night, just 10 mins of very basic poses that help with my sore back from poor posture. 3. Essential Oils: having lavender essential oils defusing made a huge difference in the amount of time it took me to fall asleep. I would toss and turn for hours sometimes without feeling sleepy enough to close my eyes. Defusing lavender or orange made me fall asleep in under 15mins! The noise from the defuser also makes for a peaceful sound to fall asleep too. 4. No Midnight Snacks: try not to eat 2-3 hours before you plan on going to bed. Giving your body food before bed makes your body have to work hard to digest that food without any physical activity to aid the process. Fasting is one of the healthiest things you can do for your body and when you shorten that fasting time by eating late your body has less time to focus on healing, building good bacteria, filtering out toxins and lowing blood pressure. It then has to spend the whole night working overtime to digest that food, making for weaker immune systems, digestion problems and lower toxin release. 5. Stress Management: Stress would keep me up alllllllllll night if it wanted to. Stress about money, bills, deadlines, conflicts, relationships, the past and the future was the worst culprit for my sleeping problems. There is no one magic way to manage stress because everyones is different and everyones stress is different. For me, accountability and planning helped manage my stress. When I am overwhelmed with stress it is usually because I am procrastinating something or many things. Once I realize that is where the stress lies, I write out a big list of all the things I can do right then and there to take away some of the stress. Then I do them- as many as possible. Then I write out what I can accomplish that week to help manage the stress and do them. Whenever I let the stress build back up I go back and look at that first list and repeat. Before bed I make myself say in my head, the three things I loved about that day and three things I am excited to do the next day and allow my self no negative thoughts. It has taken me months but I am getting better and better at managing stress and not allowing it to sneak up on me before I try to fall asleep. Getting those ZZZ's every night is super important. People that brag about the lack of sleep they get are not to be praised because they are disrespecting their bodies need for rest and recharging. Sleep is not for the weak. On the contrary, sleep is for the strong. That is why rest is so important when you are sick and/or healing, it is essential for optimal health. Try these + let me know if they are helpful to you or if you have any sleeping magic tricks of your own! Now I am off to do some yoga, meditate and hopefully have a full nights rest. Sleep tight, x kay