Activities to Help You Sleep

Activities to Help You Sleep

No matter how much you know you need to sleep on time, some days your body and mind just won’t let you. Whether it’s stress about your final exams, a pounding heartbeat from an adrenaline-surging experience, or excitement for your upcoming vacation to Hawaii, there are a million life events preventing people from unwinding and falling asleep as they please. Fortunately, they aren’t undefeatable: a lot of relaxing activities during the day can help you ease off the energy. We’ve already listed some activities on our blog back in September, such as reading books, meditating, putting on some calming music, doing yoga, and organizing your next day. Since then, we’ve also written a blog post on apps that can help guide you through the above. While we still stand by the above activities, we’d like to add some more to consider as part of your new regimen:

1. Clean up your room.

This may sound like a tedious chore, but it pays off beyond just a cleaner aesthetic! A cluttered space subconsciously exacerbates the chaos of a cluttered mind. Even if you’ve got the most comfortable bed ever, what you visually see before you close your eyes matters too. The cluttered visuals register to our brains as work that needs to be done, which is usually associated with strain and stress. The physical and mental work associated with decluttering can also help tire you out as well!

2. Check out an app to help you sleep.

Again, we’ve just written up a list of apps to help you sleep. These apps generally guide you through meditation sessions, play relaxing music and nature sounds such as rain or waterfalls, and some even read you bedtime stories. You can set a timer for how long they’re on so don’t worry about draining your battery.

3. Do cardio.

In our last post, we suggested some bedtime yoga, which definitely helps. However, some of us better benefit from more intense aerobic exercise, which speeds up your heart rate. Such exercise has been linked to decreasing the intensity of sleep disorders such as sleep apnea. Before you get apprehensive about breaking out into a sweaty mess, some studies actually suggest that moderate intensity exercise actually works better. Over time, cardio can actually boost your mood and decrease stress, which we’ve stated many times as being extremely conducive to falling asleep quickly. Just try to keep the exercise a few hours ahead of your bedtime, as you don’t want a heightened heart rate right before it.

4. Practice mindfulness.

Mindfulness helps you destress by helping you focus on the present rather than the past or future. Another way to say it would be “an intentional act of present-moment awareness without attachment to an outcome”. To reach this feeling of mindfulness, you’ll need to be kinder to yourself by practicing self-compassion, patience, and acceptance. When you practice mindfulness, you’ll be eliminating your worries including any negative experiences with sleep. So if you’ve only been sleeping four hours each night, don’t let this experience overshadow tonight.

5. Try some aromatherapy.

Essential oils don’t require a prescription and are an affordable, low-effort way to help soothe your senses. Some essential oils have been linked to calming the nerves and are conducive to sleepiness, most notably lavender. Try a wall plug-in or a diffuser to distribute the scent around your room. These oils are generally safe to apply to the skin as well. As you feel yourself slowly drifting into relaxation after trying one or more of the above, you deserve to wrap it up on the best bedding you can get. Memorial Day is approaching, which means plenty of sales, including $250 off of Lull’s premium memory foam mattresses! We know that the weather’s heating up, so we’re letting you know right now that it comes with a cooling top gel layer to ease off the body heat and the consequent tossing and turning. It’s actually got over 42000+ happy reviews, so go ahead and check it out while breathing in the fragrance of your lavender scent diffuser!
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