The topic of sleep came up in a breakout session a few Sundays ago at my progressive Palo Alto church which I attend by Zoom. I'm not a sleep expert but both my husband and son have sleep apnea so it's definitely an interest of mine.
I feel lucky that I generally get good sleep which is really important for your health. To learn more about sleep, I recommend Matthew Walker's book "Why We Sleep."
#1 Go out as early in the day that you can and exercise. Take a walk or a bike ride and enjoy the sun, which helps your body naturally produce more melatonin, the sleep hormone.
I started doing this when I started working from home and it became even more essential because of the pandemic. I just feel better when I go outside as I would feel “stir crazy” without leaving my house.
#2 Take a warm bath at night to relax yourself. This is guilt inducing when you live in a state like California which is in a serious drought. I save the water and use a bucket to flush the toilet so at least I’m not wasting water.
#3 Try chanting. I learned this after getting free healing touch services (yes, remotely!) from Stanford as a cancer patient. The Reiki master who worked with me for over 8 weeks gave me chanting homework. I found that doing this in bed right before I sleep really helped soothe me. Later another meditation teacher told me that singing and chanting soothe the vagus nerve, which helps regulate blood pressure, heart rate, and digestion.
You might want to join a choir, too! My church choir is still singing; they just sing into their computers, record it and then someone syncs it and voila.
Here's the chanting link my teacher gave me to clear my chakras, the 7 energy centers of the body.
Very nice blog. Thank you. Hope sleep is good. I go to bed at 10:00pm fall asleep at 3:00am and wake at 6:00am. Doctor says thats my brain's sleep pattern. It will change. He did not say exactly how. Back to reading. Take care up there in HMB.