Teach Yourself To Relax and Sleep

According to some statistics, 1 in 4 adults experience sleeping difficulties at some stage in their lives. Billions are spent on sleeping pills and other forms of medication each year. However many doctors believe that sleeping medication serves as a bandaid rather than healing the core of the problem.

In addition, many people are looking for alternatives to sleeping medication because they are worried about the habit-forming nature of this kind of remedy and the potential side effects.

I have developed an online course to help with one particular aspect of sleeping deprivation, namely, insomnia that is caused by emotional stress, racing thoughts or an overactive mind.  It’s called Meditations for Sleep, Stress Relief and Relaxation.

I wanted to create a short course that people would find simple and accessible. It lasts for three weeks but you can take it at a slower pace if you need to.

Insomnia is a global problem and this is an online course so it’s convenient for people to study at a time that is suitable for them no matter what time zone or which part of the world they live in.

Meditations for Sleep is held on a special membership site. There is the option of paying by two monthly instalments.

The course particularly focuses on the problem of how to relax when your mind cannot stop jumping from one subject to another or when you are worrying endlessly about a particular challenge that is dominating your daily life.

It deals both with the physical relaxation of the body and with mental relaxation and emotional stress release in equal parts.

All the techniques in my course were developed by medical physicians to deal with stress-related problems. The techniques have been researched, adapted, evolved and proven successful by their peers and successors.

I have combined the techniques and adapted them specifically for the purposes of aiding the problems that are caused by sleep deprivation.

However the course is not only for people who are suffering with sleeping difficulties.  It is also suitable for people who are experiencing daily stress which prevents them from being able to relax at any time.

There are also tools and techniques that you can learn which are helpful for dealing effectively with the external circumstances that may be keeping you awake or keeping you at a high level of stress.

Better sleep helps to improve emotional health and well-being and helps to prevent the development of serious illnesses relating to the brain and heart.

Meditation has also been proven to help improve emotional and well-being as well as being an aid to beat insomnia.

However meditation can seem impossible and unattractive to people who lead busy lives and who have very busy minds.

The guided meditation recordings and instructions on this course help to bypass the barriers of the busy and stressed-out conscious mind and tap into the power of the receptive unconscious.  This shortcut speeds up our ability to relax the body and mind, de-stress and fall asleep more quickly.

If you would like to get more information about Meditations for Sleep, Stress Relief and Relaxation, click here to visit the membership site and watch the introductory video.

You can also register for the free Get More Sleep Web Seminar series to get short audio and video presentations containing tips, strategies and information to help with falling asleep and staying asleep naturally.

What is REM sleep?

REM sleep is Rapid Eye Movement sleep.

The eye movements that occur during REM sleep suggest that the dreaming process is similar to watching a film.

REM dreams are visual, usually containing involved and complicated plots whereas non-REM dreams tend to be based on thoughts that can be repetitive and obsessive – like worrying about something that you’ve lost during the day.

The most intense dream period occurs in the early hours of the morning.

Some people suffer from REM behaviour disorder. During REM sleep, most of us are unable to move. However people with the REM disorder may dramatically act out their dreams and injure themselves or others.

Why do we need REM sleep?

REM sleep helps the brain to construct long-term memories.  Information you have learnt, absorbed and acquired during the day is consolidated during this stage of sleep. This makes learning easier.

REM sleep also helps with the development of the central nervous system whichgoverns our reaction and sensitivity to physical pain.

Sleep, Dreams and Depression

Studies have shown that some people with depression may pass too quickly from Stage 3 and 4 into the REM stage of sleep. The REM stage of sleep for people with depressive disorders may last too long and can be much more intense.

This then affects the way that they construct their emotional memories and can make them prone to focusing more on painful memories and events during their waking hours.

Tests have shown that different types of meditation may help to ease some of the problems that are associated with depression and lack of sleep.

Guided meditation may be suitable for people who find it a challenge to quieten their minds.  With guided meditation, you carry out the process whilst listening to instructions as you go along, sometimes with a teacher or alternatively with an audio recording.

Listen to a short free sample meditation which is aimed at relaxing the body, mind and spirit.

To access the meditation, enter your email address in the box below:

Our Sleep Cycle: The Science Behind Sleep

The following excerpt is adapted from my ebook Banish Insomnia Now:

There are five stages of sleep.

Stage 1

This is a period of Light Sleep when you can easily be woken. Your eye and body movements slow down during this stage.

Stage 2

After about ten minutes of light sleep, we tend to move into Stage 2 where the brainwaves move slower and eye movements cease. The heart rate slows down and the body’s temperature decreases.

Stage 3

The period of deep sleep begins. During this stage, the brainwaves alternate between very slow and faster movements.

Exercise during the day helps to promote this stage of sleep. This is the rejuvenating stage of sleep that helps us to feel refreshed when we wake up in the morning.

This stage of sleep also releases the growth hormone in children.

Stage 4

This is the period of deepest sleep when the brain produces slow moving delta waves.

During deep sleep, the cortex, which is the largest part of the brain, enters a stage of recovery. The cortex helps to govern thought and action.

If we miss out on this stage of deep sleep, we are liable to wake up feeling moody, forgetful and irritable. Our concentration will be poor and we will be unable to give proper attention to tasks.

Sleepwalking, bedwetting and “sleep terror” may begin from this stage of sleep.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine combine Stages 3 and 4 into one category called Slow Wave Sleep.

Stage 5

This is the period of REM sleep when dreaming occurs. It starts about 90 minutes after we fall asleep.

During this period, we breathe faster and our eyes begin to move rapidly (hence the name Rapid Eye Movement sleep). Our brain activity intensifies and our muscles become motionless.

Dreams during the REM sleep stage tend to be very visual with the most vivid dreams occuring during the early hours of the morning.

REM sleep takes up about 20-25% of our sleeping time.

We should pass through the non-dream and dream stages of the sleep cycle about five times a night, although this varies from individual to individual.

To read more, purchase my ebook: Banish Insomnia Now.

Banish Insomnia Now Ebook

Learn to beat insomnia without drugs, pills or side effects. Natural remedies. A holistic approach. Instant download. Delivered by email.

Price: £7.97

USD $12.83

If you’d like general information about how to get fall asleep naturally, register for a free web seminar series made up of short audio and video presentations with tips for getting more sleep. To register, enter your email address in the form below:

HO’OPONOPONO song

Ho’oponopono Song for Healing

How a Stressed PA Beat Insomnia

Magda (not her real name) was 32 years old when she began to suffer from insomnia.

She was frustrated because she couldn’t get more than four hours sleep a night.

Read how Magda was able to go from sleeping less than four hours a night to sleeping for up to seven hours  just by adopting a few simple techniques.

The material includes a partial transcript from one of Magda’s coaching sessions plus an overview of the step-by-step process that Magda used to get herself to fall asleep naturally and easily.

To read the Case Study in full, click here:

http://ways-to-sleep.com/info/stressed-PA-beats-insomnia.pdf

Insomnia: The Fears and Frustrations

Here are some of the common challenges that people with sleeping difficulties experience.

If you have problems with sleeping deprivation, do any of the following fears and frustrations apply to you?

Frustrations

Many people with insomnia report an inability to switch off at the end of the day. They are unable to stop racing thoughts. Some are constantly “hyped up”  and mentally overstimulated. Others feel the need to burn the candle at both ends.

Even though some people feel constantly tired, they cannot sleep and then they have no energy during the day.

When they do manage to fall asleep, the slightest sound wakes them up again.

They feel very isolated because they spend nights lying awake while everyone else that they live with is asleep. A major issue is that the debilitating nature of sleep deprivation is sometimes not understood or is underestimated by the people around them.

They often feel obliged to paper over the cracks with prescribed medication as this seems to be the quickest way to get sleep but are worried that it may become habit-forming.

They feel constantly stressed due to lack of sleep.

They worry about the bags or dark circles around their eyes, feeling haggard and ageing prematurely.

Fears

Sleep deprivation affects the mood. Some fear the impact that their mood swings may have on their children, partners or family members.

They may worry that they could develop a psychological condition such as depression. Others have heard anecdotes about people who start hallucinating after a long period of chronic insomnia and they worry that the same thing could happen to them.

They also fear developing problems related to their physical health due to lack of sleep.

A big concern is that they may fall asleep at the wrong time such as at work during the day, when operating machinery or when they are driving.

They fear of making serious mistakes in the workplace that could cost them their career.

If they usually have bad dreams, they are afraid to go to sleep in case they experience nightmares.

Some people have somnophobia which is a fear of the act of sleeping itself.

Natural Solutions

These fears and frustrations can create a vicious circle as the more people worry about their situation, the more difficult it is for their brainwave frequencies to slow down and initate the sleep state.

There are many natural solutions that can help with sleeping difficulties.

Physical relaxation techniques and guided self-hypnosis can help to bypass the anxieties and fears that can prevent us from entering the sleep state.

To find out more about training the brain to enter the sleep state, visit the Guided Meditations page and find out about three guided meditation recordings that can help to induce physical relaxation, stress relief and sleep.

Meditations for Sleep, Stress Relief and Relaxation

Get a Free Guided Meditation

Meditation is a great way to help you to relax, sleep or release stress. But it can be a challenge to quiet down our minds to enter the focused state of meditation.

Guided meditations can often help with this sort of difficulty.

You can listen to a short sample guided meditation for relaxing your body, mind and spirit.

To access the free guided meditation, enter your email address in the form below:

Sleep and the Monkey Mind

Here is another chance to listen to the audio presentation:  Calming the Monkey Mind and get for practical tips and strategies to relax your mind and get to sleep quickly.

The phrase ‘Monkey Mind’ is a Buddhist term which can mean uncontrollable, unsettled, erratic, confused or indecisive. Just as a monkey jumps from tree to tree, so our minds can jump from one topic to another, seemingly outside of our control, no matter how hard we try to stop it.  Almost as if our mind has a mind of its own!

In this audio recording, you will get:

• 6 tips to get your body and mind into a state of deep relaxation so that you can go to sleep

• Information about the biological reasons that can cause our thoughts to get stuck on a mental treadmill

• Information about 3 states of consciousness and how these states help us to sleep or keep us awake
• You’ll also learn why trying to empty your mind can sometimes be the worse thing you can do

To access the recording immediately, please enter your email address in the form below:

What type of insomnia do you have?

What type of insomnia do you have?

Insomnia is usually defined as trouble falling sleeping, trouble staying asleep or waking up too early.

But there are many different reasons or causes of insomnia.

Secondary Insomnia

For example, Sally experiences insomnia because chronic back pain keeps her awake. Sally suffers from secondary insomnia.

Secondary insomnia is where your sleeping difficulties are a sort of side effect of another illness or condition such as depression, chronic pain, asthma or menopausal symptoms.

Primary Insomnia

Richard is now in his thirties. But he’s been unable to sleep since he was four years old. Apart from never having been able to sleep well, Richard is in quite good health. He doesn’t have a stressful job and he lives in a quiet area.

Richard suffers from a form of primary insomnia.

Primary insomnia refers to long term sleeping problems that can’t be attributed to an illness, noise in the environment or a psychological illness.

Idiopathic Insomnia

Idiopathic insomnia is a rare form of primary insomnia. This is where someone has had trouble sleeping since their childhood in spite of being in otherwise good health, suffering no stress, not having bad sleeping habits and not having any psychological conditions. Experts say that this form of insomnia may be due to an overactive awakening system in the body. But there are no known causes.

Psychophysiological Insomnia

Charmaine’s inability to sleep was first triggered off when she began having problems with her boss. She was unable to sleep due to the worry and stress of the situation. Charmaine changed her job and is now happier in her work. Unfortunately she’s still unable to sleep and her anxiety about her bullying boss has now been replaced by an obsession with being unable to sleep.

Charmaine, like Richard, suffers from primary insomnia. However she suffers from a condition called psychophysiological insomnia. People with this condition have a tendency to worry in general. But their worry that they won’t be able to sleep tends to become a self-fulfilling prophesy
The build up of tension around the idea of not being able to sleep can develop into an obsession and a persistent lack of sleep.

Finding Solutions

Understanding the type of insomnia you have can help to move you towards a solution.

For example, if you have secondary insomnia, you work mainly on alleviating the illness or condition that is preventing you from getting to sleep.

With primary insomnia, you may focus on “retraining” the deeply ingrained habits that brain through learning cognitive behaviour techniques or relaxation techniques.

If you’d like more information about getting the brain to enter into a state of sleep, visit my website: Meditate2Sleep.com and pick up a free audio recording.

Do I have a serious problem with insomnia?

Do I have a serious problem with insomnia?

Sometimes people are unsure about whether or not they have a serious problem with insomnia – especially if they don’t know whether it may just be a symptom of another problem such as stress or back pain rather than a problem with sleeping itself.

So here are some tips and questions to assess yourself before you follow up the matter with your doctor.

For a week or two, keep a sleep log recording how long you slept each night, how many times you woke up and observe whether there is a pattern or whether your sleeping habits are random.

You can also expand your sleep log to include what you ate that day, and what you drank, or any workplace or family situation that was going through your mind as you were lying in bed trying to sleep.

And here are some general questions that you can ask yourself.

When did you first begin to experience sleeping problems? What was going on in your life at the time? And what is going on now?

Do you have a problem falling asleep? Or do you have a problem staying asleep? Or is it a combination of both?

Do you continually have to work changing shift patterns?

How much alcohol do you consume a week?

If you are you a smoker, how much cigarettes did you smoke?

Do you exercise and if so, what time of day do you exercise?

Do you experience mood swings?

When you do get to sleep, do you have bad dreams?

This is just a first step in moving towards a solution to your insomnia problem.

Because the solution to insomnia is often connected to the cause. And there are many causes of insomnia. Matching the wrong solution to a particular cause is one of the many reasons why sleeping remedies don’t work for many people.

Sometimes a one size fits all approach to solving this challenge can’t resolve the issue.

If you’d like more information about relieving insomnia and stress naturally, you might like to visit my website: Meditate2Sleep.com and pick up a free audio recording with sleep and stress management tips.