Disclaimer! Based on Personal Experience
Are you suffering to sleep faster? Do you feel disturbed to sleep?
If the answer to the above two is Yes then this article is dedicated only to you. Let’s dive deep into this.
Sleep Disturbance mostly happens because of a series of bad habits. In this article, we will replace those habits with healthy habits and will try some practical sleeping tricks.
Don’ts: Habits you should avoid
Don’t use any electronic devices like PC, smartphone, etc. at least 1 hour before going to the bed
Due to the modern age, these devices become an integral part of our lives for everyday tasks. We do everything from entertainment to work everything on these. But we also have to consider our health especially sleep side by side. Don’t use any electronic devices like smartphones, computers/laptops, tablets, etc. at least 1 hour before sleep.
Due to prolonged looking at the screen of these devices and the emission of different rays, we can’t sleep properly and forget about sleeping faster.
For this, you can use an alarm to know when to turn off these devices.
For example, every day I set an alarm 1 hour before sleep. This notifies me to cut off from every device and switch to only hard copy books. This is the primary reason why most of us don’t get sleepy or can’t sleep faster.
Don’t overeat
Mostly, due to saving foods from throwing into a dustbin or any delicious food items we overeat. On some rare occasions overeating is okay. But the word rare says everything!
Overeating close to sleep is not okay by any means. Not only it will delay your sleep so longer but also cause bloating, gas problems types of health issues.
There are no standard methods to measure overeating. It’s just an experience of feeling after eating. So you should know when to stop. Also don’t use/watch smartphones while eating. This also causes overeating in your unconsciousness.
Don’t eat junk food at least close to sleeping time
You should know junk food or fat requires the highest time to digest followed by protein and carbohydrate. Since your body is spending most of its time digesting, obviously your sleep time will delay a lot. So avoid those foods in your sleep time range to sleep faster.
Don’t do any heavy tasks or hard work requiring tasks
Don’t do any heavy or hard tasks before sleep. This should follow strictly to prepare your body to calm and so to sleep faster.
Don’t Sleep with legs crisscrossed
Every time try to sleep stretch your legs straight. Don’t crisscross. Otherwise, doing so will put too much pressure on the nerves in your legs. Thus, It will make you very uncomfortable to sleep and will consequently affect your overall health.
Dos: Habits you should follow
Fix your Sleeping time
Suppose, you used to sleep at 11 pm at night. Then continue this for the next 7 days. You will wonder to see that your wake-up time is fixed automatically after that!
Now you may ask why I need to fix my sleep time as well as wake up time? Well, doing so will activate your internal biological clock. This means, your body will tell you when it’s time to sleep and wake up!
As you’re sleeping at 11 pm at night every time, your body will automatically set its sleep time according to that. So when it’s close to 11 pm (like 10 to 30 mins before 11 pm), every time it will give you a signal of sleeping. Thus, it will make you sleep faster!
Make a habit of reading books every night for 1 hour before going to the bed
This habit is one of the most best and effective ways to sleep like lighting. Just pick up any favorite book (obviously a physical book) you want to read and read till 30 mins before sleep (you can be flexible here a little). Doing this will not only enrich your knowledge but also give you calmness and softness to sleep (keep reading below why).
Just remember these two things while doing this:
- Study/Read under the soft table lamp or any lamp that focuses on a particular place. Don’t read under the room lamp. It won’t create that calmness and softness to sleep. Primarily, it’s because under a room lamp/light lets you focus on too many things. Thus, it won’t create that calmness. Contrary to this, table lamp except in a particular place makes most of the surroundings darker. Undoubtedly, a darker room is ideal for faster sleep.
- Don’t read any random book that you don’t like at all. Instead of calmness, it will give you boredom and irritation which is the opposite of sleeping faster.
Stay in darker or dim light
Just 5 mins before your sleep stay sitting calm in a darker room or in a dim light room. Doing so will activate your internal biological clock and signal your body saying: “It’s time for sleep, dear!”. As our natural biological clock, light tells our body to wake up or remain wake up. Where dark or dim light tells our body to sleep.
Make a habit of doing meditation
No other thing than meditation can make a more peaceful state in your body. If you’re a beginner meditate for 5 mins at least. Day by day, by making a habit try to increase this timing to 30 mins.
Flip your pillow by 180 degree
Sometimes you may get sleepy a little bit lately for various reasons. As a result, after sleeping for a couple of minutes, you will feel your pillow warm. This is because your body’s heat were transferred to the pillow. I am damn sure you won’t find any comfortable sleeping on that. It may prolong your sleep time. So, the solution?
Just turn/rotate your pillow (on which you sleep) by 180 degrees. No heat from your body (especially your head) can transfer/reach that side. Thus, you will get the colder side of the pillow.
Try to sleep straight (not on the left side or right side)
Uhh…sleeping straight? What does that mean, bro?
Well, see these two pics (ex1):
Are you sleeping in one of these positions? If yes, then try sleeping straight like this (ex2):
At first, you will struggle. But continuously sleeping straight, you will get a really faster sleep. Ok, I understand! Then what’s the problem sleeping within that position?
Firstly, sleeping in the above two (ex1) isn’t the ideal position of sleep as all of your body parts aren’t in balance. Secondly, as the body isn’t well balanced the mass of it is not well distributed. As a result, you are putting most of your mass on one side and very less of your mass on the opposite side.
Last but not least, due to this imbalance position our body organs and nerves affect negatively. That’s why the straight position is considered the ideal and comfortable sleep position.
Wear comfortable and clean clothes according to your monsoon
Always wear clean and comfortable clothes while sleeping. Separate sleeping clothes are ideal and recommended.
Don’t wear any dirty, regular day and tight clothes. Dirty and regular clothes contain sweat, bad smells, and also germs. In no way, it can be considered for sleep forget about good sleep.
On the other hand, due to modern-day fashion and trends, most of our generation is seen wearing tight clothes. This is mostly due to showing the perfect shape of our body in front of others. But here we forget about our health. Wearing those tight and synthetic fabricated clothes (mostly) causes skin irritation; squeezes our nerves, veins, and arteries; affects our overall health.
So not only at the time of your sleep but also on your regular day, always wear a little loose and 100% cotton fabricated clothes. It will allow proper airflow inside-put the body. Thus it will make you comfortable throughout the day.
Always keep your bed sheet and pillow cover clean
Like clothes, always keep your bed sheet, pillow cover, and overall your room clean. No one wants to sleep in a dirty and smelly bed, right?
Eat at least 2 hours before your sleep
This is one of the vital habits to sleep faster. Many of us sleep just after our meal. People do this by saying they don’t have enough time to do extra kinds of stuff. So they want to and will sleep as quickly as possible without following anything.
Unfortunately, it happens mostly the opposite.
First of all, agree that we all have 24 hours of time. If someone says they don’t have enough time to do anything. This is mostly due to their poor time management. That’s why eating 2 hours before your sleep concept is here. From birth, our human bodies are designed to do one task at a time.
To give you an example: close your nose and mouth by hand to stop breathing. After a minute, now try to think about something like your career, a particular person or place, etc.
Can you think?
Hardly!
Ok, now give you release! (start your breathing again)
What’s the reason for this?
Because at that time your whole body was optimizing to breathe. Getting oxygen became the most vital task for the body. So it was putting all of its energy to breathe. That’s why you can’t think of any random thing except breathing at that time.
A similar incident occurs when you go to sleep immediately after eating. Your body is already using energy to digest the food and you’re adding another task to it i.e. sleeping. It becomes so challenging for your body to handle both tasks at once. Therefore 2 hours of break between your eating and sleep is necessary.
Stay calm
At the end of the day, don’t give too much pressure to sleep. Just follow the above according to your customization, stay calm, and stay in your normal state. You will automatically get a good and faster sleep!
Yes, I do agree work tension and stress may not get you to stay calm.
Here what I think is: stress and chill is an integral part of our life. The absence of any one of them will make our life dull and boring. As both will stay with us forever why bother about them? Just chill and enjoy your sleep!
Summary
Don’ts
- Don’t use any electronic devices like PC, smartphone, etc. at least 1 hour before going to the bed
- Don’t overeat
- Don’t eat junk food at least close to sleeping time
Dos
- Fix your Sleeping time
- Make a habit of reading books every night for 1 hour before going to the bed
- Stay in darker or dim light
- Make a habit of doing meditation
- Flip your pillow by 180 degree
- Flip your pillow
- Try to sleep straight (not on the right side or the left side)
- Wear comfortable and clean clothes according to your monsoon
- Always keep your bed sheet and pillow clean
- Eat at least 2 hours before your sleep
- Additional things that I practice every day
- Rotate your pillow by 180 degree
- Don’t Sleeps with legs crossed
- Stay clam
