Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success

by Shawn Stevenson

Side-sleeping can be a quick fix for snoring and can help to improve breathing, more so than lying on your back. Plus, sleeping on your side (the left side in particular) has been reported to ease troublesome digestive problems like acid reflux and heartburn. The downside, as most side-sleepers know, is the dreaded “dead-arm” and finger numbness from this position. Sleeping on your arm for too long can cut off bloodflow and nerve function. You can wake up feeling that someone played a prank on you and slathered your arm with novocaine.

Shoulder lean: Instead of sleeping with your shoulder directly under you, move it forward slightly to avoid constriction of your shoulder and arm muscles. Pillow proposition: Make sure that your head isn’t propped up too high on pillows. You want to ensure that you’re maintaining the natural straight position of your spine with a pillow that supports your neck, but doesn’t raise your head too much. For those with back pain: Experts recommend sleeping on your side with a soft pillow between your knees if you have a history of back problems. This helps to stabilize your spine and alleviate pressure from your hips and lower back.

you need to replace your mattress every 7 years,

Chemicals in conventional mattress flame retardants include: •PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers): Used in mattresses before 2004. However, since it was determined that these chemicals are toxic to your liver, thyroid, and nervous system, mattress companies have phased use out. •Boric acid: Has known carcinogenic properties. •Melamine resin (contains formaldehyde): The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified formaldehyde as a probable human carcinogen under conditions of prolonged exposure.

But we also become desensitized to smells very quickly. Our olfactory senses down-regulate our experience of smells rapidly whether they are good or not so good. This is why it’s often said to stop and smell the roses, because you won’t be able to notice them very long if you don’t.

There is a great quote that says, “My bed is a magical place where I suddenly remember everything I was supposed to do.”

What I’m going to share with you is not just a tool to help you improve your sleep; it’s a powerful tool to help transform your life overall. The inner chatter that you experience is a result of the stress and untamed busyness

the day. Now, more than ever, with the constant flow of information coming at you, it’s important to have a practice to help you buffer that stress. That important practice is meditation.

Meditation is like a tonic. A tonic is something that you can use every day, and the results continue to get better and better. The more you meditate, the more calm and presence you’ll have in your day-to-day life.

After 8 weeks, compared to a control group, the subjects who had been trained in meditation showed larger changes in the size (amplitude) of their alpha waves when asked to focus on one specific thing. Essentially, their focus was stronger and deeper than at the beginning of the study. Researchers at Harvard Medical School have also found that meditation alters the structure of your brain, thickening the regions associated with attention and sensory processing.

Beta waves (15 to 40 Hz): This is the brain rhythm in the normal state of wakefulness, associated with thinking, conscious problem-solving, and attention toward the outer world. You are most likely in a “beta state” while reading this right now. Alpha waves (9 to 14 Hz): When you are truly relaxed, your brain waves slow from the hyper-alertness of beta waves to the gentle waves of alpha. The “alpha state” is where meditation begins, and it’s a brain wave frequency that heightens your imagination, visualization, memory, learning, and concentration. This is the gateway to the subconscious mind and reprogramming your thinking.

Theta waves (4 to 8 Hz): Theta brain waves are present during deep meditation and light sleep, including the important REM dream state. This is the domain of your subconscious and only experienced momentarily as you drift off to sleep from alpha or wake from deep sleep (delta waves). We are more receptive to insights and information beyond our normal conscious awareness in this state. Some experts state that theta meditation amplifies intuition and other extrasensory perception skills.

Delta waves (1 to 3 Hz): The delta frequency is the slowest of the frequencies and is experienced in deep, dreamless sleep. It is also seen occasionally in very experienced meditators. The delta state is critical to the body’s healing processes. Much of our regeneration and healing happen in this brainwave state, making getting enough deep sleep critical to our survival.

CALM IT DOWN POWER TIP #1

If you decide to meditate at night to help you wind down for sleep, try doing it before you get into the bed, not while you’re in bed. Again, the neuro-association you want to have with your bed is sleep (and sex if you’re too sexy for this party), and that’s it. You can sit by your bedside and meditate for a few minutes, then slide your way into bed for a great night’s sleep. CALM IT DOWN POWER TIP #2 Use guided meditations to help you get acclimated when you’re first starting out. They can be really helpful for extremely busy-minded people because your attention goes to the instructions along the way. Try out the guided meditations in the bonus resource guide.

POWER TIP #3 If you do want to use a simple meditation/mindfulness practice to help you fall asleep while lying in bed, try this: •Lie peacefully on your back with a comfortable pillow to support your head if you need one. •Take a deep breath, breathing in for 5 seconds, holding for 5 seconds, then breathing out for 5 seconds, and holding out for 5 seconds. Do this sequence three times. •Now shift your focus to breathing and circulating that oxygen to your toes. Visualize the air coming in through your nose then traveling down to your toes, and then back out (following the same breathing count

CALM IT DOWN POWER TIP #4 If you’ve found that you are consistently waking up in the middle of the night, there could be a couple of potential causes. The most obvious culprit is abnormal hormone cycles. As we’ve discussed in previous chapters, optimizing your hormones through smart nutrition, exercise, and following the tips in this book is key to setting your hormones back on track. Another issue could be an unknown or unresolved sleep apnea. It can be sort of like a really, really weak person is choking you—not anything to blatantly hurt you, but just enough to annoy you and wake you up. Losing weight is key here, as you know, but you may want to work with a physician to get this checked out. A few other issues to consider are low blood sugar (as we discussed in Chapter 13), problems in the gastrointestinal tract (as we discussed in Chapter 7), and (a big one) psychological stress. With all of the stressors surrounding us today, it can be overwhelming for just about any of us. Having a smart meditation practice and working on the things that

DOWN POWER TIP #6 There are also more “active” forms of meditation that you can do to see many of the same benefits without sitting in one place. The Journal of Health Psychology published a study demonstrating that doing a daily qigong practice (pronounced chee-gong) for just 1 month was enough to increase sleep duration and other factors of psychological well-being. Qigong is a more than 4,000-year-old form of

meditation and energy practice involving controlled

breathing and movement exercises. It’s growing rapidly in popularity today as more and more studies are advocating its benefits. Another study published in the International Journal of Neuroscience found that a 6-week qigong practice improved the sleep quality and walking abili...

Chamomile: This herb has been used for thousands of years to treat everything from skin disorders to heart disease to inflammation. Today, numerous studies are proving the true efficacy of this ancient plant. For example, a study highlighted in Molecular Medicine Reports showed that chamomile flavonoids have significant anti-inflammatory properties and trigger COX-2 enzyme activity that reduces physical pain. The study also asserts that chamomile can be used as a mild sedative and sleep inducer.

The sedative effects appear to be due in large part to a particular flavonoid called apigenin. This compound is abundant in chamomile tea, and it binds to certain GABA receptors in the brain, naturally calming nervous system activity.

Chamomile is an excellent tea to have before bed. Simply have a standard-size cup of tea with an organic, prepacked

Kava kava is well known for its sedative properties and is commonly used to treat sleeplessness and fatigue.

Preparing a cup of kava kava tea can be part of a relaxing evening ritual.

Many experts agree that melatonin supplementation can be very effective for some people. But what’s critical to understand about melatonin is that it is an actual hormone you’re taking. And just like any other hormone therapy, such as testosterone therapy or estrogen therapy, it comes with a greater risk of side effects and potential problems.

One of the main issues with melatonin supplementation is that it can potentially down-regulate your body’s natural ability to utilize melatonin on its own. A study published in the Journal of Biological Rhythms discovered that faulty timing or large doses of melatonin can

cause desensitization of melatonin receptors. Essentially, you can start shutting down your body’s abilit...

In 2008, a study from the University of North Texas found that students who identified themselves as morning people earned significantly higher grades.

In fact, the early risers had a full grade point higher than the night owls in the study with a 3.5 to 2.5 GPA respectively. Waking up earlier obviously isn’t the only factor in getting good grades, but it’s definitely a correlation to take notice of.

Other studies suggest that night-lovers tend to be smarter and more creative than morning types, have a better sense of humor, and can be more outgoing in some instances. The big issue, according to the Harvard Business Review, is that night owls are out of sync with the typical corporate

schedule and miss out on critical opportunities more often because their timing is off.

Rather than making the decision to suddenly get up at 6:00 a.m. when you normally get up at 8:00 a.m., take gradual 15-minute increments off your wake-up time until you get to your desired destination.

This is a much more graceful way to do it. Oftentimes when people decide to get up early, they throw their sleep cycles into such a shocked state that they’re more tired and irritated, plus they’ve created a neuro-association between more pain and waking up early. This causes them to burn through their willpower within days and revert to their old habits before they know it.

Get excited. The night before, think of one thing you’d like to do in the morning that excites you. It could be something you want to write, or a new yoga routine, or meditation, or something you’d like to read, or a work project that has you fired up. In the morning, when you wake up, remember that exciting thing, and that will help motivate you to get up.

Jump out of bed. Yes, jump out of bed. With enthusiasm. Jump up and spread your arms wide as if to say, “Yes! I am alive! I’m ready to tackle the day with open arms and the gusto of a driven maniac.” Seriously, it works.

Put your alarm across the room. If it’s right next to you, you’ll hit the snooze button. So put it on the other side of the room, so you’ll have to get up (or jump up) to turn it off. Then, get into the habit of going straight to the bathroom to pee once you’ve turned it off. Once you’re done peeing, you’re much less likely to go back to bed. At this point, remember your exciting thing. If you didn’t jump out of bed, at least stretch your arms wide and greet the day.

Here’s one more bonus suggestion to beat the urge to go back to bed, and instead energize your body to be ready to take on the day: Wake up your senses. When you get out of bed, get your senses stimulated with something good. A common thing to do is to get that coffee or tea brewing and drink it. The smell, taste, and touch are all enlivening for your senses.

EARLY TO RISE POWER TIP #1 Go to bed within 30 minutes of the same time each night and wake up at the same time each day. Many people in our modern world try to “catch up” on sleep and sleep in on the days that they don’t have to get up for work. By throwing off your sleep schedule like this, you’ll usually find that you’re more tired than you want to be on your off days, and really dreading getting

out of bed once Monday rolls around. Remember, a consistent sleep schedule is important for your health. Try to avoid staying up much later just because you’re off the next day. Actually go to bed and get up so that you can use that day to do the things you want. I promise you, Netflix does still work during the daytime, and you can get a mini-marathon in without the same side effects you’ll experience if you’d stayed up all night. To stay within your body’s desired sleep pattern, you don’t have to go to bed at exactly 10:02 p.m. each night, but do your best to make it within 30 minutes of what your ideal sleep time is.

Leo Babauta’s gradual method works on the other side of getting optimized sleep, too: getting to bed earlier and getting more “money time” sleep. As we saw in Chapter 6, you will get even more hormonal benefits, enzymatic repair and activity, and overall physical and mental rejuvenation by getting to bed earlier and capitalizing on sleep between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m.

If you’ve been habitually staying up until 1 o’clock in the morning, suddenly deciding to go to sleep 2 hours earlier could end up being a rocky transition if you try to do it all in one night. Instead, utilize the gradual method, also referred to as advancing the internal clock, to gradually move your bedtime up a little bit earlier until the desired bedtime is reached. If your goal is to be in bed by 11:00 p.m. and you’re currently getting to bed at 1:00 a.m.,

simply move your bedtime up by 15 minutes every couple of days until you hit the goal you really want. Of course, you can rip the Band-Aid off and go early to bed and early to rise cold turkey, but this is a much more graceful way for you to get there...

test subjects receiving massage therapy experienced improved sleep and an increase in serotonin levels.

Even though we know that massage is a great remedy for stress, people are often shocked to find out the other benefits that massage can deliver. Here are just a few of the notable benefits: •Normalization of blood pressure •Reduction of inflammatory cytokines •Reduced pain •Improved mobility •Improved symptoms of anxiety and depression •Reduction in migraines and headaches •Improved digestion and elimination •Reduction of stress hormones •Improved immune system function

Greek physician Hippocrates, said, “The physician must be experienced in many things, but assuredly in rubbing.”

Acupressure (a blend of the words acupuncture and pressure) is a form of therapy that’s been used for more than 2,000 years. According to researchers, there are specific places in your body where nerves relay signals to other organs and glands of the body if they are engaged. Acupressure is essentially a method of sending a signal to the body (by needle or other means) to “turn on” its own self-healing or regulatory mechanisms. It’s not really radical to understand at all. We all know that every cell in our bodies is managed by a governing force that is our brain. Every cell, tissue, and organ can give and receive data across this information superhighway that is your body.

The acupressure point used in the study was HT 7, which is right under the palm of your

hand near the edge of your wrist. In another, double-blind, placebo-controlled study on insomnia patients, manipulation of the HT 7 point over the course of the study increased urinary melatonin metabolites to normal levels. Basically, the researchers could see from th...

Other forms of acupressure-based therapies to check out are EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and traditional acupuncture.