If you stay up late scrolling through your social media or checking your emails and fretting about the deadlines, then chances are you don’t sleep well.
Before you ask, of course, there is a connection between what you do before you hit the sack and your sleep quality. It also has a say in how fit and fresh you wake up the next morning.
Nighttime routines and rituals are a great way of ensuring that you drift to dreamland soon, have a fun time there, and wake up ready to take on the real world.
Nighttime routines to wakefit
- Say no to devices
We have to start with the biggest problem that stops you from getting a good night’s sleep.
Netflix, checking your Instagram, browsing through Facebook, try and avoid these before going to bed!
Exposing yourself to the blue light of devices at night does serious harm to your natural circadian rhythms.
Our body is designed by nature to become aware and alert when exposed to such light. When we use our phones or our IPads at night, our brain is fooled to believe that it is still daylight. As a result, the body is forced to not doze off but stay awake.
Do yourself a favor and try not using any electronic device at least an hour before you call it a day.
- Read a book
During the one hour that you dodge your devices, you could read a book (obviously not an ebook!).
Reading a few chapters of a book, preferably light-hearted fiction, can aid sleep. It also helps your brain relax by making you enter a world that you don’t inhabit and hence whose problems are not yours to solve. It puts a momentary stop to all your worries and fears.
No wonder reading works like meditation!
- Take a warm bath
Taking a warm shower or a soothing bubble bath an hour before sleep will relax you into bed like nothing else.
By taking a bath, you lower your body temperature slightly below normal, thus making you feel drowsy, which obviously is the best state to be in when you are trying to get some sleep!
- Make a list of things you are grateful for
Practicing gratitude goes a long way in making our hearts feel lighter, which in turn, relaxes us into sleep.
Before going to bed, you can try making a list of all the good things that happened that day and all the people you are grateful to have in your life. If you are the religious kind, then maybe hum out a little prayer for someone you love. If you are an atheist, then you could close your eyes and send the person you love.
Try this exercise for a week, and you will see how the quality of not just your sleep, but your life, changes.
Something very similar to this is to sit with your family. Try sharing with each other all good anecdotes of that day. Maybe you could even pray together, how does that sound for a fun family activity?!
- Tap into your inner self
Meditation is one of the best ways to invite good sleep into your life.
There are several techniques that you can try. Bringing attention to your breathing by watching the breath enter and leave your body through your nose, is one of the best ways. The other way is navel-gazing, also known as Omphaloskepsis.
The 4-7-8 technique is yet another way to calm the mind. Begin by emptying yourself of breath. Now breathe in through the nose for four seconds (count till 4 with your mouth closed). Next, hold the breath for seven seconds. Now exhale through the mouth with a whoosh sound for eight seconds. This must be repeated six to eight times.
Pro tip: After your meditation or breathing session, drink a warm cup of chamomile tea to soothe the nerves and get better sleep.
As BaaBaa, our sleep expert says, “the more you know the better you sleep”.
We hope these sleeping rituals will help you sleep better and wake up fitter.
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