Say Goodbye to sleepless nights
On behalf of Ocean Village, Dr Chris Idzikowski has prepared this guide to sleeping well, with hints and tips and getting a better night’s sleep.
1. Plan to sleep well 2. Healthy living 3. Sleep diaries 4.Top tips
5. Siestas 6. Yoga 7. Meditation 8. Breathing
9. Other techniques 10. Holidays
Modern life brings many pressures to bear on our sleep pattern. Work, possibly at odd hours or across time-zones, long commutes (often by car), social pressures, bringing up a family – all these cut into our sleep time. But we can’t keep losing sleep without some reaction. Sleep in some ways is like breathing: it can be something we do voluntarily to some extent, but eventually the brain takes over and re-imposes a rhythm.
Sometimes, however, the sleep pattern can’t fully re-adjust, resulting in sufficient sleep to survive, but not enough for the individual to feel or perform well.
And another fact is emerging. Industrialised societies that are getting less sleep are also those societies that are becoming more overweight. Research is beginning to indicate that voluntarily shortening sleep is associated with poor appetite control, leading to obesity – definitely another good reason for learning to sleep well!
A holiday is obviously a way of doing this, not only to reduce stress, but also for learning how to reduce worry and actively allowing enough time for sleep.
1. Plan for a good night’s sleep
Try not to worry about the amount of sleep you are getting. Getting over-focussed on your sleep is a good way of preventing it from happening. Don't TRY to sleep – trying is an active – sleep is passive.
• plan your timetable so that you have time to sleep
• schedule your sleep for a time that your brain and body are most ready for it
• create routines and rituals which you can associate with going to sleep
• have an environment that promotes sleep
• prepare your body so that it can sleep comfortably (don't overeat or drink too much!)
• prepare your mind so that it can let go of waking thoughts. Remember sleep is about letting go. It's not an activity.
2. Healthy living
A healthy lifestyle is a must to aid sleep. Try the following:
• Try to exercise for at least 30 minutes, 3-5 days each week. The exercise should be sufficiently intense so that you are a little out of breath but still able to hold a conversation with a companion
• keep to a sensible diet
3. Keep a sleep diary
· This is a great way to work out the average time it takes you to fall asleep and for how long so you can keep track of how you’re doing over time – you may be surprised to find you’re getting more sleep than you thought. A sleep diary is very useful because just one bad night's sleep can hugely distort how one feels the next day. It can feel as if the problem has gone on forever whereas it may occur only infrequently.
Note down the following:
• What time you go to bed
• What time you usually turn the light out to go to sleep
• What time you think you fall asleep
• Roughly the times and duration of awakenings during the night
• What time you finally awoke
• What time you got up
Even if your sleep pattern is poor during the working week, a sleep diary can help you work out your weekly average that should include ‘catch-up’ sleep for weekend lie-ins. Using this average, it is possible to work out how much sleep you are short during the week – sometimes called 'sleep debt’ – and an objective can then be set to help you recover.
4. Top tips to promote a good night’s sleep:
• Avoid exciting or emotionally upsetting activities too close to sleep
• Avoid alcohol, tobacco or caffeine.
• Avoid awakening activities in bed
• Make sure you have a comfortable bed with a good mattress and pillows
• Block out any excessive noise with ear-plugs or, if necessary, double-glazing
• Block out light with heavy curtains
• Make sure your room is reasonably cool
• Try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day
• Establish regular wind-down techniques such as having a warm bath before going to bed
• Do not eat a heavy meal prior to sleep
• Avoid rich, fatty or spicy foods
5. Day sleep (siestas and naps) versus night-time sleep
One piece of advice that is often offered nowadays is not to sleep during the day. This is true if one is trying to optimise sleep during the night; sometimes by sleeping during the day, sleep during the night is reduced and night-time sleep is poorer. However, good sleepers can sleep during the day and find that they can also sleep well at the night. Also if someone is stressed and a daytime sleep reduces their stress then their night-time sleep can benefit from the overall reduction of stress.
Generally naps of around 30 minutes can be quite beneficial. Sleep has a natural cycle in adults of about 90 minutes so it is sometimes best to either allow 30 minutes or 90 minutes for sleep. The problem with 60 minutes is that one may awaken out of deep sleep and that can lead to grogginess.
6. Yoga
Yoga is believed to have both mental and physical benefits, both reducing stress and increasing suppleness, which can be of benefit to sleep. It can involve special physical postures (asanas), forms of breathing control (pranayamas), maintenance of
silence (mouna), meditation (dhyana) and other exercises.
In Yoga classes in the West it is not uncommon to find new students fall asleep at the relaxation phase of a class – just one class of focussing properly on both body and mind can be beneficial! It is wise to check with your doctor that you are fit enough to do yoga – but don't worry too much, instructors should know lots of alternative positions if the common ones are too difficult.
7. Meditation
Meditation techniques usually involve focussing attention on thoughts, the body, emotions or surroundings. The techniques should produce a state of calm awareness. There are general health and mental health benefits which can aid sleep by producing a state of calmness which may facilitate the onset of sleep. Remember meditation is not concentration, a meditation session should leave you feeling calm and relaxed. A bout of intense concentration will not!
· So what is meditation?
Meditation is a state in which the mind is freed from its usual clutter. One way of letting go of these feelings is to close your eyes and imagine a series of boxes that have labels on them – Anxiety, Unhappy Memories, New Ideas, Pending Tasks, Regret - and then to let the unwelcome thoughts run through your body and identify them. The idea is that you create a box for each of these distractions and, as each one comes to you, you put it in its box and leave it there.
· How to meditate
The meditation described here has two phases: the initial, preparatory stage, when you slowly let your mind drift in preparation for the meditation, and the meditation itself, which is known as a breath meditation. You can make it last for anything from ten minutes to half an hour.
Preparation
1. Start by finding a place where you can sit undisturbed, and in comfort. You ideally need to be in a position where you can feel relaxed without falling sleep, but as upright as possible. Sitting is best, cross-legged if you can manage
2. Rest your hands on your legs, and try to settle into a comfortable position.
3. Take a moment to look around and notice everything as if it were new
4. When you feel settled, close your eyes take several deep breaths and feel the air rush in and out, as if you were sighing. Try to enjoy the feeling of letting go.
5. Let your shoulders relax and drop, and at the same time feel your spine lengthening.
6. Slowly let your breath settle back into its normal rhythm.
7. Start to become aware of your body. Try to relax the areas that are tense. Do this for a few minutes
8. Breathing
Breathing is closely associated with meditation. The teachings of some of the world’s most important ancient religions have been based on teaching their followers to turn their minds inwards as a means of gaining inner peace and happiness. It is only in recent Western history that the practice of contemplation or meditation has been lost.
· The art of breathing
There is a variety of breathing techniques many of which have developed from Eastern and ancient Western meditative traditions. It may sound strange to talk in term of ‘techniques’ for something we do automatically all the time. However it is said that in the West, none of us really know how to breathe properly. Ask any group of Westerners to take a deep breath and one will see that their chests always rise as they breathe in. Whereas what will probably be seen with a group from the East is that their stomachs and abdomens will rise as well as their chests, indicating that they are breathing deeply. Luckily, deep breathing techniques can easily be learnt.
· Deep breathing
The good thing about deep breathing is that it’s completely under your control. It brings about a physiological effect on the body as slowing down your breathing will slow down your heart rate. When the brain gets anxious, two things happen:
(1) The stress stimulates the body to go into either ‘fight or flight' mode, in which both heart rate and breathing speed up
(2) The brain interprets this response as a cause of stress, and puts the body back into fight or flight again thereby increasing the anxiety and stress.
Deep breathing can disrupt this vicious cycle by producing a physiological reduction in heart rate and breathing rate, in turn will help to calm the mind.
· How to do deep breathing:
Relax, lie on your back, with one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen. Before you start, think about whether any of the muscles in your body are tense – e.g. are your jaws clenched? Your neck muscles, are they tight? If so, let that tension go.
Relax and breathe in slowly through your nostrils. Try to feel the breath moving through your chest. Feel your chest rise and, as it does so, the breath continues to enter your body.
Keep breathing in. Let your stomach and abdomen push upwards towards the ceiling until your lungs are as full of air as possible. Ideally, the hand on your abdomen will now be higher than the one on your chest. Pause for a moment, let the air out of your stomach and abdomen first and then your chest. As you breathe out, the muscles generally start to relax and your jaw should be unclenched. Try this exercise during the day, and repeat at night if necessary.
· Breath meditation
1. Settle down comfortably, close your eyes and start by taking a few deep breaths
2. As you exhale, let go and feel the tensions in your body go. If you still find you are having tense feelings, breathe into them and let them go.
3. Feel your spine lengthen as if somebody has attached a string to your head and is pulling it a little
4. Relax your face muscles and let your tongue become relaxed as you start to breathe more deeply
5. Start to feel the breath coming in and out through your nose, then, as your breathing gets deeper, feel the breath entering your throat, chest and lower abdomen
6. Try to breathe a little more deeply through your abdomen, following the breath in as you breathe in and out. As you breathe out, try to let go
7. Try to pinpoint the moment where you stop breathing and are about to start again and let that moment between breathing in and out be a moment of exquisite silence. As you breathe out, let any remaining tensions go, then slow your breathing down.
8. When you want to come out of your meditation start gradually listening to what is around you, and move your head back a little, then your hands and your body. Open your eyes; look around and return to the point where you started.
9. Other Alternative techniques
1. Hot baths increase slow-wave sleep, and may be generally conducive to sleep. It is not clear why they work, but it may be something to do with the fact that the hot water opens up blood vessels, which helps you to cool down. Foot baths may also be helpful. One technique is to have two foot baths, one filled with warm-to-hot water and the other with cold water. Place one foot in each for a few minutes and then change over.
2. Hydrotherapy, or water therapy, is thought to stimulate blood circulation, draw out heat and provide support while exercising. Its main use is in muscle, soft tissue and joint injuries, but it is also occasionally used for insomnia, the rationale being that increased blood circulation eliminates toxins that may impair sleep.
3. Massage is one of the most popular of all relaxation therapies. It can take many forms, from simple massage for relaxation to massage incorporating aromatherapy or other healing therapies such as reiki and shiatsu.
10. Holidays
Holidays are the perfect way to unwind and going on a cruise can be particularly helpful for sleep. The mixture of being disconnected from life's daily hassles coupled with a situation and sea-air that naturally promote good sleep is hard to beat. Sleeping well leads to feeling and working well throughout the waking day. The habit of sleeping well developed during a holiday can be taken home and the benefits can be retained long after the holiday is over.
Use your Ocean Village cruise holiday to
• Use the spa complex on Ocean Village Two to help you relax
• Reacquaint yourself to yourself and to yourselves
• Learn to sleep well
• Learn to control your body and mind.
• To develop rituals and routines prior to going to sleep.
Why a cruise can be most beneficial for sleep:
1. A cruise disconnects one from life's daily pressures, physical and mental
2. A Caribbean cruise is associated with ideal light and darkness associated with good sleep (roughly twelve hours light and twelve hours darkness – dawn and dusk occur quickly)
3. An ambient temperature promotes siestas - more sleep can lead to better sleep
4. Establishing new, better sleep-wake patterns can be taken home
5. Learning how to meditate, to do yoga (breathing, stretching, meditating, relaxing) and learning how to physically relax means that these techniques can be used at home
6. The experience of the cruise can be used as a basis of visualisation techniques that help sleep when one has returned from holiday.
