Stress

Stress and anxiety can keep the sleep system from overtaking the wake system. To stop this, you need to quiet your mind and body. Here’s how:

How does relaxation work?

Stress and anxiety activate your nervous system. Your energy, brain activity, blood pressure, and heat rate increase. After the stressor is gone, your nervous system should wind down. Sometimes, chronic stress can keep this system active, making it difficult to sleep.

Relaxation is NOT just unwinding (e.g. watching a movie, reading) but activities eliciting physiological changes that turn off this system (decreasing brain activity, blood pressure, and heart rate) and facilitate longer and more restful sleep. The nervous system influences both the body and mind, and so relaxation activities target both as well.

What are some relaxation techniques?

There are different techniques to help you relax. Some of the most popular are:

Guided visualization meditation
Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR)
Deep breathing exercises

1. Guided Visualization

Guided visualization meditation is a relaxation technique during which you listen to an audio recording of someone talking you through a meditation.
This is a technique that helps you imagine yourself in a different state, often one of you relaxing or engaging in a new, positive behavior.
These are longer exercises, and you should leave approximately 15 minutes to practice.

You can Google “guided meditation” or “guided sleep relaxation” for many other examples and files for free.

2. Progressive Muscle Relaxation

PMR can be particularly helpful when you experience muscle tension as a bodily response to stress.
PMR involves tightening and relaxing different muscle groups in sequence.
It helps to relieve muscle tension, which in turn helps your mind relax.
It can also be a helpful technique to distract yourself from your worrying thoughts because you have to focus on your muscles.
You can build PMR into your bedtime routine or you can do these exercises while lying in bed.

You can Google “progressive muscle relaxation” for many examples and files for free.

This is also a good exercise to do if you wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep.

3. Deep, diaphragmatic breathing

Deep breathing is a calming exercise that can be done on its own or along with any of the other exercises listed here. It can be done at any time to help you wind down, and can be done standing, sitting, or lying down.
When you are stressed, your nervous system becomes activated and your breathing rate increases.
- If you pay attention, you might notice that you take many very shallow breaths from your upper lungs.
- This shallow breathing sends feedback to the rest of your body that you are stressed, which maintains the rapid, shallow breathing.
- Paying attention to your breath and consciously slowing down your breathing rate is an effective way to help you reduce both mental and physical stress.
Deep, diaphragmatic breathing slows down your respiration rate, increases the amount of oxygen you are taking in with each breath, and reduces the effort and energy your body is using to breath.

To learn this technique and maximize its effectiveness, practice for at least 5 minutes a few times per day. You can use this technique lying down to help you fall asleep or if you wake up in the middle of the night.

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