Change your breath, change your sleep
There is nothing more frustrating than feeling super tired, getting into bed, and not being able to sleep. It’s absolute torture. What happens when we go through this, especially if it’s over a prolonged amount of time, is we look for external factors to explain the sleeplessness and to find help. Maybe we try melatonin, meditation, medication – all these things to try to help us.
What if I could give you a tool that was free, and could help you?
Why does the way you breathe affect your ability to go to sleep?
Think about this – you’re clam, you’re relaxed: how are you breathing? Super slow cos you’re feeling relaxed. And when you’re stressed? Much faster because your body is ready for action. What happens when we go through stressful periods is that your body will try to protect you and elevate your breathing rate in response and can get stuck in that faster pattern so you naturally start to breathe faster until that becomes your normal breathing pattern, so that even when you’re trying to relax your normal breath pattern is too fast. This is always telling your body it needs to be on and ready for action – which in turn means your body will struggle to turn off when you’re trying to go to sleep and you’ll find sleep more and more elusive.
You have a few things happening for you:
You lay down trying to sleep and your body will still be in action mode and wont let you get that much needed shut eye. If your body doesn’t feel safe, which is how it is responding to the faster breathing, it sends signals to your brain to keep watch for that danger.
You start replaying the scenarios of the day which is your brain’s attempt to find that danger that the body is signalling is present.
This is the most major thing keeping us awake
When we do slow breathing, even if it’s just for 5 minutes before we go to bed (I’ll show you how in another video), it naturally lifts our melatonin. Instead of buying the chemical from the chemist, our body creates this sleep hormone naturally and we have control over it and can naturally lift it.
By slowing our breathing before bed it will naturally encourage the production of melatonin and will slow our brain down to get a better night’s sleep.
Check out my #sleep blogs for more tips on how to increase your melatonin naturally to get a better night’s sleep.
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