![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/iStock-ochtend-goed-gevoel-300x200.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As the days are shortening already, and the temperatures are falling, I think it\u2019s the ideal time to prepare for the dark months to come, and to make sure we get through them as energetically and healthy as possible. And sleeping well, is a very important tool in achieving this.<\/p>\n
What do you think?\u00a0 Have you ever pondered it? Is sleep important to you? Do you listen to your body and mind?<\/p>\n
Do you feel better after a good night sleep?<\/p>\n
Do you feel more energetic, lighter, in a brighter mood, more able to focus, more compassionate, \u2026after sleeping well every night?<\/p>\n
I think we can all agree that we do, don\u2019t we?<\/p>\n
Sleep is a very essential part of living a healthy and happy life. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n What if we actually could contribute to creating <\/em>good and restful sleep<\/span> at night?<\/p>\n What if we could train our body and mind<\/em>,<\/span> to wind down and slip easily into that blissful sleep which restores our body and mind?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s see how<\/em><\/span> you can make yourself feeling<\/em> <\/span><\/strong>the advantages of being well rested, instead of just knowing the facts of what a good night sleep does for your body and mind.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s have a look at how you can create this new habit<\/em> <\/span>of turning in at a decent hour every night, because it\u2019s what you believe<\/em><\/span><\/strong> is the absolute best way of taking care of yourself, and of others for that matter.<\/p>\n Why do we need a good night sleep?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I am kicking in an open door when I begin reciting all of the benefits of a good night sleep. I think it\u2019s pretty clear to everyone that:<\/p>\n Better rested means, better focus the day after.<\/span><\/p>\n Better rested means, better mood the day after.<\/span><\/p>\n Better rested means, better health: physically, emotionally, mentally.<\/span><\/p>\n Nothing but benefits. But this is not what I want to elaborate on here in this article, I think we all know the facts<\/span> <\/strong>of what a good night rest accomplishes. I want to talk about setting up an evening routine to get our body and mind ready to fall asleep, so that you can actually experience <\/em><\/span><\/strong>what a good night sleep does to you and to your life. And that experience will make you create this new habit, the new routine because it makes you feel so much better, so much healthier.<\/p>\n How can we contribute to having this blissful night of rejuvenating sleep?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The most effective way of getting a good night sleep, is to have the same evening routine<\/em> every night.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This may sound boring to you but, just consider how you would like to feel in the morning.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t mind feeling as if you\u2019ve been hit by a truck, when rolling out of bed, then skip this article :-).<\/p>\n If you would prefer to be ready for a new day, with a bounce in your step, and a smile on your face, keep reading.<\/p>\n How can you create this new habit of having an evening routine?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n This will take some getting used to in the beginning, but once you\u2019ve settled into this same bedtime every night, you\u2019ll feel your body getting used to it, and \u2018knowing\u2019, it is time to go to sleep. Going to bed the same time every night, makes it feel natural to your body to fall asleep at that particular time, as it is the same every night. You won\u2019t even have to watch the clock anymore as you\u2019ll start yawning around the same time every evening, and you\u2019ll know it\u2019s bedtime.<\/p>\n When you watch something relaxing, when you listen to some soft music, when you read a good book, when you do something relaxing and calm\u2026 you\u2019ll already feel<\/em> calm by the time you go to bed. This is important because, when you still feel very upbeat, very tense, very active, you\u2019ll need more time to get settled into sleeping modus, as your body still needs to lower the heart rate, and your mind still needs to settle down, \u2026<\/p>\n This is a tough one as our phones are very addictive little devils, they manage to, very sneakily, get us sucked in, into scrolling through pages and pages of social media. Even if the content is not disturbing (which we never know for sure in advance, as we may come across something that does make us feel upset), it is still input, input, input. The constant input makes our brain go into doing overtime, and that keeps us awake. Our brain needs to be able to shut down too. Also, the light of our screen keeps us awake. Even the effect of \u2018blue light\u2019 is not yet fully proven to be very different from the \u2018normal\u2019 light intensity of the screen.<\/p>\n Our body needs time to digest our meal. The more we keep filling our stomach, the more time our body needs to digest. When it\u2019s still digesting, it \u2018eats\u2019 away the quality of our sleep. Alcohol is also a tricky one: we may fall asleep more easily when alcohol induced, but again, the quality of our sleep will be worse, and we are very likely, to wake up in the middle of the night, and to feel groggy in the morning.<\/p>\n I know this may sound very scary to people who never write down their thoughts or feelings, but it\u2019s really quite easy! You take a nice little booklet, and a nice pen, and have it in your night stand next to your bed. Just before putting your head down, you think of 3 things that have put a smile on your face that day, this can be a very small thing or a huge one. It does not matter, just write down what made you feel happy, what made you feel grateful. The more you practice this, the longer your list will become. Your brain needs to be trained <\/em>into remembering the nice things of the day, as we tend to focus on what went wrong that day, and what bothered us. Focusing on the good things, puts us on a higher vibration, on a vibrational frequency of feeling good, feeling happy, feeling grateful. This good feeling relaxes us and makes us fall asleep with positive thoughts in our mind. This too contributes to a very peaceful sleep.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not happy people who are grateful, <\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n it\u2019s grateful people who are happy\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n If we would recall all the negative stuff, if we would choose that moment before we go to sleep, to vent our frustrations, our problems, it would make us feel stressful, resentful, and not at all in the peaceful mood we need to fall asleep. We would reside on a lower vibrational frequency, and that is where we would wake up the morning after too.<\/p>\n To me, this is the final step to ease into a blissful sleep. Once you lay down in your bed, once you\u2019ve written all the things that made you smile that day, you are ready to doze off. You can then do some breathing exercises, listen to some nature sounds, meditate, \u2026 to become fully relaxed, to be completely ready to drift off.<\/p>\n This may seem a lot, but begin to practice this routine. Go step by step, one thing at a time, and build your ritual until it has become a habit.<\/span><\/strong> Like all things you want to master in life, it takes practice. Knowing how helpful this routine is, I wish you all the patience and the perseverance to learn these steps. Once you\u2019ve done this routine for a while, you\u2019ll start feeling the benefits, you\u2019ll start getting used to it, and after some time, it will feel as normal as brushing your teeth, putting on your PJ\u2019s and turning off the lights before you close your eyes. Sweet dreams!! Sleep peacefully!<\/p>\n Thank you all for reading me and for supporting me on Medium! If you want unlimited access to all of my articles and of many other authors, you can become a Medium Member and you\u2019ll be supporting me and all the other authors. Many, many thanks to you all!!!<\/p>\n Katrien<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the days are shortening already, and the temperatures are falling, I think it\u2019s the ideal time to prepare for the dark months to come, and to make sure we get through them as energetically and healthy as possible. And sleeping well, is a very important tool in achieving this. What do you think?\u00a0 Have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifecoachwomen.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n