Racing the mind to sleep: Mastering the art of recovery
“What if the way our body and mind is responding to our day is exactly right and makes complete sense? What if instead of fighting it we made a subtle shift to work with the body. Instead of stressing ourselves out about getting to sleep we focused on mastering recovery. ”
-Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Ep 219
Racing the mind to sleep: Mastering the art of recovery
Racing thoughts, rumination, wired and tired. All of these are top complaints about sleep disturbances. Have you been there? Physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted and yet incapable of shutting down the racing thoughts in order to get to sleep. It’s not your fault but it is within your control. And that’s our Work IN today. We’re going to explore top down and bottom up tools to win the race to sleep and master the art of recovery.
Sleep is the ultimate tool for recovery. Built into every single day, sleep is when every system in the body repairs and resets itself for the next day. But it is nearly impossible to get to sleep by simply telling yourself to go to sleep. In fact in many cases that thought alone is guaranteed to keep you awake.
What if the way our body and mind is responding to our day is exactly right and makes complete sense? What if instead of fighting it we made a subtle shift to work with the body. Instead of stressing ourselves out about getting to sleep we focused on mastering recovery.
Yoga naturally taps into this progressive relaxation where you lean into tension in postures and then you let that go. Contracting areas of the body while relaxing others. Finding ease in the effort.
You can get the same thing in other types of movement and exercise sometimes by accident. But with a little more awareness it’s even better. And understanding how the nervous system responds to movement as well as the hormones that are released can help when you’re learning your body’s unique needs and requirements for rest and recovery.
However, if we don’t already have regular exercise purpose built into our day, and even if we do, rumination and stressful thoughts can ramp up when it’s time to sleep. And because everything that the mind tells us, all those racing thoughts, feel clear, present and true they can trigger the stress response. That stress response is designed to keep you alert. It’s the antithesis of sleep.
So we can use what we know about that, about our mind-body connection to win that race to rest, and recovery.
We can do that by using both what we call top down and bottom up pathways.
Top down is what we say when we are changing how we think about something. I think this is a good place to start because what we believe about how we’re supposed to sleep can make or break our experience. So here’s some things you might not know about sleep that could put your mind at ease.
The reason we sleep is for rest, repair and recovery for the body and especially the brain. Do you have to be knocked out cold for that to occur? Not necessarily. We know there are certain stages of sleep and brain wave states that do different things. Deep sleep and REM sleep are different and stage 1 and 2, those liminal transition states are equally important. That’s why things like guided meditations can work so well. There is intensity in physical, mental and emotional action. And we need to recover in some way from all of it otherwise we can get overwhelmed. SO each of these different stages of sleep serves to clean up, clean out, reorganize, store, heal and categorize our experiences from the day.
It is natural for people to wake up several times in the night. There’s even speculation that we evolved to do that. After all, it's not great for survival for any mammal to be unconscious for 8 hours straight. Maybe we shouldn’t beat ourselves up about that when it happens. Maybe those series of naps are important and natural. It’s not bad sleep to wake several times in the night. In fact maybe there is no good or bad when it comes to sleep, maybe there’s only better.
Sometimes the only time we have to think about things is at the end of our day. Just like when we lean into physical tension in order to release it, maybe we need to lean into that mental tension before we can let it go. Personally, I have found that the more I repress my emotions and thoughts during the day the worse they are at night. Cut your self some slack and let your brain process. That might be journaling. But it might also be as simple as making a list of the stuff you want to get done the next day. A plan of action. If you write it down you don’t have to go over it in your head and if you think of something else in the middle of the night you can add it to your list.
Cat naps during the day are allowed. Many times we find ourselves fighting sleep all day only to struggle to get to sleep at night. So annoying. So don’t. A 20 min cat nap feels fantastic and won’t interfere with your sleep later. And often it’s a better recharge than a cup of coffee. So permission granted.
There are probably many more thought habits and beliefs about sleep that could be interfering with HOW people sleep. These are just the ones that hit for me. It’s worth considering speaking with a cognitive behavioral professional if sleep is a significant issue for you because sleep deprivation can show up in and exacerbate many kinds of mental health diagnosis. Being tired all the time is a symptom of pretty much every disease and we think it’s normal.
Bottom up is when we use the body’s natural responses to affect our experience and build resilience. These are physical levers through actions and our senses that can make a big difference. Bottom up requires some behavior change but it’s easier to do if you know why it works.
The nervous system through the senses is always on some kind of alert looking for threats or evidence of safety. It bases those decisions on your past experiences. Sadly for us it can’t tell time. So it doesn’t know the past from the present or future. SO when you start ruminating over past events or future possibilities, it thinks those thoughts are happening now and will respond accordingly. Knowing this we can start to give the body evidence of safety so we can replace those sensation memories with something that will allow sleep and rest.
Walking outside. Walking outside in nature is the poor man's EMDR. When we walk forward and let our eyes travel left and right at the same time it inhibits or turns down our amygdala ( the part of the brain that responds to fear). Reducing the intensity of traumatic thoughts and memories. If we take a walk outdoors, in the evening in particular, we get that easing of our stress response regardless of where the stress is coming from and BONUS we also allow the brain to receive light signals from the setting sun that release melatonin and prepare the body for sleep.
Communicating through breath. Using coherent (6X6) breath or box breathing is a direct line to the nervous system to shift into parasympathetic. And practicing a breathing technique that takes mental focus like counting gives both the body and the brain something to do. The breath is a bridge physically and energetically between our survival energy and our relaxation response. Start with 1 minute and go from there. Coherent breathing is 6 ct inhale 6 ct exhale and box breath is 4 ct in/4ct hold/4 ct out/4 ct exhale 4 ct hold. There are many other patterns that are helpful as well. When we breath fast the body reads danger, breath slow the body reads safety. And that’s what we need to relax.
Touch. WE can’t be sympathetic, fight or flight AND allow ourselves to be touched. But we can sometimes trigger the parasympathetic with touch. It could be something as simple as a weighted blanket or an eye pillow believe it or not. Haven, the act of simply running your hands down your arms or tapping EFT. The body recognizes these as signals that it can settle. If you have a partner willing to rub your feet or hands or lets face it, other parts of you can be soothing as well.
Listen. There are certain frequencies and resonances that are soothing to our brain.THe science is slow here suggests that they can change your brain waves. Binaural beats (different frequencies in each ear) can lower anxiety and improve mood as well as increase creativity. Along the lines of giving the brain something to focus on instead of chasing thoughts around, guided meditation and yoga nidra work in the same way, shifting the brain into that liminal transition state. They say that 30 minutes of yoga nidra is the same as 4 hours of deep sleep. I have used yoga nidra on many occasions. It's the best sleep ever.
Smell. Our sense of smell is the only sense that skips all the logical parts of the brain and goes straight to the amygdala. It’s your own personal smoke detector and even when a noxious smell isn’t dangerous, if it's strong it can keep you awake. We can use smell to condition the body and mind to relax over time. Particularly something you enjoy. This is why people like to diffuse essential oils like lavender. But really it can be anything that is soothing to you. Scent is one of the strongest mnemonic connectors in the brain. In other words smells are powerful memory ties. So I suggest making a new relaxation connection to whatever smell you’re going to use. If you use lavender on an eye pillow during final relaxation in yoga for long enough the brain associates that smell with rest and relaxation. It’s like self hypnosis almost.
None of these is a magic pill but all of them can be used in combination to create your own sleep ritual that teaches the body and the brain that it’s time to shut down for the night. The fun is in the experiment with these and other tools to find what works for you.
We require rest and recovery. Discomfort, mental and emotional discomfort as well as physical discomfort and pain is a protective response. It’s designed to pull all of our focus as a way to protect us on multiple levels so we’ll hopefully do something different in order to change our state and allow recovery. I suspect that human beings in general crave some kind of discomfort, some kind of friction in our lives to feel alive, to grow and learn and thrive. Otherwise life would be pretty boring. I know I do and so I have to make a conscious effort especially in high intensity physical and mental effort to find some kind of ease. To tap into recovery pathways so that I don’t burn out or injure myself. The trick is to find those recovery pathways. Sleep is one of them. But it’s not the only one.
Both the body and the brain can recover and rest simply by doing something different. We call it active recovery. Athletes plan in active recovery all the time. If your work is sedentary maybe your play could be challenging. If your work is very physical you recovery needs to be finding stillness. If you spend a lot of time alone, maybe getting out in the world, making friends, being with people can feed your soul. There can be many things that feel restful that aren’t sleep. The fun is in finding what feels like rest for you.
Sometimes the pressure we put on ourselves to get to sleep is the very thing that keeps us awake. It doesn’t have to be. We can work with the body and the mind to allow ourselves to find rest and recovery with a deeper understanding out that mind body connection and tools that acknowledge both.
Thanks for listening.
Connecting the dots for your personal health and professional wellness can be daunting. You don’t have to go it alone. Head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin you’ll find all the show notes for this and other episodes plus lots of free resources including a link to book a 30 min fitness strategy call with me. And of course I’d be ever so grateful if you would take a moment to like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening.
And remember stop working out and start working IN.
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a health coach and trauma informed yoga professional bringing real world resilience and healing to main street USA.
I offer trauma release + yoga + wellness education for groups and individuals…regular people like you.
Book a call to learn how I can help.