SLEEP: TIPS AND TRICKS TO FALL ASLEEP EASILY
To fall asleep peacefully, it is important to know how to calm your emotions and to clear your mind. When your thoughts occupy your head, whether they are negative or positive, they create a mental chatter that can disrupt your sleep.
Here are some simple tips and techniques to help you fall asleep easily!
VISUALIZATION
It helps to positively anticipate bedtime. Practiced regularly, this exercise makes it easier to fall asleep.
How to practice visualization: Make yourself comfortable. Relax by releasing every part of your body. Then imagine that you are going to bed. You take off your clothes, go to the bathroom, etc. You head to your room and settle into your bed. You appreciate the support and softness of the mattress. You turn off the light and gradually let sleep take over. Your body becomes heavier and all your muscles become slack. Your breathing is calm and peaceful. You imagine yourself sleeping. You observe your body at rest, your face relaxed. You become aware of the quality of your sleep. Soak up these positive feelings.
Gradually regain your environment, awareness of outside noises, the space of the room. Slowly move your hands and feet. Take slow breaths.
BREATHING SQUARED
In order to find sleep, we will naturally slow down our breathing. Encouraging this slowing down of the breathing through (breathing) exercises will precisely help you to fall asleep.
The following exercise works in 4 equal steps that can be reproduced as a square:
- Breathe in deeply by inflating the belly
- Block your breath, your lungs are full
- Exhale all the air from your lungs
- Block your breath, your lungs are empty
Count a few seconds per step.
Repeat this cycle several times until you feel relaxed. Gradually return to normal breathing.
THE LOURDEUR
When we fall asleep, our muscles naturally relax. This relaxation is useful and necessary, and it is possible to encourage it by a visualization exercise, this time on the heaviness of the body.
Once you are comfortable sleeping, make sure that all your limbs are resting comfortably on your mattress. Then mentally go through each area of your body, one after the other, visualizing a feeling of heaviness associated with relaxation in that part of the body. In this way, you will lift the contractions, even involuntary ones.
Start with your legs, arms, head (as a whole, then focus on your neck and jaw in particular). Bring that warm feeling into your trunk, and finish the exercise by visualizing the heaviness of the whole body. Don’t resist and continue to let yourself go to finally find sleep.