EP 109 Can Meditation Improve Sleep?

0:00 Do you find yourself struggling to get a good night's sleep despite feeling exhausted? I'm talking about staying up all night with endless thoughts in your head. Or you do go to sleep, but you feel tired the next day, even though you got more than eight hours of sleep. Like, it just doesn't make sense. Now, I have a client who has been facing major challenges with sleep, and I figured many of you might relate to this struggle. So today's episode, we will be addressing this with some solutions. So stay tuned. You're listening to the New Age Human podcast, where we have mind expanding conversations around science, spirituality, and alternative health to help you unlock your true potential and thrive in a rapidly changing world.

0:46 I'm your host, Jon Astacio, and I've been in the health and wellness industry for over 10 years, helping busy professionals like you improve their mental and physical wellbeing. Using holistic. Lifestyle changes and now immersive meditation. Now today, we're exploring the major causes of poor sleep, like really bad sleep and how meditation can be a game changer and helping you find better rest. And on top of that, if you stick around to the end, I'll go over some lifestyle changes you can make. right now to get better sleep starting tonight. So let's dive in and start with the role of the nervous system. This is the underlying thing right now to be aware of.

1:27 So when you're stressed, Your body activates the sympathetic nervous system, which is also known as the fight or flight. Okay, so think of being attacked by a grizzly bear or someone chasing after you. That is a fight or flight. You know how you get more energy and you're more powerful. Aware of your surroundings. That's that's your body being amazing, right? But it will be hard to relax right afterwards, right? You need to like walk it off. Now, meditation helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is also called the rest and digest system. It promotes relaxation and prepares the body for sleep. So obviously we're going to talk about how to get you from.

2:08 The sympathetic to the parasympathetic system, from fight or flight to relax, chillax and digest. Okay, so, unfortunately, in today's culture, we're often kept in a state of fight or flight and due to constant stressors, like, let's say, uh, I'm sure you have work demands, business demands, studying social media, and, uh, You know, trying to keep up with that, especially if you're like a solopreneur and you're trying to do it all yourself. Um, you know, things are just, there's just a lot of demand on all of us just to make it happen. Okay. And we can sit here and complain, but let's talk about some solutions.

2:48 Let's talk about how we can find ways to relax and finally get some rest. Because honestly, getting a good night's sleep. Rest and like sleep is a game changer has helped me a lot. I have more, patience with people. I have more mental clarity and I want to, I want to have that for you. Okay. So what are some of the causes that we're going to go over today that you may not be aware of that might not be as obvious that would be associated to bad sleep. We're talking about stress over stimulation Um, poor sleep environments, diet comes into play. Yes. You might have to change your diet or tweak it a little bit, physical discomfort and overthinking.

3:30 I think overthinking is one is, is one of the most obvious ones because that's been a big challenge for myself, but we're going to start at the very top and we're going to talk about poor sleep. Being caused by stress, you know, how people say, uh, relax, you're too stressed. Well, what the heck, if I knew how to relax, I would have done it already. Right? But just so you know, that ongoing stress, if you keep up with stress and you don't find ways to manage it, it's going to raise and keep raising your cortisol levels, which keeps you in that sympathetic nervous system. Of fight or flight, and you're going to just stress the body out on what you're going to want to do is dive into some meditation practices that promote a reduction of cortisol.

4:20 Okay? So meditation helps reduce cortisol levels. So it's not just a little bit of woo woo. There's a chemical change that happens when you go into meditation. Okay? I think that's pretty cool. So one of the things that I would suggest for helping with stress is regular meditation, not a one off and be like, ah, it's not working for me. No, we're talking about regular meditation being consistent because if you're consistent with your meditation practice, even if it's like five or 10 minutes, it's going to like a muscle, make your ability to move into that calm state that relaxed states easier.

5:01 Okay. So the more you do meditation again, like five, 10 minutes, just get something in there. So you stay, consistent. The more you do it like a muscle, the more easier it is for you to get into that relaxed state. The next thing is overstimulation diving into that to expand on that overstimulation. I'm talking about screen time, TV, laptop, phone, tablet. Freaking billboards. There's just screens everywhere. And the thing about those are especially social media. It's a dopamine hit, right? That the whole death scroll, you keep going. He looked, I've, I, this happened to me a bunch of times.

5:41 You're you open up like Instagram and you, you know, 20 minutes go by and you're like, Jesus, you know, like imagine trying to relax before bed by. Scrolling through social media. We all do it, but it's, it's getting your mind active and you need to, we need to pull out of that. Another thing is, um, at the time of recording it is October and I'm in the Northeast of United States and that is like ground zero Halloween, like vibes. So we're talking about horror films, scary movies, you name it. Those are overstimulating and it's the last thing you want before you go to bed. So let's say.

6:21 You decided to watch, um, a slasher movie or a Texas chainsaw massacre. There you go. And now it's time for bed. What do you do? Well, you can meditate. That's one. What type of meditation? I recommend guided meditation because your mind is already overstimulated. Let someone else take over and guide you into a relaxing state. It's going to help you shift your focus to a relaxed state of mind. Moving on to The next cause of bad sleep, a poor sleep environment. so when we talk about environment, we're talking about the temperature of the room, the lighting of the room, noise, and this could also include cell phone electromagnetic frequencies from electronics plugged into the room.

7:12 So be mindful of these. A good meditation practice, if you are having a hard time managing your environment is to before bed, do a meditation that's focused on visualization. I just spoke about this and if you have, uh, I have a client that is having a hard time sleeping and, uh, We found out that they have no problem sleeping on the beach. And so their visualization before bed is going to be a beach. so it might not be a beach for you, but what will be a calming scene for you to relax the body and immerse yourself?

7:53 Okay. The next thing would be diets. Now, I know some of us are, don't want to touch our diet. It's like why do I have to change my diet for sleep? Come on now, but here's some some things that will Disrupt and interfere your sleep cycle caffeine and alcohol too big sleep Cycle disruptors, because remember when you go to sleep, you have to go through multiple different cycles like REM and I forgot the other ones, but you're, you're going deeper and deeper and deeper and that each cycle has a different frequency. when you have something like, uh, caffeine in your system, still, it's going to disrupt that because, um, fun fact, caffeine stays in your system for 7 hours.

8:39 So good luck with going to sleep. Alcohol. Some people will say, Oh, what I drink and I pass out and I have a really good sleep, but did you, you're not repairing yourself. you're. You might be repairing some things, but you're not going to have that full sleep cycle. Okay, so let's say you did have some caffeine. Let's say you did some had some alcohol, but some things to help you with it is doing a mindful meditation. What does that mean? Because isn't meditation kind of mindful? Well, I'll tell you what it means when you add journaling to your meditations. After you meditate, you journal for a little bit that builds awareness of your dietary habits and other habits that you may not be aware of.

9:25 You could do a meditation and just ask yourself, what is something that I did today that could be related to diet or an unconscious habit? That's making me restless right now, And if you do that in a question form, go into meditation, contemplate about that, then write it down, you'll notice that you got a little bit more clarity on the causes of that specific day. And if you continue with that journaling, you'll see patterns. So, I highly recommend journaling. The next thing is being uncomfortable before bed, especially when it gets cold out stiff joints, you might have to do some stretches and whatnot.

10:09 So what you could do is a meditation to help you with that is what's called a body scan meditation. If you do a body scan meditation, excuse me, that will help you relieve some physical tension in the body, especially if you're focusing on different parts. Also recommend simply stretching. The next thing is overthinking. That's the next cause. That was big for me. Racing thoughts, thinking about, did I lock the front door? Did I lock the back door? Did I arm the alarm system? Did I prep the food for tomorrow to have to wake up earlier? Like these are things that could be going through your head, right?

10:51 And then you're like, wait, You're comfortable and now you got to get up and make sure the front and back door is locked. You're half naked, you're walking through the house and, you know, maybe the windows are not blocked. And now you're just now you're exposed to your neighbors now, but just. Do this, right? One of the things you could do is a, another mindful meditation, I would say this is more immersive meditation. So get into that mindset, get into that, that, that. Your, your meditation pose where you're lying on your back or sitting up, whatever works for you, but ask yourself that question of whatever, um, or, or tell yourself, honestly, whatever my day worries are, let's let them go.

11:39 Right? Imagine you're on the bus. Okay, and all your worries are personalities and let them sit at the way back of the bus way back where you can barely hear them. They're there. You didn't like forget about them, but they're just not part of your world right now. Your focus is forward, right? So try that out. But honestly, if you just stay consistent with your meditation, um, the solution for overthinking is very similar to the solution for, stress. They're very related. Just stay consistent, stay and stick with it So now if you stuck around. Awesome. Congratulations.

12:19 We're going into the practical actionable tips for better sleep that you can take action on right now for better sleep to nights. Okay. So first one is breathing exercises. You could do this right now. Well, today, right specifically this breathing practice is the 478 breathing technique. The 478 is just counts its numbers, breathing in for four seconds and breathing out for four seconds, breathing in for seven, breathing out for seven, breathing in for eight, breathing out for eight and don't do the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, do Mississippi's give yourself some. Actual seconds, right?

13:01 Breathing in. So you, so I'll do like one example, just breathing in. Wait, how do I talk and breathe in at the same time? So breathing in four seconds and breathing out four seconds. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi. Okay. Now do that for seven and eight. Okay. And I'm sorry for whispering in your ear. the next thing you could do is called a body scan meditation. So I touched up on it a little bit earlier, but start from your head and work your way down to your toes and each part of the body. Focus on releasing tension.

13:42 If you focus on one part of the, of the body releasing tension, you're relaxing each part and your focus is leaving the head and slowly moving down the body to your toes. Okay, try that out. Let me know how it goes. The next is. If you're overstimulated, try limiting screen time, right? Phone, TV, tablet, all that, but I would say avoid screens at least 30 minutes before it's time for bed. So if you're going to sleep at 10 o'clock at night, have your last screen time end at 930, 30 minutes, even an hour. Or if you're ambitious, Okay.

14:23 And speaking of moving into it, it's time for bed. What helps you calm down? Well, a bedtime routine, creating a calming routine, such as reading a book or taking a warm bath helps reduce stress. if you're reading a book, just be careful that it's not like this heavy book. That's going to like slam into your face. If you're on your back, it's happened to me. And, um, If you're thinking of reading this heavy book and it's going to knock you out, then by all means do that, but I would recommend a paperback book for bedtime. Right? And then if you, obviously you're going to need lights, I would recommend a warm light, not a blue light, a warm light that has, or like a red light, or like a, uh, a salt lamp.

15:10 Those have really nice hues. Okay? So, limit screen time, bedtime routine, there you go, warm bath. When you leave the warm bath and you dry yourself off and you get that cold chill, that does something to the body and for some reason it signifies going to sleep. The last thing would be, To create a sleep inducing environment. We did talk about that a little bit, but going a little bit further into it, make sure the room is dark, it's cool and quiet, or you may need some white noise, like a fan. Another thing is avoid electromagnetic frequencies in the same room as you. What are those? Those are the frequencies that are given off that you can't hear.

15:52 But you're subconscious and your body can hear it or feel it. So we're talking about the cell phone connections. We're talking about anything that's plugged in or electronic is going to emit a disharmonic frequency. That's going to dis, disharmonize your body. And. One, your body is trying to find harmony, and then, so that's stress, unnecessary stress, and then two, for some reason, your subconscious interprets those frequencies, specifically your cell phone, trying to connect to the internet constantly, it thinks it's light. Isn't that interesting? So, light You're trying to, you got a dark room, but your, your, your mind thinks there's still light and it's being triggered to stay awake. Not good.

16:33 Good rule of thumb that I do is put your phone on, airplane mode and don't plug it in overnight. Just make sure you have it charged and then you can use your phone for the alarm. So. Bringing it all together. It's really important for your environment and just having all these habits would work for you. So, just take all of these things that I told you and see what works for you. Okay? My question for you is which of these solutions do you think will help you tonight? So as we close out today, um, thank you again for hanging out with me and being goofy with me. I always like to have as much fun as I can with talking about these things, but I really, I really want to emphasize like meditation can really help you with sleep, especially before you go to sleep, but being consistent with it is going to help you manage your states of the parasympathetic versus the sympathetic system.

17:31 Okay. There's a chemistry involved and now that you know that, let's see what happens. So I encourage you to stay consistent with these and give me some feedback. What worked and what didn't work and what that said, thank you again for joining me today. Have a good night's rest. I'll see you out on the next episode.