Everybody struggles to get to sleep from time to time.
It's part of being human
to not have a good night's sleep.
My name is Dr. Lydia Brown.
I'm a clinical psychologist.
Today I'm gonna talk about a few science-backed strategies
to help you fall asleep.
So to do this technique
breathe in through your nose for a count of four
and then hold your breath with the lungs full of air
for a count of four
and then breathe out
through the mouth or the nose for a count of six.
So we're elongating the out-breath.
Pause at the end of the out-breath
before repeating the cycle about three more times.
Every out-breath
our heart rate literally slows down.
and the parasympathetic branch
of our nervous system is activated
and this branch of the nervous system
is involved with resting and digesting and relaxing.
So to practise the body scan
first feel the weight of your body
lying on the bed from the feet up to the head.
And then bring your attention back down
into sensations of the feet.
Just feel the sensations of your feet
and where they touch the bed beneath you
and then gradually move your tension up through the body,
feeling different sensations in the lower legs,
knees, upper legs, glutes, back,
gradually bringing your awareness up to the head.
Then you can, if you want shift the tension
to feel the body as a whole,
the weight of the full body lying on the bed.
So progressive muscle relaxation, or PMR,
is similar to the body scan,
except we start by tensing the different muscle groups
avoiding any part of the body where you might have an injury
so that you stay safe.
So for PMR, you can start back down
with the feet and the lower legs
and just tense the muscles for about five seconds
and then quickly rapidly release that tension
to feel the sensation of relaxation.
And just stay with that feeling for about 10 seconds.
So once we've worked in the lower legs
we move up to the upper legs, glutes, back and so on.
This can be quite a powerful practice
to really help the body to physically relax.
So to do this practice while lying down in bed
place your hands on your abdomen
and just feel the hands rise and fall naturally
as the body rises and falls.
The rhythm feels a lot like the slow rhythm of waves
washing against the shore.
And just simply be present to that experience.
So the reason why feeling the breath in the belly
can be helpful
is first it brings awareness away from the mind
down into the belly
which is a simpler experience
and it also helps encourage a relaxed type of breathing
from the diaphragm.
When we get stressed
our breathing tends to get a little faster and shallower
so this practice really anchors our awareness
down in the belly
to help encourage more relaxed breathing.
Just imagine that you're in a calm, soothing environment.
I often liked to choose being in nature.
For example, you might imagine
that you're walking along your favourite beach,
feeling the sensations of sand in your feet,
hearing the waves of the ocean
and just taking yourself to that calm place.
So if you don't have a visual mind
some people will prefer to use a mental object of attention
to calm or anchor their mind on something simple.
So an example of this could be counting.
You might choose to slowly count up
from one continuously counting upwards
or you might start at 1,000
gradually counting downwards from 1,000
and this works because it just simplifies the focus of our attention
on something as simple as counting.
So the next time you are in bed,
trying to get to sleep,
firstly take the pressure off and be kind to yourself.
Then take a moment to think about what's going on for you.
Are holding tension in the body or the mind
and then choose a toolkit strategy
that might work best for you in the moment.