Fight Insomnia: How to Use Mindfulness Meditation for Sleep

Insomnia is brutal. Sleepless nights and stressing about sleep patterns can be burdensome on our mental and physical health. But if you are not sleeping or feel exhausted during the day due to tossing and turning, deep sleep is possible for you.   

Luckily for those of us who have struggled with sleep deprivation and know its effects, there are meditation techniques and tools that can support a healthier sleep cycle and address insomnia to enhance quality of life. Many people struggle with chronic sleep conditions, but they do not have to be a life sentence. Sleep and mindfulness meditation have been studied a lot in the last decade, and sleep meditation practices are life-changing for many.

The best part about emerging research about sleep meditation and reduced insomnia shows that the practice is accessible to everyone. While sleeping pills or even herbal supplements can often come with unsavory side effects, sleep meditation and mindfulness practices offer gentle and natural ways to address real sleep challenges. In a recent article by Harvard Health, 20 minutes of mindfulness each day can do wonders to support healthier sleep patterns.  

While the relationship between sleep and meditation seems promising, practitioners sometimes don't know where to start. In this article, we will:

• Look at the psychological and physiological impacts of insomnia and low-quality sleep
• Show how meditation affects sleep patterns 
• Explore the best meditation techniques for improved sleep
• Find ways to use mindfulness as a strategy for overcoming insomnia

Sleep and Meditation: A Resilient Connection

It's no surprise that lack of sleep impacts our waking moments. Insomnia has been linked to increased stress, unstable moods, a lower immune system, weight gain, brain fogginess, and an increased risk for heart events. Often, to compound these effects, it can be anxiety-inducing to think about how our lack of sleep is impacting us. Perhaps for this reason, in a study by JAMA, people who went through a mindfulness program that introduced meditations for sleep found higher rates of improved sleep compared to those who were merely educated about sleep health. 

“One famous study had subjects get normal sleep for two days, then deprived sleep for a week ... And what you find is that, during that week of deprived sleep, subjects’ mental health tanks — almost to the point that it looks like their mood levels had hit clinical depression.” —Lauri Santos

Best Meditations for Insomnia and Better Sleep

Let's get down to it and look at a few popular meditation techniques for sleep:

• Guided meditation and imagery: meditation helps sleep by triggering our parasympathetic nervous system, which is known as the "rest and digest" system. With the right guided meditation, you can often find that calm through imagination. Many guided meditations begin with a simple visualization, and the best meditation for you is one that is guided by a soothing voice. There are many guided meditations online. And just like a favorite song, when you find the right meditation teacher, you know it. 
• Body scan meditations: To begin, you close your eyes and begin by focusing all your attention on the top of your head. Slowly moving down the body and breathing mindfully. Bring your attention to each body part, from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet. This type of meditation is one you can do in a few breaths or take time to expand to five or ten minutes. This body scan meditation will help to get you into the present moment and provide a mind-body connection that provides a soothing and supportive mindset. You can also find guided versions of this practice.
• Progressive muscle relaxation: According to Anxiety Canada, progressive muscle relaxation helps with relaxation by using contrast. Similar to the body scan meditation, this is about focusing on sensory awareness. To start this practice, it might feel counterintuitive. You begin by tensing each muscle group, from your toes to your feet to your leg muscles and on up, all the way to your face. You can also start at the top and go down. By creating stress on the body, you can better tune into the feeling of relaxation and calm. This physical practice combines mindful body awareness with meditation to help you settle in for a good night's sleep. It can also be repeated.
• Gratitude practice for sleep: Sometimes the best meditation for sleep can be a simple gratitude inventory. This meditation is a great example of how when we are winding down our day, it can help to let go of stress by practicing gratitude and putting ourselves in a more positive frame of mind, which helps us to fall asleep. 
• Breathing meditation: Once you're in bed or in a restful pose, focusing on the breath with awareness and expanding the exhales as you breathe can help your body to find calm. If you are not used to meditation before bed, mindful breathing can be a way of transitioning the mind and body to a more receptive and restful state. This can enhance any bedtime meditation practice you choose and lead to deeper sleep. Breathing with mindful awareness can also be a mindfulness meditation in of itself. 
• Sleep stories: Some of us remember being read stories as a child at bedtime. It was a lovely feeling to drift off from a place of imagination and wonder. Increasingly, sleep stories are a popular method for finding faster and deeper sleep. They support listeners by helping to remove them from any lingering thoughts about the day and introduce a more wonder-filled and relaxing mindset.
• Music and binaural beats: Music can help to pump us up or help us wind down. With the right sleep track, music relaxes the autonomic nervous system and triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps to relax you. According to The Sleep Foundation, binaural beats are a phenomenon that can support the shifting of brain waves by offering two different tones that cause the mind to create a third, which can lead to soothing and rhythmic delta brain waves. 

Role of Mindfulness in Overcoming Insomnia

Mindfulness helps reduce stress by training us to be aware of our thoughts and feelings without getting caught up in them. When you practice mindfulness, day or night, you learn to see your worries more objectively.

Better sleep is possible. It all begins with a more harmonized mindset. So often, our minds are projecting into the future or repeating what has happened in the past. We also have a tendency to overthink about the more stressful aspects of our day.

The fact is that mindfulness meditations do not have to be practiced at night to support sleep. Research has shown that the practice supports sleep quality even when done during the day. Let’s now look at some practical daily exercises and routines to cultivate mindfulness for better sleep at night.

Daily Mindfulness Meditation Practices for Better Sleep

When living our lives, we often deny ourselves the present moment. One way to find more mindfulness during the day is to give yourself the gift of nature. A few minutes even in the woods or sitting near a tree can offer a real sense of calm and restoration in our day. 

Digital detox moments are another way to evoke mindful awareness where we might otherwise be distracted or dwelling on stressful information that comes through the news or social media. Scheduling even 10 minutes a day to turn off your phone or put it in a drawer and instead simply go about your routine with more focus can be an eye-opening way to enhance mindfulness each day.

Finally, the simple magic of breath meditation practice is undeniable. When you don't have much time or you feel yourself triggered by stress or worry, bringing your full attention to the breath can do wonders to bring you back to the present. While we may think meditating before bed is the most obvious way to get better sleep, these daily mindfulness practices support us by helping establish a more relaxed frame of mind in general, which will set us up for success when we find ourselves trying to wind down at bedtime.

Implementing Meditation Techniques for Insomnia

If mindfulness meditation is new to you, I urge you to start small. So often, people new to the practice will try to aim so high that their practice is not sustainable. To help you follow through on your mindfulness goals, here are a few practical suggestions:

• Try going to bed 10 minutes earlier to make time for an unwinding practice. This can take the form of progressive muscle relaxation, listening to a sleep story, a visualization, gratitude, or simple breath. Creating this additional time to unwind means you are more likely to follow through with the practice.
• Make your daily routine realistic. You can start with 5 minutes of mindfulness meditation a day. Even 3 minutes. Knowing that any time is better than no time will help you to be less likely to talk yourself out of practicing on a given day.
• Be patient with the practice, and if you have trouble keeping up, find an accountability partner to practice with. There are online meditation communities you can join to find support, or you can check in with a friend.

Starting a new habit often comes with trial and error, but mindfulness meditation will benefit your life in myriad ways. Meditations to help sleep can take many forms, but to meditate daily will lead to drastic results. Not only can the mindfulness and meditation practice help with insomnia and sleeplessness, it can also help you feel more rested during the day, lead to a calmer mind and body, reduce stress and anxiety, and help you stay in the present moment. And, friends, it's a beautiful place to be. 

If you’re looking for more guidance and community support, along with gratitude meditations to support your journey, join me at Aura, the most holistic meditation app on the market, for 30 days free.