It might not be supplements or gadgets, but simple daily rituals that save your sleep. Photo / 123RF
It might not be supplements or gadgets, but simple daily rituals that save your sleep. Photo / 123RF
Opinion by Annabel Jones
I had every gadget, pillowcase and sleep supplement going, but it only made things worse. Here’s what actually worked.
I was born a good sleeper. The eldest of four siblings, my mother insists I slept through the night “from day dot”. In my 20s I gloated about my propensity for sleeping soundly. “As soon as my head hits the pillow I’m off” I would pipe up when the subject of insomnia came up.
In my mid-30s, my grandmother warned me that sleep deprivation was waiting in the wings. With a consoling tone she insisted that being up for hours in the night is a sad consequence of age. And yet, in my ignorance I swore it would never happen to me. Until it did. And now? Sleep is all I can think about.
Consult any longevity expert and they’ll tell you that sleep is the holy grail of wellbeing. Without a good night’s kip you may as well forget about cryotherapy and infrared light – high tech interventions will be null and void if you can’t access the cell rejuvenation of deep uninterrupted shut-eye.
The algorithm on my Instagram feed is so attuned to my obsession, I’m fed an eternal stream of solutions from magnesium body butters to odd-shaped pillows that promise to optimise your sleeping position.
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I signed up for an overnight sleep study that involved attaching electrodes to my heart and legs at night after which I was informed I have ‘positional’ sleep apnoea because of the angle of my jaw which obstructs the flow of air when I’m on my back thus I am encouraged to sleep on my side.
The gadgets and the gizmos
I bought an Oura ring to monitor my REM (rapid eye movement) and HRV (heart rate variability). I have a room purifier, a weighted blanket, CBD drops and body oils that claim to induce melatonin production.
I smuggled actual melatonin back from New York via a friend, banished my smartphone from my bedroom at night, took the TV out of my room, blacked out my windows and purchased a fancy alarm clock that emits dulcet tones and blue blocking light. I’ve tried reading novels to help me nod off, listened to recordings of Yoga Nidra (a guided meditation) on the recommendation of neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. I also journal at the end of the day, a brain dumping exercise that’s meant to unburden one’s mind of pressing thoughts that can subconsciously keep you from relaxing.
If there’s a gadget, hack or herbal tonic that is marketed to help you drift off, I’ve tried it. So why can’t I get to sleep? And when I do, why can’t I stay asleep?
Alas, my problem was now twofold. Not only has a good night’s sleep been hard to come by, but in desperation to solve the issue I’d become a sleep perfectionist, laser-focused on dialling in every marginal gain as if I was training for an elite sport.
I had tried everything. The only thing I hadn’t done was scrap it all. In a moment of clarity, I reached out to Lisa Sanfilippo, an integrative psychotherapist, sleep recovery expert and yoga practitioner.
What Sanfilippo offers is a combination of integrative therapy with somatic (body) work. The reason for her hybrid approach is that “you can’t theorise your way to relaxation, you have to work in partnership with your body – leave it out of the equation and you’ll only get so far”. Or in my case, even further away from where I started.
What I learnt from Sanfilippo is that it’s only when you address the tension in a physical way that you can begin to unwind fully.
Sleep anxiety often worsens insomnia - learning to accept wakefulness can be the cure. Photo / 123RF
Working with a sleep therapist
And so, we began a six-week course of sleep therapy that has nothing to do with Apple Watch sleep scores.
In 1997, when Sanfillipo was a trial preparation assistant working in the sex crimes prosecution unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, she found herself stressed out and unable to sleep. This led her to yoga, a discipline she subsequently qualified in before training as a psychotherapist.
“Those years were a testing ground for what I teach my clients now,” she explains. What I discovered is that the nervous system needs to ease into slowness. It’s a process,” she says, explaining that if you’re in fight or flight all day, then rush to a yoga class it’s often too much of a leap.
The relaxation process isn’t something you insert five minutes before you get into bed, it’s a sequence of small doable hacks that you incorporate throughout the day.
On my first session with Sanfilippo she did a basic wellbeing check-in. While I hadn’t any pressing life concerns to report, I had been through a number of significant changes that could have had something to do with my inability to fall off. I’d been struggling with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition that, while tolerable with medication and lifestyle alterations, frequently woke me up in the night with throbbing leg and hip aches.
Furthermore, both my parents had a cancer diagnosis last year. Not unusual issues for someone my age, but significant enough to warrant an acknowledgment, says Sanfilippo. “The body can’t relax if it doesn’t feel safe,” she told me.
Prior to seeing Sanfilippo, I wouldn’t have said I felt unsafe in a visceral sense, but I sensed what she was getting at. There was something niggling in the background, a foreign unsettling feeling. Too subtle to pinpoint but present enough to create tension in my body.
Too often, explains Sanfilippo, we try to fix issues of the mind with the mind when it’s our body that helps to move worry and stress through the nervous system. Not to mention, my military efforts to ‘fix’ my sleep issues with technology had created yet more anguish.
I retired my Oura ring and learnt a series of gentle stretching moves from Sanfilippo done lying down.
While these are designed to be done before bedtime, Sanfilippo explained that there is also benefit to getting out of bed and moving around in moments of wakefulness (willing yourself back to sleep will often make things worse).
We experimented with ways to self-soothe on days when there’s tension in my body. For instance, when anxiety rises up at any point during the day, the best thing to do is to move or shake it out rather than being still, as is often recommended. “When you feel tension or anxiety, it needs to be released, not contained,” she tells me.
She showed me that by simply pushing down on the chair with my hands or leaning against a wall with both arms at 90 degrees adjacent to my head, my palms and the insides of my forearms pressing into the hard surface, it releases tension.
At other times, say if I’m travelling on a busy train at the end of a hectic work day, I’ll press my feet into the floor and move them up and down. These mini movements can be a powerful exit strategy for stagnant worry.
All this gets you to a place whereby when you go to bed, you’ve unleashed some of the mental strain that runs riot at the point of rest. I’ve found one of the best positions for unwinding is to lie on the floor with legs at a 90 degree angle, resting on a chair or sofa. The elevation takes the strain off my back, making it easier to melt into the floor.
Another yoga stretch I now frequently do before bed is a lying down twist, reaching both arms out wide while twisting bent knees in one direction and head in the other. Then vice versa. I keep a mat by my bed for a five-to-10-minute nighttime ritual which, says Sanfilippo, can also be valuable to repeat if you wake in the night.
Most of all I’ve reframed how I think about sleep. Expecting 51-year-old me to sleep as soundly as I did at 21 is as unhelpful as pursuing the complexion or body I had at that age. When I stopped fixating on sleeping well and instead began punctuating my day with easy ways to promote relaxation, my body rewarded me with fewer sleepless nights.
These days I appreciate the good ones much more than admonishing myself for the bad nights. But as Sanfilippo often has to remind me, labelling something ‘bad’ or ‘good’ doesn’t help to break the cycle. What does work is a consistent self-care routine with no expectation on the outcome.
Gentle stretching and body-based techniques can help reset the the nervous system. Photo / 123RF
The six tips that cured my insomnia
1. Morning routines are overhyped. A bedtime routine is crucial
I give myself a bedtime routine now, just as I did with my kids when they were young. I take my makeup off as soon as I arrive home from work, I change my clothes into something comfortable, empty the dishwasher turn down my bed and dim the lights.
2. Have a bath before bed
About an hour before bed I draw a hot bath with Epsom salts or magnesium flakes with a drop of lavender oil. I light a candle and keep noise to a minimum. If nothing else it’s an act of self-care that helps me quiet outside noise.
3. Eat dinner early
One thing that’s helped a lot is eating my last meal at least three hours before bed. This takes a bit of getting used to because you have to turn the usual eating window on its head, but eating late is a disaster for relaxation – digesting food takes energy and can hamper the vital repairing processes that naturally happens during sleep. Eating late can also cause acid reflux and disrupt breathing, top respiratory consultant, Matthew Hind, advised me.
4. Caffeine and supplements
I have my last cup of coffee by 12pm and take a natural sleep supplement called Diome Rested, 30 minutes before bed which helps me to nod off. It sounds wafty: it’s made up of minerals, vitamins and botanical extracts, but it works better than Melatonin and doesn’t have the morning hangover that sedatives often induce. Alcohol and sugar are off the table too if a lack of sleep is your bête noire. Annoying but true.
5. Prepare your diary for the next day
If I have a particularly busy week at work, I’ll look at my diary for the next day and mentally plot my key tasks so I’m not worrying I’ve missed something.
6. Take mini catch-up breaks
I still have off nights. Sometimes I have off weeks. But when that happens I approach it with acceptance and make sure to take regular mini breaks throughout the next day to close my eyes and practise one of the stretches I’ve been taught to do. This, explains Sanfilippo, helps you catch up and primes you for a better night to come. “Five or 10 minutes in a quiet corner with eyes closed can be surprisingly powerful,” says Sanfilippo.
