Relaxation Techniques To Improve Sleep

The importance of relaxation

sleep-guide Insomnia is a persistent disorder that can make it hard to fall asleep, hard to stay asleep or both, despite the opportunity for adequate sleep. Relaxation can help you overcome the tension and anxiety often felt as a consequence of insomnia. Those experiencing disturbed sleep have trouble unwinding sufficiently to get a good night’s rest, and for many, excessive mental activity and racing thoughts prevent them from getting off to sleep, or wake them up frequently or too early. Therefore it’s important to know how to properly relax.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

CBT is simply a programme of psychological treatment that when applied towards sleep can correct mistaken ideas and negative thoughts that can cause sleeplessness, and make it worse. Importantly CBT actually treats the cause of the insomnia and not just the symptoms. It helps by changing negative thoughts about sleep, and learning more accurate information in order to replace the negative thoughts with more positive thoughts and beliefs. The most common forms of CBT are:

Stimulus Control
Sleep Restriction
Sleep Hygiene

Relaxation and Breathing

Stressful lifestyles, working late, and watching intense television shows or the news, are some of the factors that can contribute to the mind racing and being unable to wind down. It’s important to know the importance of being relaxed before bed, and to have the knowledge of effective relaxation techniques to apply in order to experience deep, restful sleep.

Relax your Body

This can be done in bed and works by relaxing separate groups of muscles. It is also effective to visualise each set of muscles being relaxed as you go through the exercise:

Tense a muscle by contracting and flexing for 7-10 seconds. Take care not to strain the muscle.
Visualise the muscle being tensed and feel the build up of tension
Release each muscle abruptly, and then relax, allowing the body to go limp before going on to the next muscle.
Keep other muscles relaxed whilst working on a particular muscle.