3 ways you can start sleeping better

You know the feeling of waking up the next day when you haven’t had a good night’s rest. You’re tired, your energy is low, and all you can think about is getting back to bed. If this is a regular occurrence for you, you could be putting your health at risk in the long run.

Getting a good night’s rest is important for overall health. Without sleep, we can develop heart problems, weaken our immune systems, and even experience memory loss. For these and many more reasons, it’s important to sleep well each night.

If you’re having trouble sleeping, read on to uncover three tricks to improve your shuteye.

3 tips to improve your sleep

Sleep in total darkness: Our body’s inner clock runs with the sunlight. For many of us, lack of sleep could be due to the fact that there is too much light in our room. For this reason, it’s important to sleep in total darkness.

When it’s dark, our body begins to produce melatonin to help us sleep. When there’s light, this process is delayed, so we find ourselves tossing and turning.

Try to keep your room dark as much as possible. This includes turning off your electronic devices –if needed, leave them in another room.

Try yoga: Sometimes sleep disturbances can be a result of stress. Yoga is becoming a widely popular way to relieve stress and improve physical fitness. The great thing about yoga is, it can be performed in the comfort of your home, so once you’re done, you can take your well-relaxed body straight to bed.

If you’re unfamiliar with yoga, you may want to start off with some classes or check out some videos online. Performing yoga prior to bed or in the evening is a good way to de-stress and release yourself from the thoughts that keep you awake at night.
Keep a journal: This is particularly helpful if you suffer from insomnia, but it can work for all other sleep troubles, too. Sometimes we cannot sleep because by the time we close our eyes, our brain becomes too active bringing up all of the day’s worries. Keeping a journal can help you rid your brain of those troubles as you commit them to paper and let them go.

By keeping a journal next to your bed, you can stop that worrisome thought in its tracks before it bothers you to the point you are wide awake in the middle of the night. You may even want to turn journaling into a daily bedtime practice if it helps or if you feel there’s a lot going on.

It’s important that you get a good night’s sleep, so if you’re not, these three tips can help.