Foundational Steps Towards a Good Sleep

I envy those who seem to have a superpower when it comes to sleep. You know the ones? Five minutes into a plane ride and they’ve dozed off until landing. Neighbours blasting music and they’re fast asleep. It’s 3:00pm and they lie down and immediately enjoy a 25-minute siesta.

I’ve never had that superpower. Instead, I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with sleep - months where it felt elusive, then weeks of sleeping more soundly, yet still consumed by vivid dreams, or worse, nightmares. Even after eight hours, you won’t feel rested if you’ve spent the night dreaming. Your body may have recovered, but your brain never got the chance to. I tried supplements, read books, diffused lavender in a freezing cold room, and prepared my nightly herbal infusions like a ritual. Some of it helped occasionally but most of it didn’t stick. What actually helped me to sleep better was changing my day-to-day habits, learning how to regulate my system so that it genuinely feels safe enough to relax when the time comes.

It’s worth asking: why are sleep issues so widespread now, and how have our lifestyles shifted to make this so common? What are we doing or not doing that’s impacting our ability to simply switch off and rest? Even animals can develop insomnia, typically triggered by pain, fear or environmental disruption. What’s disrupting ours? Stress is unavoidable, but are certain habits amplifying it? And what changes in our routines and our environment might help us actually sleep?

If you tend to live in your head, no habit listed below will land the way it should until you have some kind of practice that brings you back into your body.

One thing worth saying upfront: if you tend to live in your head, no habit listed below will land the way it should until you have some kind of practice that brings you back into your body. Yoga, qigong, quiet time in nature, and journaling - still the best free therapist I’ve found for getting out whats taking up space in your mind.

Here are the specific things I’d like to mention, which I feel have helped me to sleep better.

Eating enough. Under-eating keeps the body in a low-level stress state. A body that feels fed feels safe. A body that feels safe can actually rest. Under-eating is one of the most common causes of insomnia in women. We are still stuck in diet culture, most of us aiming for the goal of weight loss, as opposed to optimal health and vitality. We always hear about how were eating way too much. Many certainly are, but there are also a large group who are chronically under-eating, without even realizing it. Moms who are overburdened, surviving off scraps from their kids’ plates or simply snacking most of the day. Women who would love to lose a few pounds, who’ve resorted to black coffee and a muffin until dinner each day. It wasn’t until I started letting go of my fear of weight gain that I could actually start nourishing myself properly - this alone helped me overcome a number of symptoms I was dealing with. The funny thing is I actually look a lot more lean now that I’m eating significantly more, because I’m getting my metabolism on track after years of under-nourishment. 3 meals a day, protein, carb and fat with each meal, snacks when needed. Supplementing with more food when needed, such as in the luteal phase.

Reduce screen time, especially short-form content. This isn’t just about blue light or overstimulation, though both matter. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, excessive use of the eyes is understood to weaken the Heart. The Heart is the organ most associated with insomnia and overstimulation of the mind, so if sleep is something you’re struggling with, this connection is worth taking seriously. Short-form content in particular is relentless in its demands on your attention. Less of it, especially in the evening, is not optional if you’re trying to genuinely address this. Turn off notifications, keep your phone in another room, set app timers, fill your time with other activities that bring you joy and fulfillment.

Be mindful of what you're consuming, not just how much. We talk a lot about diet in the context of health, but the content we feed our minds deserves the same attention. Disturbing films, doom-scrolling news, endlessly cycling through anxiety-inducing information - your nervous system doesn't separate what it sees and hears from how it feels. If you've ever watched something unsettling before bed and then struggled to sleep, you've felt that directly. The same principle applies at a lower, slower level when stressful content is a constant backdrop to your day. Stay informed to a degree which feels right for you - but it is worth honestly asking how much of what you're taking in is genuinely serving you, and how much is keeping you in a low-level state of stress. Consider how you might feel after spending 20 hours a week consuming news, versus 20 hours listening to music you love. Same time.

Make more time for moments of stillness. Easier said than done in the attention economy we've found ourselves in. But we weren't designed to be consumed by things all day long - senses perpetually overloaded, attention perpetually demanded. We don't need to carry our phones with us from room to room, or keep headphones in at all times, filling every quiet moment with a podcast, piling more into our brains that are already carrying too much. For some of us it's less screen time. For others, it's less noise, less talking, less doing. A lot of us have spent so long in constant motion that stillness feels unfamiliar, even uncomfortable - but many of us are slowly waking up to the fact that we could stand to do less, and just simply be more often. Porch hangs, watching the sunset, listening to the birds, screen-free meals. How can we expect to sleep well at night if we haven't allowed ourselves a single moment of quiet during the day? A Chinese news clip went viral, reporting that research shows women simply need more time lying down. Not sleeping necessarily, just resting. It's one of the most radical things we could do for our body, mind and spirit in a culture that treats busyness as a virtue.

Let the evening feel like evening. Light is one of the most powerful signals your body receives. In the morning, get outside and let natural light hit your eyes as early as possible - this sets your circadian clock, telling your body it's daytime and triggering the hormonal cascade that will hours later, wind you down toward sleep. But that winding down can only happen if you give your body the opposite signal come evening by embracing darkness. Dim the lights after sunset, swap harsh overheads for warm-spectrum lamps and consider red-tinted blue light blocking glasses if screens are unavoidable. Your nervous system is reading environmental cues - light, temperature, noise, activity and responding accordingly. We can't expect to flip an internal switch and drift off the moment our head hits the pillow if we've spent the evening bathed in artificial daylight.

Finish eating before 8pm. Digestion and deep sleep don’t run well at the same time. Give your body a chance to finish one before starting the other.

Walk outside after dinner. Simple, and genuinely underrated. It supports digestion, brings cortisol down and creates a natural transition out of the day. No headphones, no stimulating conversations - listen to the sounds in your environment, feel your heels heavy on the ground, breathe through your nose.

Build an evening ritual. It doesn’t need to be elaborate. The point is repetition, doing the same things in the same order until your nervous system starts recognizing it as a cue to wind down. This could be writing, reading, taking a bath - also a great time for a sleep-focused yoga or qigong practice.

Meditate, in whatever form works for you. Seated, lying down, walking. The practice is teaching your system that stillness is safe. That takes time, but it compounds. Those who have had a consistent meditation practice for a while will tell you that suddenly, you’ll notice little improvements in areas of your life that you wouldn’t have expected. You’ll feel you have more control over your actions, and maybe even begin to start accepting the things you can’t control. Every now and then I’ll have a sleepless night. This was common for me when I was younger - I would stay up riddled with anxiety, worried about how I’d feel the next day, wondering what was wrong with me. However now, those nights still come on occasion, yet I don’t feel bothered. I accept that sleep isn’t coming, practice deep breathing or hop out of bed, do some yoga or read for a while.

Viparita Karani (Legs Up the Wall) for 10–15 minutes before bed. This is an inversion, which means it’s inherently calming to the nervous system. Blood moves back toward the heart and head, your legs get a chance to fully rest and maybe most importantly, you’re just lying there. No phone, no input, just breathing and being still.

If you try this for a week and notice you’re falling asleep more easily, feeling genuinely calmer in the evenings, sit with that for a moment. That’s 10 to 15 minutes in a single posture - imagine what a full yin or restorative yoga class could do. Viparita Karani is one of the foundational poses in restorative yoga - the whole practice is built around this kind of deep, deliberate release. YouTube has plenty of good classes and you don’t need any special props. Blankets, cushions, whatever you have at home will do.

Eat and drink warm. Cold and raw food requires more energy to process, your digestive system has to work harder to break it down and bring it up to body temperature before it can do anything useful with it. Warm, cooked food asks far less of your body, which matters in the evening when everything is trying to slow down. There's also a reason so many digestive issues surface at night: digestion and deep sleep compete for the same resources, if your gut is still laboring away, quality rest becomes harder to come by. Prioritizing warm, cooked meals and beverages, especially in the second half of the day is more underrated things you can do for both gut health and sleep. Think about how a hot cup of herbal tea feels after a long day compared to a glass of ice water.

There are no quick fixes for sleep (or for much else when it comes to our health.) It's not often the supplements or the hacks. It's the fundamentals, returned to consistently that create real and lasting change. Most of what's listed here costs nothing. It just asks for your attention and willingness to slow down in a world that keeps fighting for your attention.

Originally published on the West Holistic Substack. Subscribe there for new essays, or browse the archive.