Foundational Steps Towards a Good Sleep

I envy people 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, waking up for meals and refreshments before immediately falling asleep again. Neighbours blasting music? They’re fast asleep. It’s 3:00 p.m.? They can lie down, start snoring almost immediately and 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 completely elusive, followed by stretches where I slept more soundly but was still consumed by vivid dreams or worse, nightmares. Even after eight hours, it’s difficult to feel rested when you feel like you’ve spent the entire night dreaming. Your body may have been lying still but your mind never seemed to get the same chance to rest.

I tried loads of supplements, read plenty of books on the subject, diffused lavender in a freezing-cold room and prepared my nightly sedative teas. Some things helped occasionally but most never worked like the magic pill I hoped they would.

What actually helped me sleep better was changing my day-to-day habits and learning how to regulate my system so that by the time evening came around, my body felt safe enough to relax.

It’s worth asking why sleep issues have become so widespread and how our lifestyles have shifted in ways that make switching off so difficult. Even animals can develop insomnia, typically in response to pain, fear or environmental disruption. So what is disrupting us?

Stress is unavoidable but certain habits may be amplifying it. Much of modern life is remarkably detached from the rhythms we evolved around: sitting for most of the day, surrounding ourselves with artificial light long after sunset, eating foods that are rarely local or seasonal and juggling endless responsibilities with very little room left for silence or stillness. Then there are the hours spent staring into screens, absorbing more information than our minds were ever meant to process in a day.

If you tend to live in your head disturbed by looping thoughts throughout the day, it’s worth considering which activities could genuinely bring you some peace of mind. For most of us, it probably isn’t one single thing.

Yoga is certainly one simple and effective system for helping us return to a calmer, more peaceful state.

Verse 1.2 of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras reads:

“Yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ” — yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.

And believe it or not you don’t need to do advanced postures or hours of meditation. You can start with the absolute foundations.

One yoga book I keep coming back to: It shares foundational exercises of yogasana for practitioners of all levels. View on Amazon →

Yoga isn’t the only way to calm fluctuations of the mind. For someone else it might be Qi Gong, prayer, journaling, jogging, swimming, hiking, dancing, writing poetry, listening to music, knitting, sailing or cycling.

It’s worth reflecting on which hobbies give you genuine moments of mental clarity rather than simply helping you numb out. If you’re not sure what those are yet, it may be time to experiment and follow where your interests lead you.

Beyond making time for practices that bring you peace of mind, there are also foundational habits, things we do or don’t do every day, that can leave us feeling either increasingly wound up or more regulated and capable of switching off when the time comes.

Ensure you’re eating enough. Under-eating can keep the body in a low-level state of stress. A body that feels fed feels safe and a body that feels safe is far more capable of resting.

We’re still deeply immersed in diet culture, where weight loss is often treated as the goal instead of health, vitality, strength or fertility. We constantly hear that people are eating too much and many certainly are, but there is also a large group of people chronically under-eating without realizing it.

Think of overburdened moms surviving on scraps from their kids’ plates and snacks grabbed throughout the day or women hoping to lose a few pounds who have gradually fallen into a routine of black coffee and a muffin until dinner.

It wasn’t until I started letting go of my own fear of weight gain that I could begin nourishing myself properly. That change alone helped me overcome several symptoms I had been dealing with. Interestingly, I actually look leaner now while eating significantly more, after years of under-nourishing myself.

For me, the foundation is simple: three proper meals a day, with protein, carbohydrates and fat at each meal, plus snacks when needed. Sometimes the body simply needs more food, including during phases such as the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle.

Reduce screen time, especially short-form content. This isn’t only about blue light or overstimulation although both matter.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, excessive use of the eyes is understood to weaken the Heart. The Heart is closely associated with sleep and mental overstimulation, so if sleep is something you struggle with, that relationship may be worth considering.

Short-form content in particular places relentless demands on our attention. If you’re genuinely trying to address sleep, reducing it especially in the evening, can make a big difference.

Turn off notifications, keep your phone in another room, set app timers. Or if you’re brave, break up with your smart phone for a while and opt for a dumb phone. More importantly, start filling that reclaimed time with things that actually bring you joy or fulfilment. I noticed a very clear improvement in my own sleep after deleting Instagram and purchasing a simple flip phone. More on that in another post?

Be mindful of what you’re consuming, not just how much. We talk constantly about diet in the context of health, but what we feed our minds matters too.

Disturbing films, doom-scrolling through the news and endlessly cycling through anxiety-inducing information all affect how we feel. If you’ve ever watched something unsettling before bed and then struggled to fall asleep, then you’ve experienced this directly.

The same thing can happen more subtly when stressful content becomes the constant backdrop to your day.

Stay informed to whatever degree feels right for you but it’s worth asking honestly how much of what you consume is genuinely serving you and how much of it is keeping you in a low-level state of stress. Consider how different you might feel after spending 20 hours a week consuming news compared with 20 hours listening to music you love.

Make more time for moments of stillness. This is easier said than done in the attention economy we’ve found ourselves living in, but we weren’t designed to be consumed by things all day long, our senses perpetually overloaded and our attention constantly demanded.

We don’t need to carry our phones from room to room or keep headphones in at all times, filling every moment with another podcast and piling more information into brains that are already carrying too much.

For some the answer is less screen time. For others it’s less noise, less constant chatter or simply doing less. A simple practice to experiment with is focusing on doing just one thing at a time, entirely free from multitasking.

Many of us have spent so long in constant motion that stillness feels unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. Yet more people seem to be realizing that perhaps we could stand to do a little less and simply be more often.

Sit on the porch, watch the sunset, listen to the birds. Eat a meal without a screen in front of you.

How can we expect ourselves to sleep peacefully at night if we haven’t allowed ourselves a single moment of quiet during the day?

A Chinese news clip went viral after reporting on research suggesting that women may simply need more time lying down, not necessarily sleeping, just resting. In a culture that treats constant busyness as a virtue, allowing ourselves to deliberately rest can feel almost radical.

And if a few moments of silence feel torturous, it’s worth asking what happens when we finally lie down at night and expect the mind to suddenly become quiet.

Let the evening feel like evening. Light is one of the most powerful environmental signals your body receives.

In the morning, get outside and let natural light reach your eyes as early as possible. This helps set your circadian clock, signalling that daytime has begun and starting the biological processes that eventually help you wind down toward sleep later that night.

But that winding-down process works best when we give the body the opposite signal in the evening: darkness.

Dim your lights after sunset. Swap harsh overhead lighting for warmer lamps. If screens are unavoidable, you might consider red-tinted blue-light-blocking glasses.

Circadian-friendly bulbs I use — this is a fantastic option, very similar to the ones I have at home. They offer 3 settings which you can easily toggle between by flicking the light switch: daylight, sunset and campfire. View on Amazon →

Your nervous system is constantly reading your environment - light, temperature, noise, movement, and activity - and responding accordingly. We can’t spend an evening bathed in artificial daylight and then expect to flip an internal switch the moment our head hits the pillow.

The same principle applies to the bedroom. Ideally, sleep in a very dark room without blinking electronics or unnecessary light sources. I’ve also found a sleep mask extremely helpful when blackout curtains aren’t available.

Weighted sleep mask that I use — I wasn’t sure if it would feel awkward, but it stays on comfortably while I sleep and completely blocks out any light. View on Amazon →

Finish eating before 8 p.m. Most of us know that eating a huge meal and crawling straight into bed doesn’t feel particularly good.

Our digestion also changes throughout the day, and a heavy late-night meal can leave the body working hard at precisely the time we’re trying to settle into deep rest. Put simply, digesting a large meal and sleeping deeply don’t always pair well.

Giving yourself some space between dinner and bedtime can make the transition into sleep feel much easier.

Walk outside after dinner. Simple and genuinely underrated.

A gentle walk after dinner can support digestion while creating a natural transition out of the day. Leave the headphones at home if you can. Avoid turning it into another stimulating conversation or another piece of content to consume.

Listen to what’s happening around you, feel your heels on the ground, breathe through your nose. Let it simply be a walk, not an opportunity to be productive while walking.

Build an evening ritual. It doesn’t need to be elaborate. The point is repetition, doing similar things around the same time each evening until your system begins recognizing them as cues that the day is winding down.

You might write, read, take a bath, stretch, or spend some time doing a gentle sleep-focused yoga or Qi Gong practice.

The exact ritual matters less than giving your evenings a rhythm.

Meditate, in whatever form works for you. Seated, lying down, or walking, the practice is partly about teaching your system that stillness is safe.

If meditation feels particularly torturous, start with one minute in the morning. Add another minute gradually as it becomes easier. There’s no need to force yourself into a 30-minute practice simply because that sounds more impressive.

People who have maintained a meditation practice for a while often describe noticing changes in areas of life they hadn’t expected. You may begin to feel more space between an impulse and your reaction to it. You may also find yourself becoming more accepting of what you cannot control.

B.K.S. Iyengar said:

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.”

I still have a sleepless night every now and then. In the past, I would lie there riddled with anxiety, worrying about how I would feel the next day and wondering what was wrong with me.

Those nights still occasionally come but I react very differently now. I accept that sleep isn’t happening at that moment. Instead of fighting with myself in bed, I get up and read something boring for a while.

That shift in itself has made sleeplessness much less frightening.

Practise Viparita Karani (Legs Up the Wall) for 10–15 minutes before bed. Viparita Karani is an inversion and for many people, a deeply calming posture. Your legs get a chance to fully rest, and perhaps most importantly, you’re simply lying there without a phone, without more input, breathing and being still.

I’ve been doing this posture almost every night for about 10 years and for good reason.

Try it consistently for a week and notice whether you’re falling asleep a little more easily or simply feeling calmer in the evening. If 10 to 15 minutes in one posture can create that kind of shift, it gives you a sense of what a full Yin or restorative yoga practice might offer.

Viparita Karani is one of the foundational poses used in restorative yoga, where the entire practice centres around this kind of deep, deliberate release. There are plenty of accessible classes online, and you don’t need special equipment. Blankets, cushions, and whatever you already have at home can work perfectly well.

Incorporate some type of fascial release practice. At this point, I’m fairly convinced that many of our issues really are in our tissues.

When my head is spinning, my heart is racing or I’m buzzing with anxiety, I know that sitting completely still and trying to meditate or do restorative yoga isn’t what I need. Sometimes movement and physical release are much more helpful.

A massage with someone you trust can be incredibly grounding. You can also experiment with self-massage by using a foam roller, slowly working into the areas that feel sticky or restricted. It shouldn’t be excruciatingly painful but more pleasantly uncomfortable rather than something you need to endure.

The foam roller I use — firm enough to start to work those issues out of your tissues. View on Amazon →

If you’re feeling adventurous, you might try an acupressure mat and stand or lie on it for a few minutes while taking slow, deep breaths. The sensation can remind me a little of a cold shower, uncomfortable at first but strangely invigorating.

The acupressure mat I use — there’s no need to buy an expensive one, in my opinion. View on Amazon →

Sometimes these physical practices seem to help release the tension that thinking our way out of stress simply cannot.

There are no quick fixes for sleep, just as there are rarely quick fixes for much else when it comes to our health.

It’s often not the supplement, the gadget, or the latest hack that creates meaningful change. More often, it’s the fundamentals, returned to consistently.

Experiment with these habits, but also spend some time noticing what genuinely gives you more peace of mind. Then find ways to make room for those things every day.

Be willing to slow down in a world that is constantly fighting for your attention.

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