Sleep and I have never had a great relationship and at the grand old age of 28, I’ve finally decided that I’ve had enough and plan on becoming better acquainted with the snoozy nighttime state. Less of the “I can’t sleep” moaning please! When I was younger the issue wasn’t so much about staying asleep, it was more to do with actually getting to sleep in the first place. I would lay there with my eyes closed for what felt like hours, but was maybe about 60-90 minutes, taking precious time away from the 8-hours every one was telling me I needed.
If you’ve read my more personal blog posts about anxiety and bulimia then I think you’ll agree that they’ll have had a part to play in not being able to doze off, but even now, bulimia a thing of my past, I flit between taking ages to fall asleep or constantly waking up in the night. I still put a lot of the reasons I can’t sleep down to anxiety, whether I think it’s there on the surface or not, I’m my fathers daughter, and we tend to worry about everything as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
When I was on my yoga course we had to complete a task to write down the things that we do to rest & relax and the things that make us stressed. Every single person on my course put sleep down as something they do to relax, but I put it in the stress column, as I seem to think that when I’m sleeping I’m wasting time and should be doing something productive. I think this has a lot to do with my sleep being so all over the place and therefore it’s never really very enjoyable. I remember crying after writing it down, as it really hit home and I realised this was a bigger issue than I had let myself think for all those years.
That was six months ago and in all honesty I’ve just continued in the same way I had been before. Not good, I know, but I’m only human and we all know how easy it is to dish out advice, but not actually take any of it on board ourselves. Well not anymore. I need to learn to love sleep again if I want to have the energy to do all of the things I love. Getting up for yoga at 6am might sound wonderful, but should I be doing that when I’ve only had 5-6 hours of broken sleep? Probably not.
I’m not sure what the answer is yet. I could google some tips for sleeping, and write them down in this blog post for you all to read, but I wouldn’t know if any of them actually work. Instead I’m going to spend some time going on a little journey, just me, myself and sleep, to see what helps and what doesn’t. If you have had similar issues and have some tips you’re willing to share with me, then I’d love to hear them. So far, my humming breaths and deep yogic breathing before bed are the things that have helped me the most, but I’m open to new ideas.
Sleep well. Love, Cat x