More and more people are struggling with falling asleep and/or staying asleep due to negative thoughts, stressful situations, and worrying. Meditating before bed can help with this!
What is meditation?
Meditation is a way to get out of your head and detach from your thoughts. By meditating, you signal your brain that it can relax, and your body will naturally follow. And you can probably imagine that a relaxed brain and body fall asleep much more easily than a brain and body running at full speed.
The effectiveness of meditation comes from its effect on your brain. Meditation activates your parasympathetic nervous system. It also stimulates the increase of specific brainwaves and slows your breathing and heart rate. Finally, meditation influences the production of calming neurotransmitters and hormones such as GABA, serotonin, and melatonin (also known as your sleep hormone).
4 meditation exercises to promote your sleep
Meditation can be done in many different ways. In this article, we share a number of techniques known for their positive effect on sleep and relaxation.
1. Guided meditation
A guided meditation can help you get into the right state of mind. In a guided meditation, you meditate on texts spoken by someone else. These texts can range from a breathing exercise to, for example, reciting affirmations.
Guided meditations can be found on YouTube, Spotify, and various apps.
2. Meditating with binaural beats
With binaural beats you can stimulate brainwaves such as alpha and theta waves. Alpha waves often occur during daydreaming and relaxation, while theta waves are usually measured just before falling asleep or waking up. By listening to these binaural beats, which can be found on YouTube and Spotify, you create peace and quiet in your mind, which will help you fall asleep better.
3. Bodyscan meditation
Do you want to fall asleep soundly but your head keeps rattling with shopping lists and your tasks for the next day? A body scan is a very nice exercise to come completely into the here and now and become aware of your body.
During a body scan, you use your mind to scan your entire body, as if a scanner is moving very slowly from your crown to your toes. By focusing on each spot the scanner passes over in your body, you discover where tension and aches are held. What sensations do you experience? Do you perhaps feel tingling in your fingers or a constricted feeling in your stomach? Often these tensions are physical manifestations of mental stress, which you can release more easily through the body scan and then fall asleep better.
4. Gratitude meditation
Being grateful is one of the best things you can do. For example, you can write down 3 things you are grateful for every day, but you can also do a gratitude meditation to become daily aware of the beautiful things in your life.
Every day before you go to sleep, mentally list several things (at least 3) that you are grateful for that day. These can also be very small things. By ending your day positively, you will notice over time that you fall asleep more relaxed.
