Do you ever have trouble sleeping?
I do sometimes.
Not a lot.
But now and again I find myself staring at the ceiling,
waiting for the walls to melt.
My whole family struggles with sleeping. It’s like we’re an
anti-sleeping gang, (except for my dad, who we lovingly refer to as the great
sleeping bear.) Getting a smart phone certainly didn’t help. Sometimes I’ll
play Candy Crush or surf Facebook until I realize that the rejoicing over an
early bedtime was for naught, as the numbers ONE ZERO ZERO reflect in my glazed
over eyeballs.
There was one night, when I was so worried about getting a
restful sleep because of an audition the next morning that I took a single
Tylenol PM to help.
NEVER AGAIN.
I could barely wake up the next morning, and I felt groggy and, well, drugged all day.
So much for that audition. Pfft.
Even though I wouldn’t say that I suffer from a sleeping
disorder, or anything, I have tried a few little tricks to make getting to
sleep easier. And now, I shall share them with you:
Limit Yourself.
This is on practically every list, ever, but just in case you forgot: Don’t drink any caffeinated beverages after 4pm.I know.
Seriously.
That early.
If you think you're one of those people that aren't affected by caffeine and you can't sleep at night...well, just keep telling yourself that.
Get Quiet.
Allow yourself some quiet time before actually trying to sleep. 20-30 minutes of quiet reading, meditation, or prayer (whatever floats your boat) can allow your mind and body to start coming down into a restful state.
Get Noisy.
My brother used to have a white noise machine in his guest bedroom and I hated it and I kind of wrote off the idea of white noise. However, with the advent of my trusty smart-phone, I discovered an app called, you guessed it, White Noise, and it is now one of my most favorite things. There are several different ambient sounds to choose from. My favorite is crickets. It sounds like it did outside my bedroom window in the house I grew up in aka Happiness. |
| I can sleep right through it. |
You can also choose options like Thunderstorm, Train, Plane in Flight…you get the idea. And the best part of all this? That sucker is FREE. Google Marketplace. You can thank me later.
You're Getting Sleepy...Verrrry sleepy!
Hypnosis is the bomb-diggity. Some people are weird about this one, but I’m telling you, it
works wonders. I got interested in self-hypnosis when I was about 14 and
then sort of forgot about it until a couple years ago. I now use hypnosis
regularly and it’s really quite fantastic. Try using a hypnosis audio
session designed for sleep or deep relaxation (i.e. there’s no wake-up
call at the end.) Free Hypnosis Treatment has some good ones, plus your hypnotherapist has an adorbs Northern British accent. Hypnosis works differently for everyone, by the way. For
example, I almost always go into a meditative state while listening to a
hypnosis audio, but my brother said it helped him sleep by guiding his
mind through the hypnosis session so his mind wasn’t racing through all
the things he was going to have to do the next day. 
Consistency is Key.
Go to
sleep at the same time every night. My actor friends are laughing at this
one. Heck, I'm laughing at this one. 
While this one is nearly impossible for many of us, myself included, it’s probably one of the most practical ones on this list. We all have an internal clock. Our bodies know when we need rest, and if we’re consistent about it then we’ll get better sleep. Promise.
Well, those are my personal tips and tricks for helping ME
go to sleep. What are some things you do to help yourself get a good night’s
rest? Or better yet, what do you do if you wake up in the middle of the night?
