Every one in three people now suffer from restlessness and sleep depravation. Even if you don't have diagnosed insomnia, The National Sleep Foundation says the average person should get 7-9 hours of sleep a night depending on age but over ⅓ of adults are not reaching that.
The most common cause of all this can be traced back to mental conditions like anxiety, stress, and depression. Instead of taking sleep medicine that could make you feel groggy or prevent you from being your best self, sleep meditation is a better and healthier alternative to consider.
Various studies have shown that sleep meditation helps you fall asleep and stay in a deep sleep by lowering your heart rate, encouraging slow breathing, and igniting your parasympathetic nervous system. Overall, this helps you with relaxation and to transition into a restful sleep through the night. When used with healthy sleep supplements that focus on nutrients instead of heavy medicine, sleep meditation has shown even better results.
How Does Sleep Meditation Work?
The significance and importance of a good night's sleep can be deduced from the fact that we can focus, function, and perform way more responsively, actively, and productively. Deep sleep is mandatory to allow our body to recover from the exertion and exhaustion of our routine and get us ready to conquer the next day.
Initiating Bio-Chemical Changes In Our Body
The human body has a very sophisticated analogy and mechanism- we go through several biochemical changes when we transition into sleep. Sleep meditation helps initiate these changes smoothly. Meditation helps increase the levels of melatonin (the sleep hormone) and its precursor-serotonin.
Moreover, it slows down your heart rate, breathing, and peristalsis as well as your blood pressure. In short, all active functions in your body eventually slow down. It's like a calming internal bedtime story.
Reducing Pain Sensitivity And Stress
Another way meditation helps in promoting sleep is by reducing pain sensitivity and stress, which may disrupt your sleep. Meditation and deep breathing helps lower the sensory activities taking place in the brain's thalamus, so you can drift off easier.
Balancing The Nervous System's Instincts
Our autonomic nervous system comprises two parts, one part which keeps us alert and the one responsible for inducing sleep. The sympathetic nervous system regulates active responses, while the parasympathetic system helps the instincts to slow down and relax.
Both parts strike a perfect balance to allow us to function normally and perform in our daily lives. Due to stress and anxiety, we often lose that intricate balance which can lead to sleep disorder. Meditation helps in overcoming the imbalance of sympathetic nervous system dominance.
Meditation effectively deals with restlessness and constant episodes of anxiety as it helps you feel relaxed and at peace and promotes mindfulness. To transition smoothly in your sleeping phase, you must allow your body to be in a relaxed and peaceful state.
A preoccupied and burdened mind will lead to sleep disturbance during the night and an overall inability to fall asleep. Your mind must have mental clarity and reduced stress levels to improve sleep quality.
How Can Sleep Meditation Be Made More Effective?
Sleep meditation, when used with sleep music or healthy sleep supplements, can prove to be quite beneficial for the body, mind, and spirit. Sleep music creates an extraordinarily peaceful and soothing ambiance for the mind to relax smoothly, transitioning you into a deep sleep.
To get perfect sleep, combine your sleep meditation with a healthy, natural supplement for sleep like Healthycell REM Sleep – the only sleep gel in the world that is designed for all four phases of the human sleep cycle, tastes great, and offers265% the absorption rate of pills. It ensures that you get your quality sleep and wake up refreshed and energetic to seize the day ahead.
It helps regulate and promote a healthy sleep cycle with natural ingredients. It contains essential amino acids and calming herbs extracts to soothe your mind and smoothly transition it into sleep mode, avoiding restlessness.
Sleep hormone regulation helps lower your body temperature to an optimum level to ensure relaxing and therapeutic sleep.
How to Meditate Before Sleeping
One of the most significant plus points of practicing meditation includes the fact that you can perform it anywhere and at any time because all you need is some silence so you can relax for a few minutes. With time, you will better know what method suits you. Some basic steps of sleep meditation are mentioned below:
- Look for an area that is quiet and peaceful. Now, decide the posture in which you're the most comfortable. While some people prefer lying down on a bed or sofa, some find it better to sit upright. If you're going for sleep meditation, it is best for you to lie down.
- Close your eyes and then focus on breathing slowly. Stay calm- inhale and exhale deeply. Try to focus on your breathing and divert your attention from what's happening around you.
- If there's any distracting sound or thought, tend to ignore it by focusing on your breathing pattern and letting it take over your conscious thinking.
By meditating before sleep, you're not only learning to quiet down what's happening around you. What you're learning is how you can quiet down your mind. Your meditation stamina and focus will increase with time, allowing you to meditate for a more extended period.
Types of Sleep Meditation
The method mentioned above is the most basic and most straightforward meditation technique. Thanks to neuroscience and psychology, we can now discover various types of sleep meditation.
1. Mindfulness Meditation
This type of sleep meditation focuses more on you trying to concentrate on your breathing pattern, body, and level of consciousness. You're supposed to breathe in and out deeply.
You'll notice how your body responds to this breathing mechanism by noting whether your body feels relaxed or tense. If any part of your body feels strained or under tension, you're supposed to relax it using your consciousness.
2. Guided Sleep Meditation
This type of technique is known as guided imagery and involves a step-by-step meditating process which you're guided through with the help of a specialist. You mostly listen to an audio recording of a guide whose commands you'll follow.
Guided meditation is quite popular as various platforms offer you online, free meditating audios and podcasts. You can also practice guided meditation via a sleep meditation app and streaming apps like Spotify.
It is best to dim the lighting of your room and your phone's brightness. Lie down comfortably in your bed and focus on the person's voice and instructions.
3. Body Scan Meditation
This sleep meditation involves an active focus that you pay to every part of your body. Body scan meditation helps increase awareness of your bodily sensations and how you feel and respond to different stimuli like pain, touch, tension, and strain.
By paying attention to whatever you're feeling, you are able to put conscious effort into perceiving your emotions and thoughts. It helps you relax and feel at peace which eventually enables you to sleep.
Benefits of Sleep Meditation
Sleep meditation is known to have numerous benefits- the first and most obvious one being that you'll be able to get a good, refreshing sleep and recover from insomniac episodes. In this way, sleep meditation also reduces stress and anxiety levels and helps with depression.
This mindful meditation improves your focus and overall responsiveness, apart from better sleep. It is also considered to have a healing and soothing effect on your mood and spiritual health. It increases your cognitive potential, making you feel more active, productive, and alert.
Meditation also improves your sensory abilities, particularly making your mind pay attention to them. Lastly, sleep meditation is also effective in controlling blood pressure, improving coronary health, and reducing any issues of inflammation or irritation.
Any Possible Risks or Side Effects?
Most people do not experience side effects while practicing sleep meditation. In rare cases, if someone has a chronic mental conditions, meditation might trigger unwanted side effects. 
Most people nowadays have an extremely stressful and hectic routine that can make sleep elusive. A stressed or anxious person might feel restlessness causing sleep depravity and sleepless episodes. Less sleep can further add to stress and anxiety – a vicious cycle.
Instead of taking Rx medications for sleeping that might cause addiction and any other side effects, sleep meditation has emerged as a potentially more effective and healthier alternative. A quality night's sleep should always be treasured, and if you're someone who struggles with it, a healthy night-time routine, low caffeine, and a regular sleep schedule can indeed prove to be beneficial for you. To learn more read our article, How to Sleep Better: 12 Pro Tips for Better Sleep Tonight.