Mindfulness can set the stage for sleep by allowing you to be more aware of your thoughts and to be able to let go of those anxieties instead of getting stuck on them, says Harris. “That thought process makes you stressed, worrying-often unnecessarily-about the next day’s effects. They worry, she says, that they “won’t be able to do X, Y, Z the next day” if they don’t sleep. One of the biggest problems her clients share is dreading the night as it comes and growing anxious about trying to make themselves get sleepy. “Mindfulness can quiet the brain and allows for deeper sleep,” says Shelby Harris, PhD, a clinical sleep psychologist in private practice in Westchester, NY. “Strengthening your ‘mind muscle’ through daily practice helps you better recognize the negative insomnia-inducing thoughts and let them pass.”
If you don’t meet those ideal sleep targets and tend to wake up under-rested, mindfulness could help you. Our mental health, immunity, hormonal balance, and metabolism all rely on getting sufficient, high-quality sleep. Sleep also lowers your pulse and blood pressure, letting the heart and blood vessels rest. Deep, uninterrupted sleep is restorative to the whole body: It’s when our brains process what we’ve learned during the day, storing information and memories. However, the quality of sleep may be more important than the quantity, say experts. For teenagers age 14 to 17, getting eight to ten hours is recommended. The National Sleep Foundation notes that most adults from age 18 to 64 can aim for seven to nine hours of shut-eye each night, with adults over 64 needing slightly less. What does a night of sleeping really well look like? According to the National Sleep Foundation, people who experience quality sleep spend at least 85% of their total time in bed asleep, are asleep within 30 minutes of going to bed, only wake once per night, and remain awake for less than 20 minutes before falling back to sleep. That means nearly half of us have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, wake up too early, or wake feeling unrefreshed even when we’ve had plenty of time and opportunity to rest. When it’s happening to you, there’s little consolation in knowing that inadequate sleep, or insomnia, is a problem shared by some 50% of all adults, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In up to 15% of adults, insomnia causes daytime distress or impairment, with the risk for insomnia being greater in women and older adults. Over time, he suggests, sleeplessness could also lead to unwanted weight gain and negative mood problems.
For example, your attention span, mood, and memory suffer. He has studied the many ways a lack of sleep affects you. Your worry is well-placed, says Matthew Walker, PhD, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science. You need to be alert and ready to tackle the day ahead, and you’re sure that without enough deep, restful sleep, you’ll barely be able to function. Lying in the dark, you start to panic: You know your alarm will go off in just a few hours and you’ve barely slept a wink. You can’t fall asleep, or maybe you drifted off a couple of hours ago, and now you’re wide awake, feeling lonely and a little desperate.
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