sleep – Meditation for Health

Three reasons to start meditating

Here are three of the best reasons you’ll find to meditate regularly

I have a list of the practical benefits of meditating; there are over 150 items which I’ve gleaned from scientific papers and the anecdotal experience of other meditators. But in this short blog, I’ve listed three of the most well-known: reducing stress and anxiety, improving sleep and improving focus and concentration.

Reducing stress and anxiety

Meditation is a practice that can involve focusing your attention on a particular object, thought, or activity to train attention and awareness. This can help to reduce stress and anxiety by calming the mind and bringing it into the present moment. For example, when you meditate, you can’t think about the past or worry about the future because you are focused on the present. This can help clear your mind and allow you to let go of any negative thoughts or emotions contributing to your stress and anxiety. In addition, meditation can also help to regulate the body’s stress response by activating the relaxation response, which can have a calming effect on the mind and body.

Improving sleep

There are several ways in which meditation can improve sleep and reduce insomnia. Here are a few:

One of the main benefits of meditation is its ability to reduce stress and anxiety. High stress and anxiety levels can interfere with sleep, so by reducing these feelings, meditation can help improve sleep. In addition, meditation activates the relaxation response, which can help to relax the mind and body. This can make it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep. Meditation can also help to increase mindfulness, or the ability to be present in the moment without judgment. This can help to quiet the racing thoughts that often keep people awake at night. Regulates the body’s natural sleep-wake cycle: Meditation can help regulate the body’s natural sleep-wake cycle, or circadian rhythm, improving sleep quality.

Improving focus and concentration

Meditation can improve focus and concentration in several ways. By practising regularly, you can learn to focus your attention on a specific object, thought, or activity. This can help to improve your ability to concentrate and focus on tasks. In addition, meditation can help to quiet the “monkey mind,” or the constant stream of thoughts that can make it difficult to focus. By quieting the mind, meditation can make staying focused and avoiding distractions easier. In some cases, meditation can also help to improve your attention span. Attention span is the amount of time you can focus on a task before becoming distracted.

Meditation, Sleep and Your Health: The Benefits of Meditation

Meditation is likely to be a useful tool in the journey to sleep better, but you need the right method.

Falling asleep at work; can meditation lead to better sleep — Can meditation lead to better sleep?

Sleep Better

Meditation is a wide range of ancient mind-training techniques which are now used widely to support health and wellbeing. One of the less well-known applications is to create relaxed states that support better quality sleep. A short evening meditation practice can lead to significantly improved quantity and quality of sleep. It’s not just that meditation can increase alpha brain activity, leading to sleep-friendly lower metabolic rates. But evening meditation methods can use visualisations that create serenity and contentedness allowing relaxing sleep patterns to develop naturally.

What is Meditation?

There are literally thousands of traditional meditation methods, and scientists are only just beginning to understand how they work. And although we don’t yet fully understand the psychological and physiological processes that link meditation to better sleep, there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence that indicates it really does help. So, at the risk of overgeneralising, we can consider meditation as a process that allows better control over your own thought processes, allowing you to develop practices that support relaxation and a great night’s sleep. Mindfulness forms of meditation may also give you space to focus on the here and now in a non-judgemental way. Finally, unlike many other practices, such as behavioural modification techniques, building a regular meditation habit anywhere, anytime, is easy. You don’t have to change your routine or beliefs; just focus on techniques that help you sleep better.

The Benefits of Meditation for Your Sleep

Many meditation scientists regard the altered metabolic state indicated by changes to alpha brain wave activity as a form of relaxation. And while meditation should not be sleep-inducing per se, the calmness and relaxation meditation brings should allow sleep to come without difficulty when you are ready. In one sense, regular meditation restores healthy balances in body, speech, and mind, supporting sleep and waking activity in equal measure. If the brain rests, natural healing and rejuvenation can take place. Adopting meditation can help improve sleep cycles. Different meditation styles have different focuses to help your sleeping patterns and dreams. In addition, meditation can help to calm your mind and reduce anxiety. A recent study found meditation positively impacted lowering cortisol levels in the blood, linked with stress. There is a suggestion that it may even decrease muscle tension and improve alertness.

How to Meditate Before Sleep

If you are new to meditation, your first step should be to find a reliable meditation teacher and a method appropriate for you and your meditation goals. Different practices have different functions in traditional meditation, so make sure you use a technique designed for the evening to support better sleep. Then, when you have the right method and reliable instructions, you can set aside twenty or thirty minutes in the evening to meditate. Don’t worry about doing everything perfectly or according to strict guidelines; evening practice does not normally work that way; you’re looking to calm down, not get hyped up. So to support your evening practice, you might want to think about your use of social media, consider what you eat and generally avoid unsettling influences.

Conclusions

The rhythms of modern living and how we think about ourselves and others can be counter-productive to a good night’s sleep. With extended working hours, multiple appointments, commuting, eating on the run, and constantly looking at screens, we’re all trying to keep up with modern living, but somehow we’re barely getting by. This isn’t to suggest that sleep is an option we’d consider to be a luxury because sleep should be available whenever we need it. Instead, we need to find ways to take our health and wellbeing into our own hands to help the process. Meditation has an impressive track record of tackling many modern problems and health challenges, including stress and anxiety, loneliness, depression, and sleep issues. But meditation is not a magic solution, and you will get the best results if you combine your practices with relevant lifestyle changes.

Does meditation help you sleep better?

Meditation and mindfulness can help to improve your sleep, but don’t allow them to hide or minimise an underlying problem.

Mindfulness and sleep, it’s all about balance

Sleep-related problems are frequently a reason why people start meditation classes or ask me for advice. The reasons why our sleep is disturbed are many and varied, and although it’s hard to give general advice, regular meditation often leads to improved sleep. The key term to note is ‘improved’ rather than ‘longer’. We know that almost half of people over 50 experience some kind of sleep problem; for many a chronic sleep condition can lead to a range of physical and mental health problems.¹ The good news is that meditation has been shown to help, but it does depend.

As a general principle, improved relaxation is correlated with better sleep; we all know that restlessness and agitation, particularly at bedtime, can make it hard for us to ‘drop off’. So at this most fundamental level, some regular meditation is likely to lead to a more relaxed state, and when the practice is established, better sleep patterns. But one of the critical differences between medicalised and traditional forms of meditation is the notion of ‘cure’ and ‘treatment’.

If you’re not sleeping, it’s often linked to other factors, such as an underlying health problem, stress from work or relationship issues. While meditation can make a difference, the actual solution to the problem might also rest in some clearer thinking. So the first question for you to resolve is why aren’t you sleeping? If you can go some way to answering this, it will make a big difference to the kind of meditation practice you should use. For example, if work-related stress is a root cause, you might want to tackle this as well as meditating for better sleep. Similarly, if you have a health problem that’s limiting your sleep, tackle that issue as well as thinking about meditation. Don’t use meditation to mask other issues.

Based on the feedback I receive, meditation usually helps people get better sleep, but there are typically several issues at play. For example, after undertaking an evening practice, I encourage students not to spend too much time on social media or watching TV. If you discover that engaging with social media at bedtime limits your sleep, you might wish to change that habit in addition to meditating.

In traditional meditation systems, there are practices linked to sleep and dreaming, but their role is to support the meditator in personal and spiritual development. It’s also not unusual to see more experienced meditators have less hours but better quality sleep, from the physiological perspective this makes sense although there are few scientific studies in this area.

As always email us if you have any concerns. And please post your thoughts and experiences below.

Notes

1 Black, D. S., O’Reilly, G. A., Olmstead, R., Breen, E. C., & Irwin, M. R. (2015). Mindfulness meditation and improvement in sleep quality and daytime impairment among older adults with sleep disturbances: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA internal medicine, 175(4), 494-501.

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