Mindfulness Meditation for Sleep

Sleep is a very significant part of our lives. Each and every person needs to get a proper number of hours of sleep each night in order to live a healthy and productive life. Not getting enough sleep can cause people to be less productive during the day. It can also be damaging to your health in the long-run.

Unfortunately for many of us, once it’s time to go to sleep, it’s hard to turn off our thoughts and drift into a state of relaxation and ultimately sleep. Even for those people who have no problem falling asleep, they may still deal with the sleep disturbance of not being able to stay asleep throughout the night. This brings up to mindfulness meditation.

A 2015 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine compared the results between two groups of people. The first group of participants went through a program to learn about mindfulness meditation and exercises that focused on “moment-by-moment experiences, thoughts and emotions.” This group had less insomnia, depression and fatigue compared to the second group of participants, which this other group did not learn about mindfulness meditation and instead were given a sleep educational class to learn ways to improve their sleep habits.

There are many different ways you can practice mindfulness in your daily life. You can choose to listen to meditations like the one I have included below, however it is most helpful if you practice mindfulness throughout the day, ideally for 20 minutes. The idea is that if you can find ways to evoke relaxation into your life throughout the day, then it will be more natural to go back into that state at nighttime when you’re ready to go to sleep.

For this week’s meditation, we’ve decided to share with you a 10-minute meditation that will help calm your mind, slow your thoughts, and hopefully this helps you achieve a much deeper and relaxing night of sleep.