As part of the journey toward a better sleep we tried to find daily choices we can make in order to take one more step ahead. In our understanding, a healthy night routine is a balanced one, consisting of varied habits. As we seek to combine habits with different properties, we thought they are first worth mentioning, including their pros and cons.
Watching TV
Whether you choose to watch the next episode of your favorite series or a recommended movie, spending night time in front of the TV, it can serve natural escapist needs, putting your mind on hold for an hour or so, somewhere between watching and staring, it may also be a nice hangout with your loved ones. Just notice that screens are a source of blue light, a cause of delaying falling asleep, making it harder. In addition, you may want to consider your genre pick, as it may be stressful, affect your dreams and even interrupt the continuation of your sleep.
Reading a book
It’s probably not the first time you hear about books as the first alternative of screen time. Yet, we would like to suggest a different point of view. Reading a book supplies the readers with the glimpse of escapism they usually seek. Books have the magical ability to let us wander in imaginary worlds, where everything and anything gets the shape and colors created in our minds, no filters. A noticeable advantage of reading is clearly the reduction of blue light exposure before sleep. Yet the choice of reading a book also has its disadvantages, like the fact that this is a solo-habit, not very social or collaborative, as well as the fact that it simply takes time.
Meditating
Engaging meditations in your night routine can be very helpful in relieving tension and reducing stress. When it comes to planning a night routine, meditating is definitely one of our favorites, as it’s very flexible in its duration, location and style - all three are simply unlimited. Having said that, meditations are not everyone’s cup of tea, so if you feel like it’s just not for you, don’t worry, you can enjoy these benefits using other methods.
Practicing mindfulness
From our point of view mindfulness is not just a temporary trend, as evidence is gathering together, supporting the hypothesis that it can actually make changes in the way we think. Mindfulness is already acknowledged as a common technique to reduce stress and even treat depression and manage anxiety.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848393/
Skin care routine
Dedicating time to enrich your skin with high quality nutrients is one of most familiar self-care habits, gaining more and more popularity as it’s basically time you spend with yourself, cleaning, washing and applying goods to your skin, usually with a nice texture and liked fragrance. Skin care is just one way of taking care of yourself, feel free to interpret this goal into any parallel habit, which improves your self esteem and makes you feel good with your appearance.
Clear your mind
Do something that simply makes you feel good.
- Write down a diary
- Think about things you feel thankful for
- Plan your next vacation
- Read something related to your fields of interest
- Take a long shower
- Listen to music
Preparing your bedroom
Absurdly, adjusting your bedroom to sleeping mode is an underestimated sleeping habit. If you’ll take a moment to think about it, you’re adjusting your environment to best fit your needs at a moment. It can be the temperature, the fan volume, the humidity level, a fragrance… So how come all these things become less important when you’re sleeping?
We invite you to take a moment and adjust your sleeping environment to your needs before you go to sleep.
What now? Just choose your preferred components and design your own balanced night routine.
