Tuesday 6 March 2012

My Five Best Ideas for Managing Sleeplessness







Tossing and Turning?  Imagining it is the dawn chorus when really it is the clock turning?  We are supposed to sleep more for long life and at my rate I should have gone years ago.  I have always slept for around 5 hours and with all the changes in my life it is less.  Waking up and expecting Peter to be there, waking up and getting confused on the wrong side of the bed, waking up and just wishing that clocks could be turned back.

What helps?

1.  Putting on a favourite DVD that I know well (Inspector Morse, especially the early ones) and letting it lull me into relaxed security - it will turn itself off eventually.

2.  Childhood routines: Horlicks made with extra sugar, hot-water bottle and fleecy pyjamas!

3.  Deep  breathing: watching in my mind's eye the rise and fall of chest as my breathing gets deeper and deeper...zzz

4.  Getting up and starting all over again with a bed-time routine, and telling my body and mind that it really is bedtime!

5.  Reading a familiar and favourite book: for me it is one of the Brother Cadfael stories, for example The Rose Rent or The Sanctuary Sparrow.

It is re-establishing a familiar and known routine when something unfamiliar and non-routine has happened.

No comments:

Post a Comment