If you’re having trouble sleeping, you may have wondered: does meditation help with sleep? Well, disrupted sleep can often be due to stress. Once feelings of anxiety are triggered around bedtime, falling asleep becomes more difficult. Meditation can help combat this.
Meditation is a technique that people can use to relieve stress at bedtime and fall asleep more easily. It has a long history, especially in Eastern cultures where it was often used in spirituality or religion. In western medicine, evidence suggests that it might bring about relaxation and ease stress. Research also suggests that meditation can help with pain and sleep disturbances.
So, how does meditation help with sleep?
Meditation is a type of mind-body therapy that combines mental work with physical aspects such as deep breathing. By targeting both anxious thoughts and physical stress symptoms, sleep meditation aims to relax and prepare the body for sleep.
On a mental level, meditation promotes a more relaxed response to a person’s stressful thoughts and feelings. Meditation styles often incorporate the idea of mindfulness or a focus on the present moment with an open, non-judgmental mindset. Practicing meditation may also incorporate concentrating on a repeated phrase, visual image, sound or sensation such as breathing to help reduce distractions.
Meditation and mindfulness are likely to help people sleep in many ways. Using these techniques can help reduce stress, lowering your heart rate and blood pressure. They also help us better manage pain and can even sometimes help reduce pain or make it more bearable if this is something you struggle to combat at bedtime.
As well as this, meditation can help slow your breathing which can reduce anxiety and can improve our mental outlook by encouraging us to concentrate on the present moment and soften our reactions to difficult experiences.
If you’d like to give meditation a go, you can use one of our playlists to help set the mood: Spotify – Tranquil Nights