Sleep Success: Setting Up Your Mind and Room for Restorative Sleep with Melissa Deally (Part 2/3)

All right, welcome back, No Problem Parents, to part two of our three-part series on sleep with my guest, Melissa Dealy. Last week in part one, episode 238, we talked about the effects of blue light on our sleep. And now today we're going to talk about setting up our room and our mind for the best restorative sleep and being intentional about that. In episode 215, the very first episode of 2024, we talked about being intentional this year and really being optimistic.

And so today I'm going to say that while several of the things that Melissa is sharing about sleep are kind of kept and obvious, how intentional are we being to incorporate these tips, these tools, these things that are going to help us optimize our sleep experience so that we can get the best possible restorative sleep for us and for our kids? Listen in today as Melissa shares not just the tips but why these tips are important.

I believe that sleep is a foundational step in seeking first to understand why our kiddos are behaving the way they are and why we are responding or reacting to their behaviors the way we are. Setting up our kids' rooms and our rooms, our minds and our kids' minds with intention for a good restorative sleep might just be the key to curbing those behaviors. Hey there, parents. Are you ready to kick your parenting fears, doubts, and uncertainty to the curb? Do you want to get clear on why your child's behaving the way they are so that you can sleep at night and be more excited for the next day? Are you tired of battling with your kids and are you ready to let go of control and allow them to make some mistakes without feeling like you're failing as a parent? Well, in just 30 days, you can learn how to transform your kiddo's behavior, prepare for and even look forward to the misbehaviors and change the conversations in your home.

Improve your relationship, connection, and reciprocal trust with your kids. Become a no-problem parent today. Melissa Dealy of Your Guided Health Journey is an integrative mind-body health practitioner, trainer of NLP, timeline therapy, and hypnotherapy. She's the host of the impactful Don't Wait for Your Wake-Up Call podcast, which offers concise practical advice for health and mindset embodying melissa's commitment to holistic well-being your guided health journey helps you get to the root cause of why you feel the way you do and it provides a wellness protocol along with education to help you optimize you and your child's health using functional medicine lab tests that are mailed directly to your home you'll discover any nutrient deficiencies imbalances or toxicities and then melissa works with you to create a plan to detox the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies to create lasting results. She has programs for both adults and kids, and I'm so excited to have you back on the show, Melissa. Let's just jump right in with your first step in getting the best restorative night's sleep. Thank you so much, Jackie, for having me. I'm excited to be back here too.

One of the issues today getting in the way of sleep, setting up your bedroom for optimal sleep and comfort. So first of all, you want to sleep in a cool bedroom because your body does warm up overnight and you're under blankets, etc. And if you're too hot, you can't sleep. And you probably know that because you've probably had some summer nights where you might have tossed and turned all night because it's been too hot. But in wintertime, we're less likely to ensure that we're in a cool room for fear of being cold. But the ideal temperature is between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius. And I'm sorry, Americans out there, I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but I know you can use Google to convert that. So 18 to 20 degrees is ideal for a good night's sleep.

You also want to have dark curtains in your room. Even though you're asleep and your eyes are closed, your body can still sense dawn. In fact, your skin has light receptors in it. And so having a dark bedroom for these long days really helps your body not get woken up too early or start waking itself up too early. And if you don't have dark curtains and you can't change your curtains right now, I highly recommend an eye mask, which you can get inexpensively at any drugstore. And you don't necessarily have to wear it all night. But if you're someone who gets up and goes to the washroom in the middle of the night, you can put it on after that, so that you are keeping that light out. And it's not registering in your brain that it's getting light. Very, very effective. And it's something that when I put my eye mask on, it's almost as if my eyes relax into the fact that they don't need to be alert to the impending dawn. And they relax into sleep and I always sleep better after I put it on. You also want to keep your bedroom tidy. A cluttered room leads to a cluttered mind. So when your room is cluttered,

your brain sees all of that and tries to process all of that. Whereas if everything is in a tidy place, your brain doesn't have as much processing to do and therefore it's not going to sleep, you know working on all of this with all this processing happening so tidy up your bedroom to allow your brain to calm and release all of these things that it's trying to do and process also about the benefits of a gratitude journal and a brain dump so that it can instead go to sleep happy on those gratitude thoughts and in a calm frame of mind and get you into a more restorative, restful sleep. You also want to be turning off any Wi-Fi or electronic devices in the room at night, and in fact, don't even have them in the room, and that includes television.

I talked last time about blue light and the impact that has on melatonin. You don't want to be watching television in your bedroom, even if you're wearing blue light glasses, because very often what you're watching is in some way stimulating to the brain, and if you're doing that right before going to sleep, it just again makes it harder for your brain to calm down before sleep. And it's not an ideal habit to be in in terms of building your bedtime hygiene routine. That routine needs to happen after you turn off devices. And therefore, you do not need a television in your bedroom.

But phones, like some people say, oh, I have to have my phone because it's my alarm to wake me out. Well, you can get another alarm for like $10 that you plug into the wall that is perfectly good at waking you up. And it does not have to be your phone, the electromagnetic field from phones and tablets, et cetera, being close to your head in the bedroom is actually also has negative health ramifications on your body. They're considered a toxin and some people are more sensitive than others. It is something that I discovered I was quite sensitive to a while ago when I was staying in a hotel room and I had the phone on the bedside table. And for three days in a row, I woke up with a headache and I didn't know why. And then I kind of had this, hmm, I don't normally even have my phone in my room at home because I have more than just one room in my house. And now I have this phone right by my head. So I actually moved it into the bathroom of the hotel room and the rest of my stay, I no longer had headaches. And so these electromagnetic fields do affect our body.

And for optimal sleep, it's best not to be exposed to them. And so removing them from your bedroom entirely is your best option for a good night's sleep. You also want to be making sure your mattress is right for you. And a mattress lasts on average seven to 10 years. That's what's recommended by the National Sleep Foundation. Here are some signs that maybe it's time to replace it. First of all, you could see signs of wear and tear on the mattress or even a depression in the mattress from where you sleep. Or perhaps you're tossing and turning all night and you can't get comfortable. Perhaps you're waking up groggy, sore, or stiff. Maybe you're experiencing brain fog, lessened ability to focus, and low energy during the day. That might be from other reasons as well, such as the impact of the food you're eating and coffee you're drinking, etc. But it could be impacted by your mattress. Perhaps your allergies or your asthma have gotten worse due to dust mites in the mattress. And then also another great test is that you sleep better when you're away from home. And if that's the case for you, then that is a very clear indication that it may be time to be buying a new mattress. I just recently bought a new mattress myself and I bought it online. And the reason I bought it online is that you actually get a way better deal buying mattresses online. Many of the companies selling mattresses online know that you need to test it and they give

you a 60 and 90, 120 day trial period. And you can return that mattress if it's not the right mattress for you. No questions asked, full refund. Now that is an awesome way to trial your mattress because you're going to use this mattress for the next seven to 10 years. So you want to know that it truly is comfortable for you and your partner. Some things that you can look for in mattresses are different layers of that mattress that help cushion movement. So your movement isn't felt by your partner and vice versa, because this of course is going to help you get a better night's sleep if you're not being bounced awake by your partner rolling over, as well as cooling technology so that you're not overheating in the night.

And so that's called climate adaptive in many cases. Also pillows, getting the right pillow for you that supports your neck and helps keep your spine in alignment through the night. And very often regular pillows have the upper part of your spine in your neck at a strange angle. And sometimes you can wake up with neck pain.

And of course these depend whether you're a back sleeper or a side sleeper as to what you get. And same thing, you can do your research online, you can buy them online, and you get a 30, 60, 90 day trial period after which you can return it if it's not the right one for you. Something else that's wonderful to look into that can really help with sleep is a weighted blanket. And the benefit of a weighted blanket is it's helping put your body into that parasympathetic nervous system, that rest and digest state.

It's almost as if the body under that weighted blanket feels like it's back in the womb, the ultimate place of safety. Also keeps you very warm, although you can get cooling covers as well so that if it's too warm in the summer months that you can get a cooling cover. So wonderful to lie underneath, feel all nice and snug, safe, and it really supports a restful night sleep. And again, you can buy them online, you can trial them and send them back if it's not for you.

Some other things that we want to be doing as we set you up for sleep success is training the brain that your bedroom is for sleeping. It's not for watching television. It's not for playing games. It is for intimacy.

It is for reading books as you calm your body. And it is for sleep. And so that's why clearing the clutter, getting the electronics out of the room, start to train your brain that this is where I sleep. And that's really important as you start to build a habit of restorative sleep and break the habit of lying awake.

So many people struggle with lying awake. Do not lie awake for more than 30 minutes. Often people can have that tired but wired feeling. They go, go, go all day in the afternoon, may suddenly start feeling exhausted into the evening.

And then when they're trying to go to bed, all of a sudden the brain switched back on thinking about tomorrow. But if you've done your bedtime hygiene routine, your room is set up for comfort and sleep, and you're still lying awake, we have to break that habit of lying awake and teach our brain this is not for lying awake. My mattress, my bed is for sleeping. And so we do that by if you sense that you've been in bed for about 30 minutes and you haven't fallen asleep yet, you want to actually get up, get out of bed, leave the room, turn on a dim light somewhere in the house, have something easy for the brain to process, no work type books or books that require heavy processing and understanding of the brain. We just want some simple that you're going to read that if you read for about 15 minutes in this dim light, maybe that's going to start having you start to feel a little bit sleepy and you can go back to bed and hopefully fall asleep. If however you still don't fall asleep, we don't want you lying there for more than 30 minutes because again we're training the brain that this is where you sleep. A great next step at that point is to use your breathing to get your brain to get out of its fight or flight chronic stress state and into its rest and digest state so that you can get to sleep. The body can't get to sleep if you're not in that rest state. And so there's a great technique that I use to trick the brain into

switching on this rest and digest state. And if you've followed my work for a while, you've probably heard this before, but if you're new, listen up. I call it 5-5-7 breathing. What it is, is you inhale for a count of five, you hold for a count of five, and you exhale for a count of seven.

And you do 10 cycles of that and your brain goes, hmm, I thought I was stressed out, but I'm breathing like a safe person. I must be safe. I'm going to switch on my rest and digest parasympathetic nervous system. So this is highly effective at helping you get back to sleep.

It's recommended that you sit up on the edge of your bed, your feet on the floor, and you just let your shoulders kind of drop down and your hands at your side. Let your chin drop down as well. So you're in a very relaxed state as you do this and think about your breath and count. So that is a very powerful technique. And it's also a technique that you can actually use anywhere where you notice your stress levels on the rise. And it could be driving in traffic. It could be, you know, just dealing with kids at the end of the day. It could be in the office. If you know, you're feeling those stress levels rise, you've had an argument with someone just breathe. Your breath is always with you. It's completely free and it's highly, highly effective.

The next step, and this is a pretty easy one in terms of setting yourself up for success with sleep, is for at least 30 days, wake up at the same time every day. we tend to take sleep for granted and we expect our bodies to sleep on demand and fit into our schedules and quality sleep is much more important than that and as you've heard me say in the last podcast we have to plan our day around our sleep right so what time are we going to wake up and then back that around to figure out what time do we need to go to bed in order to get the seven to nine hours of sleep. So set that wake up time the same every day for 30 days. The body starts to get into that pattern and know that this is what time I'm getting up and it helps to reset your sleep cycle. The other thing that's really awesome to do is upon waking up is to open those dark curtains and let the sunlight into your eyes because that also sends signals to the brain around I don't need to be producing melatonin anymore and I can be producing cortisol because now it's full daylight and it's time for me to get up and get going with my day. The next step, this one sounds easy, but I know a lot of my clients think that it's going to be hard, but it really isn't. And that is do not look at the time in the middle of the night. How many times do you wake up in the night, maybe go to the bathroom and look at the time. And then what happens? Very often you start to get stressed

out about, oh my goodness, I don't feel refreshed and it's five o'clock and I have to get up in an hour. And then the brain starts going and boom, you don't get to fall back to sleep, right? We've been there. We all have been, haven't we? But here's the thing. When you don't look at the time, you don't trigger that response. And so, as I said, phones out of the bedroom, iPads, tablets out of the bedroom. But if you have an alarm clock that you plug into the wall, like I do, face it to the wall so that you can't see it because it doesn't matter what time it is in the middle of the night. If you wake up and you have to go to the bathroom and you want to go back to sleep, the best thing to do is do not look at the time. All it does is trigger a stress response to the fact that you don't feel rejuvenated and you have to get up soon.

But of course you don't feel rejuvenated because you haven't finished sleeping. And so if you don't look at the time and you simply get back into bed and close your eyes and allow yourself to fall asleep and time doesn't matter, you're going to fall back asleep. It's really, really powerful. And in fact, the very, very first time my husband overheard me telling this to somebody else, he thought it was crazy.

but then he agreed to try it and was so surprised at the impact that it had. Trust me, you don't need to know what time it is in the middle of the night. Your alarm will wake you up in the morning when it's time to get up and until that alarm goes off, it's sleep time for you and it doesn't matter whether you have half an hour left to sleep or four hours left to sleep. you get to enjoy that last bit of sleep without stress of worrying that you haven't had enough sleep. And then the very last tip on improving your sleep is to not obsess over it. So there's always going to be times when we don't get as much sleep as we want, or we, you know, worry about losing sleep. And very often it happens when we have a big event the next day, it might be a big sporting event that you've been training for. It might be a performance you've been training for.

It might be a presentation. Like I said, you know, this happens to me if I have a big webinar and I want it to go well. That is the time when I'm most likely to struggle with either falling back to sleep in the middle of the night or getting to sleep in the beginning. And so I've given you lots of tips and tricks in order to counter that with, as I said, a gratitude journal, a brain dump, 5-5-7 breathing. But if you're still finding that you're lying there and not able to sleep, it's likely that you're obsessing over the lost sleep, the sleep that you're missing out on.

And that doesn't serve you in any way, shape, or form because the more you obsess about it, the more sleep you lose and you can't get that sleep back. So instead, recognize that you've done all that you can do at this point towards whatever it is that you're worried about, your sporting event, your performance, your presentation. You've done everything that you can do. The best thing you can do for yourself at this point is to allow yourself to get to sleep. Rest is going to help you more than anything else. So recognize that stressing and obsessing over lost sleep is preventing you from getting the sleep that you need and use these techniques and tools and move forward with that presentation, that event, knowing you have done what you need to do.

Honor that. And it's amazing how when you talk to yourself in this way, even in your mind, even as you're trying to sleep, you can talk yourself down from that obsessed state and allow yourself to fall asleep. So I hope that you have found all of this information to be really helpful in terms of getting yourself a better night's sleep each and every night. If it's something that you still struggle with, even after implementing all of these tips for 30 days, then we may need to look at some structural issues. It may be you struggle with sleep because of sleep apnea. It may be your airways are blocked. It may be that you need to visit a dentist that It specializes in airways and sleep issues because it's very often the dentist that will diagnose this even before a doctor.

It may be that you have gut issues that are impacting your sleep. And when we heal your gut, your sleep improves. It may be that your toxic load level is really quite high and your body is struggling to detox overnight and it's working so hard that it's inadvertently waking you up or keeping you awake. So maybe you need to look at what your toxic load levels are and do a detox.

And so you might want to go to my toxic load quiz to see what is that score and reach out to me in regards to starting a detox program. I have many people who have done my detox program, and that's one of the first and best benefits is getting to a place of rejuvenated sleep because your sleep is so important that it is worth looking into. The longer you sleep, the longer your life. That's so true. There's so much information and we are going to continue this three-part series next week with Melissa.

We're going to share some more bedtime routine tips for littles, but also talking more on breath work and the timing of eating before bed. So be sure you're clicking that plus sign or follow sign from the podcast app you're listening to. To learn more about Melissa, you can check out our links in the show notes for your guided health journey and for the don't wait for your wake up call podcast link. All right, guys, till next time. Thanks for listening.