“Are you afraid of the night because you can’t seem to fall asleep or stay asleep? Meditation for deep sleep could be the solution.”
Stress continues as one of the great evils of our time. And insomnia (our inability to fall asleep) is one of the most recurrent facets of stress. We go to sleep thinking about the agenda for tomorrow morning: taking the children to school, the meeting at the office, the work that we need to complete, and when we want to remember, sleep does not come. Guided Meditation for getting a good night’s sleep in just a few minutes is a fantastic solution to this common problem that so many people face.
Of course, there are medicines prescribed by the doctor that can help fight insomnia, but there are also meditation techniques that give a lot of results and can be practiced at home easily.
Some meditation technique is a discipline born thousands of years ago from the Buddhist and Hindu religions. It will help to maintain concentration and relax the body through breathing, which helps reduce the consequences of stress.
Related: How to Reduce Stress: 17 Simple Ways to Relieve Stress and Anxiety
What is guided meditation?
Guided meditation is a modern phenomenon, more precisely, of the times of the Internet. They are thematic meditations that we may find on the internet in the form of apps, audios, podcasts, free albums, and, most importantly, YouTube video channels. In these guided meditations, a guide or teacher leads us through a meditation exercise using their voice, which is usually accompanied by soothing and calming music.
Related: Meditation for Beginners: 7 Simple Tips to Get Started Meditation
Guided meditations are very useful especially in times when one is starting in the discipline of meditation. This guide with its themes gives us a framework of containment and confidence in the beginning. As you progress through the years in the art of meditation, you are likely to meditate in your own words or thoughts and without the need for background music.
Some of the most popular guided meditations are:
- Traditional meditations. The guide’s voice contains many minutes of silence, allowing the listener to achieve a meditative state.
- Relaxation. They are accompanied by instrumental music, sounds of nature, such as seas, winds, or waterfalls. Seek calm and relaxation throughout the body.
- Meditation with visualization. It guides us to visualize a scene or an object in our minds that will help us relax even more.
- Affirmations. Its purpose is to give a positive message to our minds. For example, affirming “I have good health” or “I can do it”, replacing negative thoughts like I can’t, I’m going to go wrong, I’m afraid and so many others.
- Guided meditation on breathing. It starts from the premise that if you can control your breath, you can prepare your mind for almost any goal.
- Mindfulness meditation. It is not linked to any religious concept and can be done anywhere: walking down the street, on the bus, sitting in a square. The important thing of mindfulness is to concentrate.
- Guided meditation for better sleep. They are among the most sought after on the web, in these times of so much stress. The guide gives us a series of instructions that help us to achieve sleep in a natural way.
- Meditation with binaural tones. This type of audio is used to stimulate alpha waves in the brain, as these are associated with the first stages of meditation.
What is sleep meditation?
Guided sleep meditation is a technique for calming your mind and relaxing your body before going to bed. This style of meditation, like others, requires shifting your concentration away from your thoughts and onto bodily sensations. The use of guided sleep meditation on a regular basis has been demonstrated to promote sleep, making this a useful tool to reduce problems falling and staying asleep.
Today insomnia becomes an increasingly widespread problem, it is very common after 55 years of age. But it was scientifically proven that meditating for five minutes a day before going to bed will help you with stress reduction, a state of greater serenity and equanimity; and greater attention span.
What happens while you sleep?
When you sleep and have deep and restorative dreams, your body performs essential functions that allow it to live 24/7, you will surely be surprised to know that your body works throughout life, because at night it performs processes to repair the body and mind, in addition, to fill you with vitality; While during the day it interacts with the world and gathers experiences to obtain all the learning, that is why the processes of the night affect the day so much. Guided meditation can be very beneficial in this regard!
Related: Sleep Hygiene: Tips to Get Relax, Destress and Finally Sleep
From the moment you begin to sleep, the brain goes through different stages of sleep, in which it sends instructions to the whole organism, repairs work as a team that the different systems carry out in a very united way as well as the body and mind are intimately connected.
The benefit you will get from a deep sleep:
- The brain repairs neurons and creates connections that can only be made at night.
- You memorize. The better quality of sleep, the better you will remember the experiences you had during the day.
- You benefit from your concentration, your analytical skills, your focus, and your concentration,
- You regain energy.
- Your breathing begins to be deep therefore low blood pressure and improves your circulatory rate, likewise, slow and deep breathing allows your lungs to strengthen.
- Your immune system is strengthened.
- It delays aging, the deeper you sleep, the less cortisol (stress hormone) we secrete and that fills you with vitality.
- The growth hormone that is secreted in sleep cycles discards old cells and repairs tissues and muscles.
- It is simply amazing! Sleep is an essential component for adaptation and body processes, a key to mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Meditation can help you achieve these benefits.
Here are some tips for meditation and deep sleep:
- Avoid large dinners. The body does not rest as it should because it is busy doing other work.
- Head massages. If there is someone who can do it, all the better. Just press your fingertips on the scalp, going from the forehead to the nape of the neck.
- Listen to music. This should be quiet and before sleeping without noise around.
- Position. Sit in a chair or on the edge of the bed, put your back straight, breathe three times deeply and very slowly. On each exhale imagine all tension, worry, and stress being pushed out of the body.
- Tense your fingers. Start with the toes, count to five, and then relax them. Then do it with the whole foot. And continue like this until you reach the head and counting to five.
Conclusion
The mind is a very important factor when it comes to relaxing and achieving a deep as well as restful sleep. Worries and stress will hinder you from getting quality sleep because if you sleep with a very agitated mind and frequent thoughts about conflicts or situations that you experienced during the day, you will not rest and your sleep will not be optimal.
Related: How to Do Meditation at Home
Instead, if you take a moment to breathe deeply and perform a guided sleep meditation, you will begin to calm mental activity and acquire a slower wave frequency, it will allow you to reach the various states of sleep that help your body repair itself.
Finally, it is important that you know that meditating is a great option, but it is not the only way to maintain the health of your body. If, in addition to meditating, you eat well, eat dinner early, don’t use screens for at least two hours before sleeping, set a fixed time to sleep and wake up, and don’t drink coffee, you will achieve a deep sleep more easily. You can also rest pleasantly and your life will benefit in many aspects from achieving a better mood, improving relationships with people, and enhancing your creativity and performance.
