Sleep Blog

Sleep is one of those parts of life that we don’t give much thought or value to, until we are not getting enough of it. You feel mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted after a bad night(s) sleep. Anyone reading this knows what I am talking about, you feel subhuman. There is even a game show that highlights our performance deficits when a person doesn’t sleep for 24hrs. Sleep is a necessity in life that impacts physical, mental, emotional health, and quality of one’s life. It can be so frustrating and feel so out of our control when you just can’t seem to get enough of sleep or the quality of it is lacking. What science does know about sleep may actually motivate us to work on our sleep hygiene.  Just like we know working out for our bodies is good for our physical and mental health, taking steps towards a good night sleep takes intention. We actually start to impact our sleep quality for the night from the moment we awake. Sleep is an important time in our 24hr clock where our body is healing and growing. Having good quality sleep improves our mental attention, focus, memory, strengthens our immune system, improves our metabolism, rejuvenates us physically, and helps regulate our hormone levels. We are meant to be in-sync with nature’s circadian rhythms. The light from the sun and the moon impacts our brains to send messages to our body on when to be alert and awake and when to be sleepy and fall asleep. 

There are many ways to support your body and mind to get a better night sleep such as: 

• sleep environment

• type of exercise you do and timing of it

• diet

• caffeine timing

• stress reduction

• specific behaviours and strategies

Sometimes your sleep behaviours are very entrenched and difficult to change on your own. Talking to a counsellor can be helpful to work on what barriers might be there internally. We can work on developing awareness and understanding your patterns and beliefs regarding sleep and discuss tools to reduce stress in your life. This work is very   personalized for you and can be a game changer for your sleep and life.