There are many tried and tested ways to help you get to sleep at night; having a consistent sleep schedule, a relaxing bedtime routine, managing stress, limiting caffeine and exercising during the day to tire yourself out. Oftentimes though, sleep is still elusive.
Did you know that more and more people are using sleep meditations as a way to fall asleep quickly? They are one of the most effective ways to help your mind and body prepare for sleep at bedtime. A deep and restorative night's sleep can be as simple as turning on a well-made sleep meditation, lying down and listening. Listeners find that they sleep right through the night and wake up feeling fully refreshed in the morning, full of energy.
How Sleep Meditations Can Help You To Sleep:
Slowing down mental activity: The guidance you receive during a sleep meditation encourages your mental activity to calm, allowing for deep rest and therefore sleep. This is very helpful if your mind tends to be lost in intense thought or jumps around from worry to worry when you lie down in quiet surroundings.
Reducing Anxiety: Sleep meditations take the 'waiting' out of waiting to go to sleep. Because your mind is distracted with pleasant imagery and concepts, there is no feeling of anxiously trying to get to sleep. It's the anxiety about not being able to get to sleep that often keeps us awake. You're confident you're on the way to sleep with a sleep meditation, so you don't worry about it.
In The Present, Not The Past: Sometimes past memories repeat on us when we are alone with our thoughts. Although there's probably some healing to do there, sleep meditations can alleviate those unpleasant feelings while going to sleep through 'present moment awareness'. You are constantly in the present moment with sleep meditations because you are, for example, listening to a pleasant visualization or receiving reassurance and encouragement.
Reducing Physical Tension: Sleep meditations usually provide relaxation and breathing exercises that help your muscles release any tension and relax completely.
Improving Sleep Quality: As long as the volume is at a comfortable level for you, a good, non-distracting sleep meditation with no sudden speech or jarring sounds, can help you reach deep sleep quicker and easier than normal, and stay asleep all night. Your mind is being guided into a deep sleep and encouraged to remain there until morning.
Positive Association with Sleep: Because listeners often feel they are at last receiving the help and support to sleep that they have been looking for, they start to welcome bedtime. Stress and anxiety are reduced and bedtime becomes a time to look forward to rather than a struggle to achieve a good night's rest. In addition, those on a path of self-development can choose sleep meditations that serve a dual purpose, such as to heal emotions or foster self-love, making sleep an even more rewarding experience.
Help to Sleep at Night with Sleep Meditations
Here's a handpicked selection of sleep meditations to help you get to sleep and stay asleep. Each contains a 'sleep-talk-down' and some have other feel-good factors or motivation for self-development, too.
1. Fall Asleep Fast Sleep Meditation
Reduce stress with this guided sleep meditation; it's designed to be a simple stress relieving 'sleep-talk-down' to help you fall asleep fast. While many sleep meditations have self-development goals, this one is designed simply to help you get to sleep quickly and easily. You'll calm your breathing and work through your body, allowing each muscle to relax completely. Enjoy a deep sleep and a world of wonderful dreams while your body heals and repairs.
If you usually have trouble sleeping through the entire night without waking up, this 8-hour sleep meditation is perfect as it provides reassurance and encouragement to remain asleep. So even if you begin to awaken, you'll be soothed back to sleep right away.
2. Foster Self Love & Self Worth Sleep Meditation
This sleep meditation not only guides you into a restorative slumber, it also provides a very soothing relaxation exercise where you send love to every part of your body providing healing and restoration. Next, you'll enjoy a beautiful visualization for meeting yourself as if for the first time and resetting the feelings you usually have about yourself. Observing with fresh eyes and renewed perceptions, it's a brand new start and opportunity to build self-worth, self-acceptance and self-love.
Your mind is relaxed yet gently focused on building all-important self-love, so as well as finding yourself on a journey towards sleep, you're also healing and improving your emotions for day-to-day life.
3. Foster Gratitude Sleep Meditation
Enjoy a beautiful and relaxing journey towards sleep while being healed and comforted by gratitude. We can bring much pleasure and enjoyment into the present moment by recognising all that we already have in life and how far we've come. We overlook and take a lot for granted, even the little things that have so much potential for joy.
Gratitude brings us into the present moment which in turn releases us from any sadness from the past and anxiety about the future. Gratitude helps us to feel really good right now and all these pleasant feelings have the power to send us drifting off to sleep in mere moments, resting so soundly.
4. Sleep Story: The Magic Dimension
This one is a little different. Here we have a 'sleep story' rather than a guided sleep meditation. A sleep story is a relaxing soothing story read by a gentle and calming voice, that's designed to not be too exciting or stimulating. This sleep story contains gentle sound effects in the background such as a steam train and birds singing.
It's a mystical magical story with various cheerful themes to foster positive emotions and make you feel good. Of course, most people never find out what happens at the end because they're already asleep.
5. Emotional Recovery & Healing Sleep Meditation
Falling asleep easily can sometimes depend on your emotions. If you're lying there in a soup of unpleasant emotions leftover from the day, or if your mind is seemingly involuntarily going over lots of regrets from the past, then you're probably going to remain awake for some time.
An emotional healing and recovery sleep meditation such as this one has a dual purpose. Not only does it calm and relax your mind, and therefore your emotions with a pleasant visualization exercise, but it also contains hours of 'I am' sleep affirmations to help train your subconscious mind to heal and manage unpleasant emotions effectively. So, it helps you to feel good in the present moment and it helps facilitate long-term healing as well.
Sleep Meditations Helping You To Sleep at Night
Sleep arrives most easily when we don't mind about it. Sleep is often harder to achieve when we are trying. So when you play a sleep meditation audio, you are leaving all the thinking, stress, wakefulness and restlessness behind and simply allowing the sleep meditation to carry you to sleep. The search for the ultimate way to get to sleep might be over, perhaps see for yourself and give sleep meditations a try.