Improving Sleep Practicing Mindfulness Meditation

Sleep disturbance is a common health complaint affecting an estimated 10–25% of the general population. Accumulated sleep deficiency can increase the risk for mood and anxiety disorders, cognitive impairment, and a variety of medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease^[rx] and obesity.^[rx] Pharmaceutical sleep aids remain the first-line treatment for insomnia. While effective, they have the potential for abuse, cross-reactivity with other medications, and side effects including memory loss, abnormal thoughts, behavioral changes, and headaches. Alternatively, behavioral treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), can be expensive and inaccessible.^[rx] While the risks are attenuated with CBT-I, some of the therapeutic components, such as intensive sleep restriction, may exacerbate comorbid psychiatric symptoms and thus compromise adherence.^[rx] Taken together, there is a need for complementary health interventions, which increase patient choice and may be offered as a second-line treatment option when first-line treatments are not viable or are intolerable.

The meeting didn’t go well this morning, and I have to talk to my boss tomorrow. Could I have done something differently, and how will I handle tomorrow?

I just want my head to be quiet.”

Falling and staying asleep can be difficult. Our minds, recovering from a frantic day and already planning for the next, find no peace.

And yet, decades of research have confirmed that inadequate sleep negatively impacts our psychological and physical well-being (Markwald & Germain, 2020).

Even temporary sleep loss is known to reduce memory performance. If prolonged, a lack of sleep can profoundly impact our mental processing and our risk of serious illnesses including cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes (Puentes-Mestril & Aton, 2017).

Sleep is key to an optimally functioning brain and body, but that doesn’t help me lying here – awake.

What if there was a way to improve our sleep and protect our physical and mental health without cost, equipment, or drugs?

Well, there is.

A wealth of recent research tells us that mindfulness holds the answers.

In this article, we discuss how mindful techniques and supportive environments improve our sleep. We review tools including audio, podcasts, apps, and meditations that can ground ourselves in the present and turn off the nighttime mental chatter.

Can Mindfulness Help You Sleep Better?

The mindful practice provides space. It enables us to stand apart from our thoughts and observe them without judgment, anger, disappointment, regret, or fear.

And yet sometimes, when we try to sleep, peace fails us. We become too wrapped up in our mental noise.

Mindfulness appears to offer a solution, and science agrees.

Research findings confirm that mindfulness leads to improvements in both the quantity and quality of our sleep. It also reduces the impact of health conditions associated with a lack of sleep, including mental distress, depression, poor memory, and anxiety (Murnieks et al., 2019; Felder et al., 2017; Greeson et al., 2018; Brisbon & Lachman, 2017).

So, how does mindfulness help?

Mindfulness works on two levels: first, by lowering base or chronic levels of anxiety and stress and, secondly, by managing the impact of additional, acute, event-based mental upsets.

Learning how to be less anxious and better able to handle stress will improve your ability to switch off and sleep (Hu, Visser, & Kaiser, 2019).

Maintaining an underlying threshold of mindfulness and being able to handle upset will help us protect our sleep from disruption.

What follows is a set of techniques and supportive environments – sounds, exercise, and even smells – that promote mindfulness and encourage sleep.

How can meditation help with sleep?

4 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Meditating Before Sleep

One of the earliest known sleep studies, performed in 1896, kept volunteers awake for 90 hours.

Participants reported severe psychological and physiological effects, including hallucinations, declining physical strength, and an inability to control their temperature.

However, after a well-deserved rest, all volunteers returned to good health. Even a temporary, unexplained weight gain was short-lived.

Since then, science has continued to report that insufficient sleep can lead to a wide range of acute and chronic psychophysiological changes.

Improves sleep quality

A sizable, 2018 review including 1,654 participants confirmed the value of mindfulness in treating adults with trouble sleeping. It recognized that over time, mindfulness interventions led to lasting improvements in both the quality and quantity of sleep without adverse effects (Rusch et al., 2018).

Mindfulness is successful by apparently modifying both the software and the hardware of our brain, improving:

• Thought processes that interfere with sleep
• Connections within the brain that moderate rest

Reduces exhaustion

Further studies have noted how mindfulness techniques reduce the harmful effects of tiredness and improve poor sleep.

We all know the feeling of exhaustion when good sleep alludes to us.

A recent study noted that the use of mindfulness in worn-out business entrepreneurs reduced levels of exhaustion and improved both cognitive function and motivational energy (Murnieks et al., 2019).

Improves mental health

An eight-week course on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction improved sleep quantity and quality in 213 participants, benefiting psychological well-being and stress-related disorders including anxiety and depression (Greeson et al., 2018).

The authors of the study concluded that benefits from mindfulness interventions were most likely to result from improved cognition and emotional regulation.

Limits memory problems

Brisbon and Lachman (2017) also confirmed the links between heightened levels of mindfulness, reductions in perceived stress, and improved sleep quality.

Increased mindfulness and reduced levels of stress were found to be crucial factors in limiting memory problems and may offer some protection against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Simple Tips for Falling Asleep

Forty-three percent of Americans say stress has caused them to lie awake at night at least once a month. Modern day distractions like work and social media can prevent us from noticing our thoughts until our head hits the pillow, and these racing thoughts can easily turn into anxiety. Behavioral sleep expert Jared Minkel knows how difficult it is to quiet mental chatter. Here are his top four ways to use mindfulness to calm a worried mind and sleep more soundly.

1. Encourage positive distractions

Focusing your attention on how you can’t get to sleep will only make sleep more difficult. Instead, Minkel recommends distracting yourself with “interesting and engaging imagery,” involving as many of your senses as possible.

For example, close your eyes and picture a nice beach—can you hear the crashing of waves? Feel the sun on your skin? Taste the salt from the sea?

“These kinds of images can then transfer into dream content, so keep it pleasant and positive,” Minkel says.

2. Allow worrisome thoughts

If you’re unable to sleep because you’re fixated on something stressful that’s happening—like a big presentation at work, or a confrontation with a family member—it’s common to want to push those thoughts from your mind. However, doing so may hurt more than it helps.

Rather than trying not to think about what’s worrying you, he recommends considering what comes after the big event. Remembering the mundane tasks that follow something stressful—like cleaning up your meeting space after the presentation, or going grocery shopping after you’ve seen family—can help you recognize that the panic will pass.

“Keep going until the stressful part is over and you’re back into your normal life,” Minkel says. “Don’t just replay the worst parts over and over.”

3. Practice nightly mindfulness

Consistency is key. Mindfulness for sleep is even more effective when practicing it regularly. Soon, you’ll become a master at directing your attention toward what’s happening in the present, instead of laying awake and worrying about what that will happen in the future.

“You can always focus on your breathing, but it may also be helpful to focus on a physical sensation like how warm and soft your blankets feel,” Minkel says.

You can also try a body scan meditation to relax both your body and mind.

4. Focus on gratitude

Focusing on the good can evoke pleasant emotions and help soothe you to sleep.

“For example, rather than thinking what might go wrong, try to focus your attention on something you’re looking forward to,” Minkel says. “You can also think of something that happened during the last day or two that you are grateful for.”

It can also be comforting to think of a positive person in your life, or nice deeds other people have done for you.

“Feeling fortunate or grateful for that person can reduce worry and help you sleep,” Minkel says.

Top 3 Audios to Help You Sleep

Music or soundscapes – immersive acoustic environments – can offer a calming environment to promote a sense of mindfulness and mental well-being, providing relief from the day’s stress and ongoing feelings of anxiety.

Research into patients with post-traumatic stress disorder found that relaxing music at bedtime improved sleep efficiency and reduced levels of depression (Blanaru et al., 2012).

The following musical landscapes may help you unwind and improve your chance of quality sleep, consistent with research that has uncovered links between music and mindfulness (Diaz, 2011).

1. Studying Music for Concentration, Focus, Reading, and Guitar Study Music

Studying Music for Concentration, Focus, Reading, and Guitar Study Music, as its name suggests, is intended as a background to activities requiring focus. However, the ambient music, accompanied by gentle classical guitar, provides an ideal backdrop for falling asleep.

Find it on Amazon.

2. The Sleeping Forecast

The BBC has been broadcasting a late-night maritime weather report, known as the Shipping Forecast, since 1911.

It is listened to by hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom are not sailors.

Instead, people use it to fall asleep, and it has led to an unlikely collaboration.

The Sleeping Forecast combines the peaceful effect of reading the weather in the waters around the British Isles – with evocative names such as Trafalgar, Cromarty, and Bailey – with instrumental music, to transport the listener to a gentle slumber.

3. Max Richter’s “Sleep”

In 2015, the BBC invited its Radio 3 listeners to sleep through an epic eight-hour lullaby, recorded live. It began at midnight, with the intention that listeners would fall asleep, then wake up the next morning while the orchestra continued to play.

The appropriately named Sleep, by Max Richter, is an amazing, ethereal piece of classical music offering much-needed serenity.

Find it on Amazon.

4 Best Podcasts

The following podcasts include both mindfulness meditations and experiences in sound, all aiming to help you step out of the daily rush of thoughts, either by focusing on your own body or the audio experience itself.

1. Mindfulness of Body and Breath

The meditations that accompany the book, Mindfulness: The Eight-Week Meditation Programme for a Frantic World (Williams & Penman, 2011) will help you find peace and contentment when it is most needed. The voice of the author, Professor Mark Williams, provides a warm, friendly guide through a set of 10 beautifully orchestrated meditations.

One episode, Mindfulness of body and breath (linked below), when used regularly, will help you center your mind and prepare for a good night’s sleep.

Find the Audiobook on Amazon.

2. Nothing Much Happens: Bedtime Stories to Help You Sleep

Kathryn Nicolai has created a curiously named podcast aimed to help you relax and fall asleep peacefully. Each story is 30 minutes or less and aims to take your mind off the business of the day by transporting you to somewhere new and yet strangely familiar.

Enjoy and find the calm you need to fall asleep.

3. Slow Radio

The BBC’s Radio 3’s Slow Radio is a collection of soundscapes described as the antidote to “today’s frenzied world.”

Try out the Flying Scotsman and fall asleep to the sounds from the world-famous train.

4. Sleep Meditation Podcast

The Sleep Meditation Podcast produces a set of nature-based acoustic pieces to stimulate a subjective experience of low-grade euphoria, known as the autonomous sensory meridian response.

Rain of Leaves and Deep Dives are personal favorites.

Try some of them out. The white noise rises and falls as you enter a sense of calm that will help you drift off.

Our 5 Favorite Apps

We are never far from our phones. They are often the last thing we look at before we turn in for the night, so why not use a mindfulness app to help you sleep?

1. Slow: Sleep, Relax & Meditate

The Slow mindful audio app is linked to the Sleep Meditation Podcast introduced above.

This well-thought-out, subscription-based app offers you the chance to tailor the provided soundscapes, including crashing waves, jungle sounds, mountain wind, and many more, to help you overcome sleep problems.

Find it in the Apple App Store.

2. Anxiety Solution: Calmer You

Based on The Anxiety Solution by Chloe Brotheridge, this subscription-based app provides an anxiety toolkit, covering practices to help you overcome anxiety and worry, and move into mindfulness and better sleep.

Find it in the Apple App Store.

3. Headspace

Headspace is a top-rated subscription-based app that provides meditations for beginners and the more experienced, to assist with a wide variety of mental health issues including stress and anxiety, along with meditations for mindfulness.

Importantly, it also includes a range of tools to help you sleep better.

Find it in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

4. One You Couch To 5K

This free app, launched by Public Health England, takes you from absolute beginner (couch) to running 5km in 9 weeks.

While the app does not claim to improve your sleep quality, research has found exercise and, in particular, running can improve the overall quality of sleep (Kalak et al., 2012).

Find it in the Google Play Store.

5. Mindshift

Another free app, this time aimed at teens, uses scientifically based CBT techniques to help you relax by dealing with anxiety and worry.

Find it in the Apple App Store.

Useful Techniques

We have already seen how mindfulness practices can impact the brain, preparing you for sleep, and how a lack of sleep can be detrimental to our memory.

Several noninvasive techniques are being explored, with varying degrees of success, to enhance such memory consolidation during sleep.

Acoustic and olfactory stimulation, prompting the patient with specific noises and smells, is easily administered, even at home, and research has reported some significant improvements to sleep and memory.

Sound

According to research, ‘pink noise’ – softer than white noise and mimicking sounds found in nature, such as a waterfall, or gentle waves – increases slow-wave sleep. Ngo, Martinetz, Born, and Mölle (2013) found that when pink noise was played to 11 participants while they slept, their slow-wave sleep increased, and the results of declarative memory (facts and events) tests improved.

Using some of the apps or podcasts we introduced earlier that play sounds from nature, such as waterfalls or waves, may benefit not only your sleep but also your memory.

Smell

There is also the potential to use other senses to boost memory recall while you sleep.

Smells such as lavender can enhance slow-wave sleep (Goel, Kim, & Lao, 2005).

Findings from 31 healthy participants taking part in the sleep study reported “higher vigor the morning after lavender exposure,” confirming the increased slow-wave sleep recordings taken. When associated with particular memories or behaviors, odors can also stimulate learning.

The advantage of acoustic and olfactory stimulation is that they can easily be adapted for home use. Using such portable equipment is a benefit because it can be used at any time, even during daytime naps.

Technology

Technology can also directly impact our quality of sleep and cognition.

A 2018 study took participants out of the lab using wearable technology that was able to produce auditory stimulation during sleep at home (Debellemaniere et al., 2018). The results showed that the 90 middle-aged participants using the Dream headband increased slow-wave sleep and improved cognition.

The future of neurostimulation systems may offer relief from brain and sleep disorders.

Coffee

Coffee is a hugely popular way to manage tiredness (Barrett & Martin, 2016).

And yet, it has its downsides. The highly effective stimulant can remain in our bloodstream for several hours, negatively affecting our slumber and, in particular, slow-wave sleep.

The UK’s National Health Service recommends stopping drinking coffee at least six hours before going to bed.

Napping

The ideal nap duration is considered to be between 20 and 30 minutes, and can significantly reduce the impact of sleep loss.

Science has confirmed that napping is a practical and effective way to manage a lack of sleep. This powerful tool can safely improve alertness, reaction times, and the mood of shift workers suffering from sleep deprivation.

Sleep inertia, or temporary grogginess, is common after longer naps but, with practice, can be managed and overcome quickly.

Conclusion

We should not underestimate the impact of a lack of sleep.

In the short term, it can affect concentration and mood. Longer term, poor-quality sleep can be detrimental to both physical and mental wellbeing.

With time, cognition and the ability to balance emotions become severely impacted, resulting in reduced judgment, limited attention, failing memory, restricted flexibility, diminished creativity, lowered mood, and a loss of resilience.

And yet, research has shown us that stress is a strong predictor of poor sleep quality (Hu et al., 2019).

By implementing mindfulness techniques into our daily schedule, along with sounds and even smells that promote a sense of calm, we can reduce stress, improve sleep, and protect both our physical and mental health.

Some soundscapes, including water, wind, etc., are particularly effective and worth exploring to potentially tap into some earlier, ancestral responses (Dunbar, Kaskatis, MacDonald, & Barra, 2012).

While we cannot guarantee we get the sleep we need, changing our mental state to one of mindfulness can improve the chances of a good night’s rest. Focusing our awareness on the present and paying attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them offers a scientifically proven, safe intervention and, with it, many other mental and physical health benefits.