Mindfulness as a Weapon

In 1989 I was ten years old, the most engaging activity I could involve myself in before bed was sneaking an extra 30 minutes of television. Bear in mind, I am talking about the late ’80s in the North of England which meant what I viewed was on four channels and essentially comprised of whatever my Father wanted to watch. The only battle I was fighting back then was arguing with my parents to extend my bedtime!

30 years later (32 to be exact) I can now watch visual content on multiple devices, across more channels than I can count. At the same time, I can switch between games on my phone and a never-ending myriad of social media platforms. Amazingly I can do all this while now Face-timing my Father from a completely different country and timezone!

I write all of this not only to extoll the virtues of the insanely rapid growth of technology throughout my life but also to highlight the level of engagement our brains are now exposed to. While this level of engagement and technological advancement has brought a plethora of improvement to our lives, it has also created new problems. The 21st century now provides us with a multi-faceted war zone where we are under siege in more ways than we can potentially handle. One primary battle is the inability to disengage from all of these stimuli and shut our brains down effectively to sleep. In 1989 it was fairly easy for ten-year-old me to watch the end of ’60 minutes’ on a Sunday and fall asleep. 42 years old me now has a minefield of brain activity to work through if I’m not careful.

Blue Light

One helpful response to this crisis of stimuli is to utilize ‘blue light blockers’ which essentially filter out the blue light given off digital screens. Blue light has been reported to suppress melatonin levels and duly affect your sleep health. Clearly, this is a very important step however while the eradication of blue light solves one problem the stimulation provided by all of these devices remains.

A break from the onslaught of stimulation is one of your best options to help elicit a good night’s sleep. Not only will this remove you from harmful blue light but the stimulus itself. Research has shown that filling this space with mindfulness practice is an excellent way to disconnect from all the overt digital stimuli and increase your preparedness for sleep.

For blue light junkies and near insomniacs everywhere, this is hopefully good news. However, mindfulness encompasses quite a large area, and figuring out what fits in it and more importantly what aspect works for you is just as important as turning your phone off.

Across the spectrum of possible mindfulness activities that can assist in improving our sleep, there are three main ones: Meditation, Reading and focused breathing.

Meditation

Meditation before going to bed has been shown to decrease the amount of time it takes someone to fall asleep and also improve the continuity of sleep. It has also been shown to bring your brain out of a fight or flight state (activated by your sympathetic nervous system) and helps you relax by stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system. Additionally, mediation can be effective at both decreasing your heart rate and increasing Heart Rate Variability whilst reducing stress through decreasing levels of cortisol in the blood.

Reading

“Reading is dreaming with open eyes.” — Anissa Trisdianty

In a landmark study by the University of Sussex reading before you fall asleep was been shown to significantly relax individuals by reducing stress levels to up to 68 percent. The lead researcher from the study Dr. David Lewis reported that reading was more a more potent stress reducer than listening to music, walking, or drinking tea or coffee. More impactful still the study reported that it only took 6 minutes for participants’ stress levels to be reduced. A good book before bed allows the mind to be distracted and float away on someone else’s words for a while. In doing so, your own troubles and concerns are not at the forefront of your thoughts. The mindfulness that comes from reading also relaxes your muscles and slows down your breathing producing a global calming effect.

Breathing

In a landmark study by the University of Sussex reading before you fall asleep was been shown to significantly relax individuals by reducing stress levels to up to 68 percent. The lead researcher from the study Dr. David Lewis reported that reading was more a more potent stress reducer than listening to music, walking, or drinking tea or coffee. More impactful still the study reported that it only took 6 minutes for participants’ stress levels to be reduced. A good book before bed allows the mind to be distracted and float away on someone else’s words for a while. In doing so, your own troubles and concerns are not at the forefront of your thoughts. The mindfulness that comes from reading also relaxes your muscles and slows down your breathing producing a global calming effect.

Sun Tzu says…

The final trick to winning this war is, as the great Chinese Military Strategist Sun Tzu said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” To know yourself in the context of sleep you are going to have to not only collect data through devices like Oura Ring and Fitbit but be able to interpret the data to better understand what interventions, such as mindfulness activities, work best to truly improve the quality of your sleep. Companies like Bioloop are making intelligent use of your historical wearables data by applying research-grade statistics to find out what uniquely works for you. Having this type of support in the battle for sleep is fast becoming a requirement, not a luxury.

War may be ‘hell’ but if you have the right weapons and support team in place it doesn’t have to be a losing endeavor.