Guided Meditation For Sleep: Everything You Need To Know

High-quality, restful sleep is absolutely critical for your health. When you’re well-rested, your entire body functions more efficiently – from your heart to your brain, your digestive system and so much more. If you don’t get enough relaxation and sleep, though, your overall health will suffer. Experts recommended most adults need 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night for a healthier life.

But with so much going on in our day-to-day lives, it’s hard to “unplug” at the end of the day. Many of us have difficulty relaxing and settling in for a night of uninterrupted sleep. Around 50-70 million Americans have “disordered sleep,” and about one-third of all people report sleeping less than the recommended 7 hours per night.

How can you disconnect from your day-to-day world, and prepare yourself for the truly restful sleep that you need? With guided meditation practice! Take a look at this helpful guide, and see how you can improve your sleep and your health through meditation.

Why Does Meditation Help Us Sleep?

You may be a bit skeptical that meditation can really help you fall asleep – but it’s true! If we look past the religious or spiritual aspects, meditation is really just a way to focus our minds on a particular thing – and on the present moment.

Think about it. We tend to get caught up in our thoughts around bedtime – we think about everything that’s been said during the day, the things we did (and didn’t) get done, and what awaits us on the next day. To put it simply, our brains are firing so rapidly that it can be hard to really relax your body and mind, and focus on the present – and the need to fall asleep faster.

Sleep meditations help you let go of the day, relax your mind and aid for stress relief– so that you can truly rest, breathe more slowly, and slip into a calm, restful night of sleep.

Why Should I Use A Guided Meditation Program?

Well, meditation isn’t easy! If you’ve never meditated before, it’s hard to just sit there, focus on your breathing exercises, and calm your thoughts without any outside aid. That’s where guided sleep meditations come in!

You can find hundreds of sleep aids meditation sessions on YouTube, and on blogs and websites all throughout the internet. They vary somewhat in their content, but they all do the same thing – they give you a single thing to focus on so that you can allow yourself to relax your mind and body.

You will be asked to close your eyes, breathe deeply, and focus on the voice of the person who is guiding you through the meditation, relaxing music, binaural beats or sounds of white noise. By focusing all of your mental energies on deep relaxation and following along with guided sleep meditation of relaxation techniques, you can avoid the rapid, unfocused thought that often makes it difficult to go to sleep at night.

What Are The Benefits Of Meditation For Sleep?

The benefits of improved sleep are almost too innumerable to count. If you can be practicing sleep meditation properly, and get more restful, peaceful and calm sleep, you can benefit from:

1. Lower risk of heart disease and stroke

Resting gives you a lower risk of developing high blood pressure, and other correlated issues like coronary heart disease and stroke.

2. Healthier skin

During the night, your entire body has the chance to rest and focus its attention on repairs and restoration. This is true of your skin, too. Your skin makes collagen when you sleep, so guided meditation can help boost the health and appearance of your skin.

3. Better mental health

Sleep deprivation increases the risk of being overly-stressed, and developing anxiety or depression, and other mental health issues. Resting properly helps reduce your risk of these mental health issues, release tension and relieve stress and pain.

4. Higher levels of cognitive function

Being well-rested ensures that your mind can stay focused and that you can concentrate on work, school, or any other tasks that require concentration and brainpower.

5. Enhanced athletic performance

Sleep is when the body repairs itself and recovers from hard workouts. Whether you’re a runner, cyclist, a bodybuilder, or participate in any other physical activity, being well-rested will help enhance your performance.

6. Easier weight management

Being well-rested encourages our metabolic health. Disordered sleep could contribute to weight gain, or make it difficult to lose weight. Being well-rested, though, has the opposite effect, and makes it easier to manage your weight and health properly.

For these reasons, (and dozens of others) getting a deep sleep through guided meditation is a great idea – and it’s worth a try to improve the quality of your health.

Tips For Better Sleep Through Guided Meditation for Beginners

Want to get started with guided sleep meditation? Need some tips? Here are a few of our best pieces of advice.

• Find a program you like – As we said, you can easily find quite a few guided meditation videos on YouTube, and sleep music on services like Spotify. Don’t be afraid to try a few, until you find one that relaxes you, and that you like.
• Take it seriously – The first time you are getting started with a guided meditation for sleep, you may feel a bit silly. But do your best to take it seriously. If you don’t, it simply won’t work.
• Take other steps to enhance your sleep – Guided meditation alone should not be the only step you take to get better sleep. Keeping your room cool, sticking to a regular sleep schedule, exercising, and sleeping on a high-quality mattress are all important factors to help drift off to sleep and meditate for relaxation. For more, take a look at this article from the National Sleep Foundation.

Follow these tips, and you’re sure to be able to rest more effectively and have a deep peaceful sleep.

Give Guided Meditation For Sleep A Try – And See The Difference For Yourself!

The guided meditation techniques works. But don’t take our word for it. You can try sleep guided meditation for yourself for free. Give it a shot tonight. And see how much of a difference it can make when it comes to high-quality, restorative sleep.

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References:
1. https://www.sleepassociation.org/about-sleep/sleep-statistics/
2. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-news/how-sleep-deprivation-affects-your-heart
3. https://www.webmd.com/beauty/features/beauty-sleep
4. https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/sleep-and-mental-health
5. Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance. Paula Alhola and Päivi Polo-Kantola. Neuropsychiatr Dis Treatv.3(5); 2007 Oct.
6. Sleep and Metabolism: An Overview. Sunil Sharma and Mani Kavuru. Int J Endocrinol. 2010; 2010: 270832.