{"id":2169,"date":"2018-05-31T19:32:29","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T19:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.meditationmag.com\/blog\/meditation-for-sleep\/"},"modified":"2018-05-31T19:32:29","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T19:32:29","slug":"meditation-for-sleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meditationmag.com\/blog\/meditation-for-sleep\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditation For Sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meditation can improve most parts of your life. It can help with migraines,<\/a><\/span>\u00a0it can help with depression<\/a>, it can help with social anxiety<\/a>, and more.<\/span>\u00a0But what about sleep?<\/span><\/p>\n

Sleep is something that everyone needs to live and function at full capacity yet everyone struggles at some point to get enough of it. I don\u2019t know anyone who hasn\u2019t had at least a few nights in a row spent staring at the ceiling counting down the hours until the alarm goes off.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what can we do?<\/span><\/p>\n

We can meditate of course!<\/span><\/p>\n

Meditation for Sleep<\/h2>\n

Studies<\/span><\/a>\u00a0have been done to find out if meditators had better short wave (the deep and restful part of) sleep than non-meditators. And guess what? The meditators got way more deep sleep. The study compared amongst three age groups and the results were fantastic. Meditators showed<\/span> 17.95%, 11.3%, and 10.63% of short wave sleep among younger (30\u201339 years), middle (40\u201349 years), and older (50\u201360 years) age groups respectively. On the other hand, the corresponding non-meditating controls showed a significant reduction of SWS with increasing age, i.e., 11.29%, 6.65%, and 3.94%.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the older group is getting 3 times as much deep sleep while the younger group is still getting 60% more than their non-meditating counterparts. That\u2019s a huge difference!<\/span><\/p>\n

Short wave sleep is the part where your body truly relaxed and repairs it self so if you get a full nights sleep and still wake up tired it\u2019s likely because you didn\u2019t get enough short wave sleep. So regular meditation practice will have you sleeping more deeply and waking up easier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can Meditation Help You Fall Asleep Faster?<\/b><\/h2>\n

But what about for those nights when you just can\u2019t seem to drift off\u2026 is there a way to fall asleep quickly using meditation?<\/span><\/p>\n

I found a breathing technique that can help you fall asleep in under a minute. In my experience it doesn\u2019t work every single time, but about 1 in 4 times I\u2019ve fallen asleep within a minute or two, and other times it\u2019s helped me calm down so I can fall asleep normally. Definitely worth trying out either way!<\/span><\/p>\n

The 4-7-8 breathing technique<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The 4-7-8 breathing technique is great for falling asleep and for generally de-stressing and calming down. I\u2019ve actually got an infographic to show you how to use it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"meditation<\/a><\/p>\n

(The infographic was originally posted on this article on natural sleep aids<\/a><\/span>\u00a0if you\u2019re looking for more ways to get a better sleep naturally.)<\/span><\/p>\n

So you place the tip of your tongue behind the teeth, breathe in quietly through the nose for 4 seconds, hold it for 7 seconds, then blow air, quite forcefully, out through the mouth for 8 seconds. <\/span><\/p>\n

Repeat that 4 times then breathe normally.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had times it in the past where I\u2019ve done it four times and though \u201coh well, I guess it didn\u2019t work this time,\u201d and then suddenly I was waking up the next morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me know in the comments if it\u2019s worked for you!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meditation can improve most parts of your life. It can help with migraines,\u00a0it can help with depression, it can help with social anxiety, and more.\u00a0But what about sleep? Sleep is something that everyone needs to live and function at full capacity yet everyone struggles at some point to get enough of it. I don\u2019t know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-why-meditate"],"yoast_head":"\nMeditation For Sleep - Meditation Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.meditationmag.com\/blog\/meditation-for-sleep\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meditation For Sleep - Meditation Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Meditation can improve most parts of your life. 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