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Hi, I'm Sarah, and welcome to youo Makesense. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner, an expert on trauma resolution, attachment parts work, and nervous system regulation. This podcast is a manual to understanding your human experience so that you can navigate the world with freedom, ease, empowerment, and create the life that you desire. Remember, you make sense all parts always. So this episode is all about sleep. We get so many questions, whether that's on Instagram, in emails, submissions for the podcast specifically about sleep. So I'm really excited to bring this episode to you and we're gonna normalize why so many of us find ourselves struggling in this area of our lives and how that ripples out to other areas. Now, the number one most important thing to focus on if we are struggling with our sleep is regulation of our nervous systems. In fact, the primary indicator of why we are struggling in our sleep is because our nervous systems are dysregulated. And remember, dysreg is simply active self protection. It essentially means that our nervous systems do not think we are currently safe, either because we are not in safety or. And more often, this is the case, our nervous systems are superimposing the past onto the present. Meaning our nervous system thinks something dangerous from the past is happening now or it is anticipating a dangerous future. Now, when we're dysregulated in something called our sympathetic nervous system, this is our state of mobilization, often referred to as fight or flight. There's an overwhelm of energy in our bodies and our systems are mobilizing in order to try to do something to evade the perceived danger. So if I was running from a grizzly bear that was chasing me, it's very clear, right, that my nervous system would not want me going into deep rest because it's trying to get away from a danger. So here is why so many of us struggle to either fall asleep or to stay asleep. Our nervous systems are going to say, I don't think it's safe to actually go to sleep because what if this bear comes and gets me? Or I don't think it's safe to get deep sleep or REM sleep because I have to essentially sleep with one eye open or really sleep lightly in case a danger comes. So that is really the primary reason that so many of us are struggling with our sleep. Another state in our nervous system that also lends us to struggling with our sleep is our state of freeze. Freeze is tonic immobility. So think of it like deer in headlights, where I have all this energy inside, but I feel trapped. It's an I have to, but I can't experience. I need to do this thing. I can't do this thing. Or I have this overwhelm of energy in my body. Met with feeling trapped. And there's nothing I can do about it. And so when we're in that place as well, when we are trying to sleep, Our nervous systems aren't allowing us to come into a deep, restful place. The state in our nervous system that we need to be able to access. In order to get deep sleep and to fall asleep in general is our state of stillness. Now, stillness is a blended state in our nervous system. That is experienced when we are predominantly anchored in regulation. But we have some of what's called our dorsal vagal complex present. And that is our state of immobilization. When we have just a little bit of that dorsal experience. It's what allows us to be regulated. But to slow down. Think of a moment where perhaps you felt in awe of something. Or a spiritual experience you had, perhaps in deep meditation, or watching a sunrise or a sunset. Or something really exquisite happening in nature. Or watching a loved one sleep. Your system comes into this place of real presence and slowing. And that is the precursor to having good, deep and lasting sleep to come into this state. Now, if our nervous systems do not think it's safe to come into that state. Or aren't familiarized with being in that state, Then we're really going to struggle to fall asleep and to stay asleep. And this is where so many of us are finding ourselves in our lives. So in this episode, we're going to talk about lots of other things that we can do to optimize on our sleep. But I really want you to know that you can do all of these optimizational things to make your sleep better. But if you are not focusing on the foundation of what is necessary for deep sleep and for quality sleep, those things are only going to work so much. Or they're only going to provide a very limited amount of support for you. The foundation of it all is beginning to regulate our nervous systems. And we'll talk a little in a little bit on how we actually do that. There are a few other things that we need in order to have deep rest. And one of those things is connection. By the way, everything I'm about to name are also things that we need to experience regulation in our nervous system. So connection is a primary human need that we all have. And when we have connection inhibited, it exacerbates disregulation in our nervous system. So if I am able to lean into, in tolerable ways, connection. That makes me feel safe, seen, understood and known. It will bring more regulation to my nervous system, which then compounds and allows me to have deeper rest. So connection with animals, connection with loved ones, you don't even have to know the people you're connecting with. It could be saying hello and connecting to someone at a coffee shop, on a walk, while you're running errands. The more that we are able to do that, the more regulation we experience in our nervous system. And if connection was not historically safe for us, I just want to name wherever your starting off point might be to lean into connection. That's exactly right. So for some of us, that might mean, you know, I'm going to smile at someone on a walk and build my capacity to come back into more and more connection. It also means in our close relationship relationships, we want to deepen our ability to experience bonding and closeness through play. Play is a wonderful way to bond and intimacy, exposure and so on and so forth. So we really want to lean into that. Another thing that we need for deep sleep, which is also necessary for regulation of our nervous system, is time in nature. And so there's lots of research on this now. But having consistent time in nature every single week is really, really paramount in order for us to have holistic health in our bodies and regulation of our nervous system. The more that we have that, the better we sleep. And I don't mean, you know, that you have to go climb a mountain every single week or you're like, I work eight hours a day, how am I going to have time to go on a two hour hike? You don't need to do that. Simply a walk around your neighborhood, connecting to the nature that's available for you and not bringing your phone is a wonderful way to connect with nature. Other things that we need are movement. Movement is necessary for our nervous systems to not only regulate, but come into a deeply resting place before bed. And it's what allows us to discharge the stress response in our bodies that we accumulate throughout the day as we are navigating our lives, which are oftentimes quite stressful. So moving our body in any way that we have the capacity to do so. If I'm not able to walk, can I move my upper body in any way that feels supportive for me or that I have access to if I, you know, you might think to yourself, I used to be able to run and I can't run because my knees are bad. Walking, walking is actually an incredible way to regulate the nervous system because it creates bilateral stimulation. So any way that we can successfully move our bodies is going to bring more regulation, which then allows for deeper sleep when it is time to get into bed. Another thing that we need is restorative rest. I think that we are living in a time where so many of us don't even know what that is, and we certainly don't know how to access it. A lot of times we think that we are resting, but really we're stimulating. So if I'm sitting on the couch and I'm scrolling through Instagram, that is not restorative rest. Watching Netflix is also not restorative rest. My system is quite active in that experience. Restorative rest is what allows my system, my mind, and my body to come into a real slowing or that state of stillness. So we can use things in our external environment or external stimuli to help us come into that place. For example, putting on a sound bath playlist before bed, or even throughout the day, even for five minutes, your nervous system, via mirror neurons, will pick up on the vibrational tone that you're hearing and will begin to match it. So that's a wonderful way to do this, Listening to any calming music, even calming sounds of nature. I live in the middle of a city, so if I open my window, I hear lots of sounds. But if I put on some calming music of like crickets or wind moving through trees, it helps to calm my nervous system, and my nervous system matches that rhythm or restorative rest of nature. Yoga nidra is a wonderful way for us to come into this place. Taking a bath, journaling. All of these ways help us to access restorative rest, which is really different than plopping myself on the couch and turning something on while I'm looking at my phone. That's not deep rest. So we really want to be able to access this for us, and that also regulates our nervous system. Another thing that I don't think is talked about enough is when we're embodied in our purpose, it will lend us to having much better sleep and also, of course, much more regulation of our nervous systems. Our species really thrives when we feel like we are contributing and doing not from a place of survival or productivity or setting bars and raising bars and having that perpetual loop, but instead I feel like, deeply grounded in the way that I am embodying the life I'm here to live. And I feel deep fulfillment in the thing that I'm doing. So I'm able to actually mobilize towards something not Rush towards it, but mobilize towards it in a way that is not overriding my nervous system. I gain fulfillment and gratification from that experience. It also is a wonderful way to output energy that my system has inside that's not becoming overwhelming and stored in a higher stress response. I'm actually outputting that energy and I'm allowing my system from that place to not only feel deeply gratified and deeply fulfilled, but also tired in a way that we want to be tired. And this is a. A really nuanced thing of how do I listen so well to my nervous system that I know I've reached a place of I've output enough energy that now it's time to rest? The more we regulate our nervous system, the more we can follow the natural internal rhythms that are showing up. But if I'm not embodied in my purpose, which what usually happens is we have parts of ourselves that are constantly knocking at our door. Our soul self that's saying, hey, you're not doing this thing. You're not doing this thing. You're not doing this thing. Which creates dysregulation, meaning I'm not doing the thing I feel called to. So the more we're embodied in our purpose, the more content we are, the more regulated we are, the better our sleep is. And then lastly, the most important thing to have deep sleep is that we are experiencing safety. Our nervous systems will not allow for that to happen if we are not actually safe. And so it's deeply important that we create an environment inside of our home that registers as safe for our nervous system. If you're someone like me, if home wasn't a safe place historically, maybe in the past or nighttime, both of those places, and time was not safe for me then what my nervous system did is it would not allow me to get deep sleep because it was saying nighttime's not safe. Because I experienced a lot of abuse at night. And this home isn't safe because homes aren't safe. And so then our nervous system is on guard for the bad thing it thinks might happen. And then, of course, we aren't able to get deep sleep. So doing a lot of somatic work around that to decouple, that's called an over coupling. An over association with something that was dangerous in the past and superimposing that on the present. So we wanna do work of showing our nervous system that this place is different, this is different now, and parts work around that is really important as well. And then creating a literal space that is safe for Us. You know, if you live in the middle of the city and it's super loud and you hear ambulances and helicopters, having some white noise in your room might be really supportive and really thinking about what creates a cocoon or container of safety. For me, all of the things I just named are pillars of what is necessary to have deep sleep. And of course, as you can see here, the number one key component of all of this is gaining and gathering more regulation within our nervous system. So now I want to talk about what happens when we are lacking quality sleep, especially over the long term. Now, our systems can recover if here or there. I have some nights where I'm not having deep sleep. But when this becomes a chronic experience, we start to have chronic issues inside of our bodies and then of course, inside of our lives. One of the things that occurs is it actually exacerbates dysregulation. So it's sort of like this hamster wheel that we get. If I'm already not dysregulated, I don't get great sleep. That creates more dysregulation in my system. And then I continue to go down this rabbit hole of higher levels of dysregulation, which means worse sleep, which means higher levels of dysregulation. So herein lies why it is so paramount to address what's going on in our nervous system and bring regulation to it. What also begins to occur is our immune systems begin to become taxed and inflammation develops in our body. The result of this is we might notice that over time, chron illness begins to arise. Maybe the flare up of things that we currently have, like autoimmune diseases. If we're lacking sleep, it'll really exacerbate all of that. We'll also find ourselves getting sick more frequently. And by the way, everything I'm naming are things that I've experienced in my own life and I really want to name. If you're feeling hopeless about this, there are things that we can do to begin shifting it, which we're going to talk about. Another thing that occurs is we have diminished cognitive function. So I'm not able to problem solve. I might not even be able to think clearly when I am finding myself lacking a lot of sleep. We will also have difficulty accessing our adult self. So because I'm experiencing more dysregulation, my younger parts are going to show up more frequently in my life. And we're going to struggle then from that place of not being able to step towards the things that we want. Having Behaviors arise that we don't really desire and not really being in the driver's seat of our experience. We'll also notice that we have diminished resiliency, so we can't tolerate stress as well. So as life stressors come towards us with our parenting, in our relationship, in our work, that it will feel beyond our capacity to manage. That will begin to happen, too, and a hypersensitivity will occur, which is why a lot of us, when we're lacking sleep, will find ourselves snapping at our partner or our kids because our nervous system is more dysregulated. And. And in that, we'll also notice an exacerbation of the thoughts that we're having. So all of those thoughts that are not serving us, which come from dysregulation, will just feel like they're growing. And the more that we listen to those thoughts, the more dysregulated we become. And then, of course, the more that we are lacking sleep. So I just want to name here that this can snowball. And for a lot of us, that's what happens with our sleep. It starts off with just struggling a little, and there's more, and there's more, and there's more, and we're in this really exhaustive pattern. And then we also get into this place of anticipating bad sleep. Remember I said we can become dysregulated from anticipatory anxiety. So I'm. My nervous system is saying nighttime is a time I don't sleep, even though I want to sleep. And now I'm feeling more dysregulated around sleep. And then I want to talk about what this looks like in our adult lives. You know, in terms of how this shows up means that we might struggle in our relationships. We might really struggle with conflict resolution. It feels very hard to resolve what's transpiring. Well, notice we have lower productivity because our energy levels are lower. Our mind is not fully online and functioning properly. We're going to notice that we have limited access to joy, pleasure, creativity, curiosity. Why? Because all of those things are experienced in regulation. We're going to have an experience of exacerbated dysregulation. We'll have difficulty problem solving, as I named. We might notice we have a short fuse. We might find ourselves numb and really struggling in our lives. And I know, you know, I'm talking about all of these problematic things, and I hope that it doesn't make you feel in any way that this isn't changeable or hopeless in any way. My goal in sharing this is that it really validates your experience. And I want you to know we're going to spend a good portion of this episode talking about what do I actually do to create this change. I also just want to say we're in a real epidemic in our world of people struggling with sleep or having sleep disorders. Really a sleep disorder is the result of our nervous systems not thinking that we're safe. Because again, as I named dysregulation is the foundation of why we struggle with sleep, which means regulation is the foundation of good sleep. Because for so many of us, the way that our culture is currently designed, where we're in this constant place of striving and productivity, most of us are living very high stress lives that are chronically overriding our nervous system. Our nervous systems are not designed to be a machine, meaning to go, go, go, go, go. We are meant to work and produce and rest and connect and work and produce and rest and connect. And by rest and connect, I mean connect to joy and other people and things that inspire us and art and hobbies, all of that is really important. And then when our cup is full, then we can go out and we can do some work and we ebb in flow in this process. But for most of us, that is not our experience. So what happens is we go through our day high stress. High stress. Override our nervous system. Override our nervous system. And now our nervous system is in a very high stress response and we're expecting it to allow us to go into deep sleep. It will not do that because it's saying, you've told me all day that there's a danger or that there is an inability to slow down because something battle happens. So I'm not, not certainly not going to just let you slow down because it's supposed to be our bedtime. And that's a real big problem that so many of us run into. Another reason that so many of us are struggling with our sleep is because we are chronically or constantly inundating ourselves with news, information and connectivity. Now, I know I named earlier connection is really important, but what has happened with technology is that we have these smartphones and it is almost for many of us like an endless supply of connection that is actually not deeply attuned connection. So for example, getting a lot of emails coming into my email inbox, that is connection. But it might be connection that's bringing stress. Even text messages back and forth from friends. It's not actually experiencing a deep level of attuned connection. Like if you were to go on a hike with them or you see them in person. For many of us, that can start to feel like a job of, oh, I need to write them back. But I'm not actually gaining any regulation when I'm chronically responding to these texts. I just am feeling like I'm in this never ending cycle of I need to respond and I haven't gone back to them. And it's not actually becoming a source of regulation for us when we're intaking all the news of the world. That's too much for our nervous system to handle. So we're creating more dysregulation. Another thing that I want to name for anyone who lives in a city like myself. We're combating a lot of external stimuli that create dysregulation. Light pollution, pollution in general. Right. Because the, the air that we're breathing in also affects our nervous system along with our health, of course, the external stimuli like the energy around us. So everything is affecting everything. So if you live in a city where there's lots of sounds and overwhelm of sounds, overwhelm of things that you're seeing, that's really a lot for our nervous systems to handle and can create dysregulation. And also a lack of nature. If we don't have easy access to nature, that creates more dysregulation. And then lastly, we live in a cultural time where a lot of us are lacking movement. You know, there's no longer a time where all of us are out in the world and we're tending a garden and then we're sowing clothes and all of those things that requires movement for us. So many of us, like myself are sitting at a computer computer all day long. And that kind of sedentary experience creates dysregulation in our nervous system. And if we're already dysregulated, we aren't doing anything to actually mobilize that energy. So I just want to name that for many of us, part of the reason that we're struggling isn't just because of past trauma. It's because we live in a world that is not conducive to the things that are necessary to support us to have deep sleep. So it's really a radical way of being that's kind of countercultural. In order for us to come back into deep sleep, the next thing we're going to talk about are three categories of sleep struggle. One, why we struggle to get to sleep, why we struggle to fall asleep, and why we struggle to stay Asleep. So let's first talk about why we struggle to get to sleep. This is something a lot of us experience where I have a goal of going to bed at, I don't know, 10, 10:30 and then all of a sudden it's 1:30 in the morning every single night. Why is this happening? One of the primary reasons that this happens for a lot of people is because nighttime is a time where the world, predominantly in our time zone, is asleep. And if, historically speaking, people have not been safe for us in the past, or setting boundaries with people has not been safe in the past, or being ourselves in the world has not been been safe in the past, then our nervous system is going to say, hey, I found a really great time of day where you don't have to worry about that. And this is a time where everyone's asleep. And so for our nervous systems, it will see this as a refuge, which is why so many of us struggle to really get to sleep at a time that we might like to. And the more that we work with our nervous system in our parts, the more we're able to shift the that. Another reason why so many of us struggle to get to sleep at a time that we might like is because we have a doer part. So this is a protector part inside of us. And that part's job is to ensure our safety by controlling external circumstances. And perpetually and chronically doing so, we might find that we're really up until the moment that we're going to lay down to go to bed. We are responding to emails, we are cleaning the kitchen, we are doing all of the these things. And the lie of this part is that once we get all this stuff done, we'll be able to relax. But we all know that the to do list never ends, right? There's always more on it. So this part will push up against whatever it is the bedtime that we've decided is going to be. And not only will it do that, but it won't allow for any rest period from the moment we stop doing to the moment we go to sleep. So that brings us to this next category of why we struggle with to fall asleep. This is something that a lot of us really struggle with. If we are in, as I named earlier, a place of chronic stress which occurs in our sympathetic nervous system, or that state of freeze where I have all that energy inside, but I feel trapped, my system is going to say it's not safe to fall asleep because I'm really concerned that there is danger ahead. There's Danger ahead with work tomorrow. There's danger ahead because I'm worried that person might be mad at me. There's danger ahead because there's someone coming to get me, and so on and so forth. So we'll find ourselves tossing and turning, thinking about all of the things that could go wrong in the future or are currently going wrong in our lives. And even if we're not having thoughts come in, we'll have this somatic response of too much energy in our bodies, panic, butterflies in our stomach, tension, and we'll find ourselves tossing and turning. That's really common. Another reason why we struggle to fall asleep is, as I named earlier, this over coupling of nighttime or home not being a safe place for us. And so the result of that is our nervous system's gonna say, I don't think this is safe. I don't think this is safe. I don't think this is safe. Something that is very common that so many of us experience. Now for others of us, we might find that we can fall asleep, but we cannot stay asleep. So I wanna talk about why that can tend to happen happen for a lot of us. If we're in this chronic state of stress throughout the day or chronic mobilization, we might fall asleep in exhaustion. Now some of you do that. You fall asleep on the couch and you're like, I forgot to brush my teeth and wash my face and I fall asleep or even, you know, maybe even do your, your nighttime routine. But you fall asleep in bed in exhaustion and we fall asleep really fast. When we're falling asleep from exhaustion, sleep shouldn't happen in a second. It actually can tend to take five to 10 minutes for us to come into deep sleep if we're coming from a place of regulation and deep stillness. But if we're falling asleep in exhaustion, happens really quick. But what occurs is after our systems come out of that deep, deep exhaustion, it will wake us back up again in dysregulation. And when that occurs, we wake up in the middle of the night. And usually what happens is because we're not totally coherent, it actually exacerbates the fear, the stress response. And this is why you can tend to find yourself really blowing things up in the middle of the night, that making them bigger than they actually are. And those thoughts get exacerbated. And now I'm more dysregulated and I'm tossing and turning even more. Another reason why we'll wake up in the middle of the night is because we haven't gotten the right kind of light throughout the day. I say this a lot, but evolution happens very, very slowly. We have not evolved to be sitting at computers inside all day long, not moving. It is the natural order of things for us to have woken up and we would go outside and we would see the sun rising. Seeing sun early in the day sets our circadian rhythm and shows our system. Hey, the light is out. It's time for doing. We're gonna go out and gather, hunt or do the thing that we're here to do. So we need energy right now to do that. And so everything inside of us follows suit in terms of our cortisol levels and our ability to, and again said, our circadian rhythm and our ability to grow throughout the day. Then at the end of the day, once we have done the things, the sun would begin to set. And that was a clue. Oh, it's time to go into rest. And so as we got end of day sunlight, that would also clue to our internal system, including our nervous system. Oh, it's time to come into this deep place of rest. So if we aren't getting morning light or that end of day light, it really disrupts our circadian rhythm in our system doesn't know how to function in the natural rhythms that are so inherent and biological to who we are. Another thing that's just really simple I want to name is caffeine. First of all, if you experience high stress, we want to minimize your caffeine intake. Caffeine is like putting gasoline on a fire when you are experiencing your sympathetic nervous system. And the sympathetic nervous system is where anxiety, worry, frustration, fear, terror, rage, lives, racing thoughts, panic. If you drink caffeine, it exacerbates that. So what we really want to do is minimize caffeine intake. And if you're going to have caffeine, we really want to keep it within 8 to 12 hours of sleep. I tried to personally not have caffeine for at least 10 to 12 hours before I sleep. There's a major difference and it's a big sleep disruptor if we are drinking caffeine close to bed. So that's a really important thing. And again, I would say if you're experiencing your sympathetic nervous system, we might want to try to stay away from that as much as possible or altogether. Another thing that can keep us from staying asleep is what we're digesting both physically and emotionally. So if I am eating within two hours of bedtime, my system doesn't have the ability to fully digest that food. That means that when I lay down to sleep My, my internal organs are actually having to go to work to digest and metabolize everything that I've just eaten. And that means it won't allow me to go into that real deep state of stillness in my nervous system, which is why we might wake up feeling exhausted. Another thing that's really important to remember is what am I also digesting emotionally now? For a lot of us, if we had experiences in the past where it wasn't safe to not only feel our internal experience, but then get it out of us via expression, if that wasn't safe, we will internalize our feelings, internalize our embodied experience and the sensations involved with that around a number of things. And so that internalization can really lend us to not being able to come into restfulness and also the internalization of what we're absorbing before we go to bed. That's really important too. So if I'm absorbing emotionally TV shows or news, that it's really dysregulating for me, maybe as it should be, because I'm watching things about serial killers or about global warming and what's happening to our planet or the division in our government and all the things that aren't working, all of those things if you're doing this, that it's not going to lend your system to be able to come into a deep place of rest. Because now I have emotionally digested things that are going to fuel dysregulation in my system. So let's talk about what we can do to change what's happening with our sleep. The predominant and most important thing to focus on is regulation of our nervous systems. People ask me a lot like, what should I do before bed and what should I do when I wake up in the middle of the night? And the truth is, the most important thing you do is not during those times, but what do you do incrementally throughout the day. So again, we live in a culture, in a society that is bit by bit, bringing more dysregulation throughout our day into our systems. If we're not doing anything to combat that, what's going to happen is we're going to find ourselves, day in and day out, more dysregulated at the end of the day. So the more that you can regulate throughout your day, the better your sleep is going to be. For me, that looks like, you know, literally put a song on in between meetings or whatever it is you're doing, and just move your body in any way that it wants to move. Just move your body. That's helping Energy to process through your system. Literally go feel the sun on your face in between calls that you have or a moment that you have free or go on a five, even a five minute walk or moving your body for five minutes is a wonderful way to bring regulation to your system. So regulate, regulate, regulate. The more you do that, the more your nervous system will land in regulation at the end of the day. And that is the the most important thing to have quality and deep sleep. Next thing is we really want to work on not overriding our nervous system or self abandoning. Most of us are doing that throughout our day. When something feels like it's too much, we still say yes, oh I can do that thing. Or we sit in traffic for an hour and our nervous system after that feels pretty stressed and we really need to just sit down and rest. But we get home and we immediately go into doing things, things that's all overriding our system, that's trying to talk to us and say hey, I need to do a little less, I need a little more rest. And the truth is when we stop overriding and chronically and habitually saying yes to everything, our nervous system thanks us for it. And it thanks us for it in the form of better sleep too. Movement. That is absolutely important. So whatever way we can move our body throughout the day, every day is very important for our systems. The more we do that, the better our sleep gets, the more regulated we become. Come a nighttime routine. This is really important. It's. You can think of this like sleep hygiene. What are you doing? Ideally two hours before bed, but let's just even start with a half an hour before bed. What am I doing to elicit the state of stillness? And just think of one moment where you were in that state. I talked about that earlier where you felt deep presence. Maybe you were like watching a butterfly land out a window. You're watching your child, child's sleep. You were laying with your sleeping dog, cuddling him. Not like I know what that is all about. When you were taking a bath and listening to calming music, remember one moment that felt sense experience that you had then is what we are trying to elicit every single night. So I want you to come up with a routine that feels right for you to help elicit that experience. For me, that looks like I turn off all overhead lights. This actually my partner helped me with this turn off all overhead lights in my house. And I, I have candles all over the place and I try not to use real candles because it's a lot of toxicity there. Just Use battery powered candles. So just doing something like that or wearing blue blocking glasses helps to elicit stillness. It's definitely turning off all blue screens at least 30 minutes before you go to sleep, ideally a couple of hours. You know, this also means we're gonna have to be with ourselves more. And that can feel intolerable at first if that's not something that we have historically done. So we want to see what can make being with myself more tolerable. Like reading a book, writing, taking a bath, listening to a meditation or yoga nidra class or meditation. All of these things can help bring us into stillness. Next thing that's really helpful is doing a brain dump. And that can be a part of the stillness practice. So I take all of the things that have been overwhelming me throughout the day and that are running through my mind and a part of me is trying to, trying to hold onto and I put them in this journal. Nothing else goes into this journal besides all the overwhelming things. And the point and purpose of that is I'm letting that protective part of me know I have not forgotten about all those things. We're going to address them, just not now. And then put that journal in a different room, not in your bedroom. That's really important too. Another thing is decoupling work from home. If you work from home, your nervous system, by the way, it's always making associations. So in making meaning. So if you work from home, it's going to start associating home as a place where work happens. Not just where work happens, but where everybody you work with is. So all the energy of work is there, all the emails of work is there. The 400 people in your company are all in your house and for all intensive purposes to your nervous system. So what I like to do as somebody who does work from home is I have an energetic clearing practice that I do every day after work. And one of those things is I create a commute for myself. That means that I take my little dog Truman in his little stroller and we go for about a 30 to 45 minute walk. And the purpose of that is I am leaving work now and I am releasing the energy and all of the things around it and I am moving my body. And when I come home now, home is not a workplace place. It's a place of rest and connectivity. And so the more that we can do that, our nervous systems start to associate home and work as separate places. Another thing that's really important in terms of decoupling this is we want to do things that Help to set somatic boundaries. So there are actual exercises that we can do of imagining that energy in your space, seeing the energy of work and literally using your physical body, almost like you're doing qigong to move the energy out of your house. You could do an energy clearing. All of those things are really important. Lastly, we have to create safety in our house. So for those of us that have over coupled nighttime with being dangerous because of past trauma, or home being dangerous because of past trauma, I really want you to think about what are things that I can do that will start creating more safety. You know, for me that started with I put a lock on my bedroom door because my bedroom was a place where I got abused. So I put put multiple locks on a bedroom door. Like maybe 15 years ago I did this and it created enough safety for my system to see, oh, nobody's going to come in here. I would really consciously with my parts just show them. Look, the front door is locked, the back door is locked. This is safe. I would show those parts how this space looks nothing like the space of my childhood. And then I would bring in for myself because I have a spiritual practice, ask the universe, God to come into the that space. Any people who aren't alive that were are safe for you, asking them to come in angels guides, if any of that is something you subscribe to or any safe other in the imagination world as well as of course in real time if you have a partner. You know the beautiful thing about this is over the course of time, the more your nervous system sees oh I actually am safe then the less we need those things. I, I haven't thought about that in a long time about how I had locks on my door and it's so beautiful how this work works that eventually it's you don't need them. And then eventually the door can be wide open. That's what healing brings. The more we have internal safety, the less we need those things as well. But for now, I really want you to lean into whatever will show your nervous system that this place is actually safe. And the more that we do all the things that I named, the more that our sleep begins to shift. Your system inherently knows how to have deep sleep. It wants it very, very much. It also knows how to regulate. And it's this work that gets us there. Hey my friend, are you ready to step into the relationships, purpose and life you're desiring? My 10 week somatic healing program, you Make Sense is now open for enrollment and I want to share some words from a previous participant so you can see exactly what you can expect After I did the work with Sarah, how I was showing up with my people, how I was showing up in communities, how I was showing up in my work completely changed. The way I was showing up was actually with a sense of self worth and understand my self worth was no longer based on my experiences before or my inability to be able to handle what was going on inside of me. My self worth is now determined by what I know of myself and just how extraordinary I am and how extraordinary then we all are. This and so much more is possible for you my friend. Click below to learn more before doors close on April 9th. So let's get to the questions that we have for this episode. And just a reminder, if you have any questions about really any topic at all, I want you to submit them to us. So there's a link in the show notes. To do that you can submit a video question, audio question, or a written question. Let's get to the first one that we have about sleep. Hi Sarah, I've been dealing with chronic insomnia for the past year and a half. It's gotten particularly bad the last six months. I've tried everything under the sun it seems, including cbti, Cognitive Behavioral therapy for insomnia, but it doesn't really last. I continuously wake up at 3 or 4am and get like four or five hours of sleep and feel like I barely got rest about five out of seven nights a week and I'm really at my wit's end. I'm going to do a sleep study to see what else may be going on. But how might the nervous system be asking for attention here? It feels like there's more to this. Thank you so much for everything you do. Thank you for your question and I just want to name I personally really understand what it is like to be in that experience. I think sometimes we think, oh, I'm not really sleeping and we can just kind of minimize it it. But for you or anyone struggling, I know how hard it is. I know how scary sleep becomes. Nighttime can become a really scary time and how this habituated pattern just seems to grow and it can lead to hopelessness. So I really want you to know that there's a way out. And you know, again and again I get very frustrated by my field because there's almost like this message that there's a one size fits all for healing or there's only one modality that we need. And what research certainly confirms is we need a variety of things for holistic healing. So I am not in any way saying that CBT can't be a supportive modality or mindset work. CBT is helpful when we're in regulation. So the more that we're really regulated in our nervous system, that's when our thinking brain is present, our prefrontal cortex, so we can actually rationalize and feel into that rationalization and true truth when we're regulated. That will not work when we're dysregulated because that part of our brain isn't even online. And when we're in a state of dysregulation, that literally creates our entire experience. Which is why if you've ever had anxiety, like about sleep even, and you tell yourself tonight can be different, you won't feel it. And that's because I'm speaking a verbal language to a system that can't hear me. So the most important thing for you to focus on, focus on is bringing regulation to your nervous system above all else. All the other things I've named are really important too, like minimizing caffeine, light intake, movement in our bodies. Those things are all really imperative. And the foundation of it all is nervous system regulation. The more you regulate your nervous system, the better your sleep is going to be. And this is an indicator to me, if you're getting up in the middle of the night, that you're experiencing your sympathetic nervous system system or that state of freeze. Simply what's occurring here is your system is saying, I think there's danger. So then all of a sudden it brings you into a stress response when you're supposed to be in deep sleep. And this is why we wake up in the middle of the night. So the last thing is, when you wake up in the middle of the night, it's very important to get out of bed, get out of bed. And then we want to regulate. If you stay in bed when your system is saying, I have stress in my body that needs to be discharged, the anxiety and the lack of sleep will grow. And also, by the way, we'll start to associate our bed as a place where we toss and turn. So instead we want to get up, go into the other room and do something that elicits regulation and also our state of stillness. So do not look at your phone. Absolutely do not do that. That's going to tell your nervous system to wake up because you're looking at blue light and also intaking probably information that's not helpful for sleep. So instead, either know, light a candle, put a battery powered candle on so we have that more orange light and read something and don't read something heavy. Read something light or write for a little bit or do a little yoga, Nidra listen to a meditation. The more that you begin regulating your nervous system, what happens is we build our capacity for elongating the time that we're able to sleep. So I don't want us to think that all of a sudden we're going to sleep, you know, nine hours every night. But maybe it goes from four hours to, you know, I slept four and a half hours last night or four hours and 15 minutes and we start to stretch in our nervous system, its capacity to allow us to stay in deep sleep. The more that we do this, the more that it actually shifts so that regulation, not just before bed but throughout the day is really paramount. And again, your nervous system and your body knows how to have deep breaths. Not only does it, know it, but it's desiring and craving it. And it's regulation that's going to allow it. So let's get to the next question that we have today. Hi, Sarah, this is Sean. I had a question about sleep. I usually don't have trouble falling asleep, but I often wake up in the middle of night. Sometimes once, sometimes twice. It's been bad in the past couple of years. I've had anxiety and depression during that time and it's especially bad in the last five months since the end of my 13 year relationship. So I want to know if there's anything I can do to kind of not just fall asleep, but sleep through the night and actually be rested when I wake up in the morning. I guess I've tried magnesium and sleep hygiene and other stuff, but it, you know, sometimes it works, but it's not consistent. Thanks. So, yeah, the things that I talked about with sleep hygiene are really important. All the things that I named and, and also you can take really wonderful supplements if that's something that in working with your naturopath or your functional medicine doctor, you've decided to do things like L Theanine, Gaba and magnesium, other things like that that you can look into. All of those things are really important and of course at the root of all of it is what's going on in our nervous system. So I just want to name specifically for this person. First of all, I am so sorry for the ending of your relationship. You know, even when something is a beautiful ending, meaning this is really a marker of the work we've done and we've gone in separate directions or I have grown beyond this relationship, and I'm not sure what this person's situation is. But even when that happens, there's grief that occurs, right? Because it's not just a black and white experience inside of a relationship. There's also usually so much goodness when grief is unrelated, resolved. It can also cause us to struggle in our sleep because our subconscious is always trying to wake us up. And I don't mean literally, I mean figuratively. It's always trying to wake us up to what needs to be looked at, what needs to be resolved. And so we might even find ourselves in our dreams, our subconscious bringing to light things that want resolution. This is really an interesting, interesting thing we haven't talked about in this episode very much. But for myself, oftentimes, if there's something that needs to be resolved, it will come up in my dreams, usually before I'm about to do a therapy session, not me as a facilitator, but with my therapist. And it might be an old memory, it might be a memory I've never had before. It might be an experience that transpired, and it'll usually happen the day before I'm going to have a session. So that that happens a lot in our subconscious. And the same goes with grief. It will bubble things up that are asking to be looked at. So we want to really look at during my waking hours, as I named before, what am I doing to really process what's inside. The more that we do that and allow that to titrate out, the more our system can come into peace, which is what it's really desiring. Another thing is when our nervous systems are used to, just practically speaking, someone else else being next to us in bed. And that has become a signal of safety. When someone else is not in bed next to us, we are going to find that our nervous systems at first are like, I'm not sure if this is safe. So I want to really name that. There's a process in our nervous system beginning to see it is safe to be here just with me. And creating that bedtime routine where we create a place of safety inside of our bedroom is really important, important to help facilitate that shift in happening. The other thing is when we wake up in the middle of the night and usually in a place of our sympathetic nervous system, so racing thoughts and anxiety, it's very important that we get out of bed. Our nervous systems are always making meaning and associations. So if I toss and turn and I stay in bed for three hours, my nervous system starts to say, oh, this is a place where I have insomnia. This is not a place where I rest and therefore exacerbates the insomnia. So what we wanna do is we wanna get a out of bed. Another reason for that is when we're in our sympathetic nervous system, we need to move that energy out of our body. And if we try to sit still while our nervous system is saying again, for all intensive purposes, there's a lion chasing me, you need to move and I don't move, my nervous system increases the activation because it's saying, why aren't you getting the memo that there's danger? So getting out of bed and doing gentle movement, literally sit and hum and sway. It's a beautiful way to regulate. By the way, we don't want to bring in too much energy and regulating in the middle of the night because we don't want to wake our system up. But calming, soothing movement we really want to engage in. You might put some relaxing music on. Do not look at your phone, that's really important. That blue light will wake your system up, or a TV or certainly not a computer. And then doing something that will support your system to discharge that energy. So some gentle movement and then connection. So you might read, that's a wonderful way to regulate. Or listen to someone's voice who's relaxing to you, like on a meditation, all of those things are going to be really helpful. And once we feel more regulated, then we come back into bed. That's a very important process if we find ourselves waking up in the middle of the night. So let's get to the last question that we have for this episode. My question with sleep is how to say yes to myself and say no to the pressure of an exam period or to the pressure of others, or my partner wants to stay up later. Even if I was able to say no, then it's really hard to fall asleep faster. I'm fighting with it since years and I have chronic diseases. So it would be, one day I'm successful in it and the other day I let it go. So how to make it sustainable? For many of us, we had to learn to orient towards the world and to other people by overriding our needs and our nervous system and acquiescing or becoming what others wanted us to be in order to ensure our safety. So we have this reflexive yes response. So for many of us, what's going to happen is when we try to honor ourself and our needs and our limits, those parts of us are going to say, I don't think that's safe, something bad's going to happen. Which is why this person is saying, even when I try to do that, I go to bed earlier, my partner wants to stay awake, I can't fall asleep, or I get anxious. And those are the parts coming online and saying, I don't know if this is safe. So. So what's really important is that we begin taking tolerable steps towards honoring our no. And honoring the needs and rhythms of our own nervous system. And it might feel too big at first to go to bed, you know, 30 minutes before our partner. Can I start with five? Like literally five minutes, 10 minutes? And show your nervous system this is actually safe. If you're in a safe partnership, by the way, please ask your partner to reassure those parts of you. You know, our partner's job is not to be the primary parent to our younger parts, but it certainly is their job to show up as a secondary parent and vice versa. So literally asking them, can you just tell me that you want me to do this for myself? That'll really help those parts of me feel safer to actually honor my own no. And do the thing that I need to do, and that can help facilitate it becoming easier. And the same goes with work and all the other things in our lives. The more I can show my nervous system see it's safe to actually honor this note again and again and again, bit by bit. The more our nervous system sees, oh, that is actually safe. And if you try to take a step that's bigger than what your nervous system has capacity for, there's going to be secondary dysregulation that transpires. So slower is how we go faster. I hope everything in this episode not only validated your experience if you struggle with your sleep sleep, but showed you that there's a way to actually change what is happening. It can be such a helpless, hopeless experience, but when we actually harness the power of our nervous systems and change what's happening on a foundational level, our bodies come back into the inherent need and desire for deep and restful sleep. Enjoyed this episode and want to go even deeper into somatic healing. You can join my email community for free. Weekly Teachings More Resources and Live Events. Sign up using the link in the description.