During the apocalyptic season of midterm and finals, it becomes common to accept the “sleep is for the weak” mentality. But, when you’re stressed, working two part-time jobs as work-study, participating actively in six clubs and five extracurricular activities, taking part in recruitment cycles, sorority, and fraternity memberships, and cramming in those paragraphs in your essay to boost up the word count at two in the morning, this mentality may become a hash daily reality - which will not only wreck you mentally, physically and emotionally, but will also do you no good in the professional arenas of the world. After all, how long can you last on so little sleep while doing so much so quickly? It’s not a tough rhetorical question, and the short and sweet answer is, sleep has got to become a priority to keep your health in check as well as everything else because you’re using the former to perform the latter. So, it’s a no-brainer that when you sleep less (or not at all), your mind works at a lower potential than it otherwise would have had you slept normally (lower cognitive thinking that the sage site of Wikipedia supports), your mood sucks (and all those cookies seemingly don’t help cheer you up), and your body feels like it pulled an all-nighter without your full voluntary consent. Read on for six helpful tips to sleep better when doing so is simply impossible.
1. Breathe Deeply
Clichéd, but, also like most clichéd statements, effective and true. Breathe deeply in, inflating your entire lungs, and try to keep it in for as long as you can, preferably for four seconds or more. Then, shortly before your face turns blue, breathe gently out, contracting your spinal cord ever so slightly and contracting your rib cage, releasing whatever it is you’re keeping in, and whatever it is that’s keeping you awake and damaging your precious REM sleep. Doing so will compel you to relax your brain and body, since deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is responsible for calming your body systems and functions. In fact, one of the most ubiquitous yoga poses has been the one for deep breathing: you lie down, shut off your brain and ‘tunnel-focus’ on individual functions of your body. Yay for sleep.
2. Establish a Regular Sleep Schedule
Yes, having a set-out agenda to schedule your sleep hours is an actual tip here, designed to remove the only existing form of spontaneity out of your already scheduled life. But, frankly speaking, it’s important to sleep and wake up at the same time as regularly as possible, including on the weekends. This will develop a healthy circadian rhythm for your body, promoting health, immunity, and eventually a good sleep cycle in the long term.
3. Empty Your Mind
Whatever that’s bothering you and your dreams, forget it, if you can, and endeavor your best to think of something else that soothes your thoughts like honey. Put your ‘bad’ thoughts and inner emotions to paper. Make a to-do list for the next morning to declutter your mind. Journal for a few minutes, either on paper, or online (on Medium, for example) to “decloud” your negativity and sleeplessness. Meditation, although a seemingly tedious activity, might actually turn out to be your best friend at night: it will help you get to sleep easily and effectively (i.e. soon and well) on a regular basis every night.
4. After 20 Minutes, Get Up
The reason that it’s 20 minutes here, as opposed to 10 or any other random number, is because, according to many scientific studies, 20 minutes is the maximum amount of time it should take for you to get to sleep. If you’re not already in Dreamland by this time, chances are you won’t in the next 20 minutes as well if you keep lying on your bed. Lying in bed, counting sheep or stars, reciting nursery rhymes, glancing at the watch/clock multiple times, and thinking hard about why you can’t sleep and how important it is that you do for your health and well being, and about how there are almost a billion reasons why you should be sleeping right now - will not help, no matter how hard you try (unfortunately, efforts and intentions do not work very effectively in the sleep department here). That’s why the next best thing to do after 20 minutes of zero sleep, is to change the scenery and environment. You have to force the brain to stop focusing on sleep until it automatically wants to. Do some light exercise, such as yoga or stretching exercises, to make you tired enough to head to bed but not so exhausted that you’re too active to even sleep. Hop around a little, and read an interesting book (maybe even a boring one to make you doze off; this is the same mechanism that works when lectures are so boring, you start drooling in your sleep during class). Change your mind and divert it to something new and refreshing.
5. Listen to Classical Music
Why? Because it’s been scientifically proven to improve concentration (that cheesy element you crucially pray for during study sessions) and initiate calm thoughts, thus relaxing your brain and body to a level for proper memory retention (i.e. when you repeat material frequently enough, that the brain moves it from short-term to long-term memory, and it - hopefully - becomes second nature to you in terms of understanding and recall). However, if you give in to your loud pop or hip-hop music desires or rock’n’roll musical fetishes at the wee hours of the night, you’ll miss out on some good z’s and definitely stay up longer, thinking about how Taylor Swift managed to make you lose your sleep, making you scream “Look What You Made Me Do” till your 8 AM alarm clock starts ringing.
6. Drink Chamomile and Herbal Tea
Read: Do not use these beverages to supplant water. I’ve done that one too many times, jeopardizing my hydration levels as well as my overall health and immunity in the gruesome process, with a not-so-pleasant recovery, and thus, I would not recommend this to even my worst enemies. The point here is, to use these caffeine-free teas as outlets to release serotonin (the feel-good hormone) and melatonin (sleep hormone) into your bloodstream, therefore slowing down your heartbeat and breathing, prepping your body and (often active at midnight) mind for sleep. These drinks are NOT intended to fully quench your thirst, as only our beloved H20 can do that. Moral of the day/article: Do not replace your water with anything. So, drink up, watch your eyelids droop down with uncontrollable drowsiness and sleep for 7-8 hours to your soul’s delight (I hope we all have that much time to sleep, but, sadly, I admit that hope may be false for all us students).
