Your evening routine

How many of us are looking at screens right up until bedtime? I know I often do although I do feel better when I am doing other things- it can be a way to wind down and relax to some extent. However, it can negatively affect sleep, as even electric lights at nighttime can and does impact the length and quality of our sleep. 

Before electric lights were commonly used, people used to sleep closer to 9 hours a night, and now its more like 7. That's likely to have had some serious impact. 

Here are a few tips: 

Dim the house lights in the evening, and go around and turn off any lights that are unnecessary after dark. This tells our brain its time to start winding down for sleep, even if bedtime is a few hours away. Eating by candlelight or low gentle light can be good. 

Make sure you have the blue screen dimmer switched on your phone and/or iPad and/or computer for after sunset. It's a setting on all modern devices. It blocks the blue light spectrum, dims the screen a little, to help prevent the negative effects of blue light in the evening. 

Get some morning sunshine- this helps the body really "get it" in terms of circadian rhythm, night and day cycles. For many people, this inbuilt rhythm is out of sync and morning bright sunlight can help reset this. Being a night owl and having light at night, then sleeping during the day, long term, really messes with our hormones and mental health, and eventually physical health. 

Be aware that reading from screens, checking the news or what our friends are doing, just before bed...can be very stimulating on our brain. If we are sensitive, finding out about a tragedy, or reading about world events, or even the tragedies that befall animals or friends of friends that we see on social media, especially those we can do nothing about, can really affect our mental health and our sleep. 

If those things upset you, give yourself permission not to stay "caught up" on the world or friends' activities all the time. Come back to present time, the physical space around you, appreciate some beauty, do something calming, and unhook from the need to be informed. The world will still be there when you do check in less often. 

We tend to be chronically overstimulated mentally through social media and email, and we need to be able to unhook. Have a bath, go for a walk, read a real physical book, socialise face to face, or do some sort of craft or manual activity, to help come back into the natural peace of the physical body and its surroundings. If your environment itself is stressful, work with that, try and do something about that, because living in a stressful environment is not good for us. 

If we give our evenings some attention as to how we are spending our time, and have an intention to nurture a calming down, a letting go of the day, and a welcoming of the coming darkness of night and its natural benefits and nourishment, it can have a beneficial effect on our ability to sleep well.