April 2010 | March 2010 |February 2010 |January 2010 | December 2009 | November 2009
October 2009 |September 2009 | August 2009| July 2009| June 2009 | May 2009

Where's the Off Button ?
When Racing Thoughts Affect Your Sleep

Make Amy’s school play costume. Call the plumber. Return that ugly sweat from Aunt Margie. Did I ever send that e-mail to my coworker? Did I lock the front door?

After running around all day, you’d think that it would take mere seconds for our minds to revel in the quiet of the evening hours, nestled in our beds like bugs in a rug. Instead of unplugging and letting you rest, though, your brain keeps chugging along like it’s time to take the SATs

With our overbooked and overextended lives these days, it’s getting harder and harder to keep our sleep time the sacred part of the day that it deserves to be. We don’t take the time to separate our days from our nights, instead expecting turbo-speed thinking to come to a screeching halt when we decide to hit the pillow.

While lack of quality sleep can have a host of health effects, as we regularly discuss on this site, let’s face it – the most obvious effect it can have is leaving us feeling like Oscar the Grouch on a lunchtime line at the DMV.

You can try warm milk, or even counting sheep. But if you’d like to give more research-backed tactics for getting your brain to wind down a go, try these techniques:

Guided Imagery

Set aside 15 minutes before bedtime for this relaxation method, which demands that you switch your thoughts over to imaging yourself in a soothing environment – sites, sounds, feeling. You can even do this from bed.

Deep Breathing

Learning how to breathe sounds pretty funny. We’re all pretty much experts in that. But deep breathing involves some specific steps – ones that calm you, body and mind.

Instead of staring at the clock ticking closer and closer to 2 in the morning, do your best to truly make getting a good night’s rest mind over matter.