Sleep is essential for human health. Sleep is when the brain restores itself, and it plays a “housekeeping” role—removing toxins that build up in the brain during waking hours.
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Good-quality sleep brings many benefits, including:
- Less frequent sickness
- Better weight control
- Lower risk of serious conditions like diabetes and heart disease
- Reduced stress and improved mood
What is Healthy Sleep?
For adults, healthy sleep typically means seven or more hours of sleep each night on a regular enough basis that it leads to a feeling of rest and restoration when you get out of bed in the morning. It is a mix of quality and quantity. Some individuals can function well on five hours a night, while others need closer to 10 hours. Sleep needs can also differ by age.
Sleep has multiple stages, divided into rapid eye movement sleep, or REM sleep, and non-REM sleep. There are three stages of non-REM sleep:
- Stage 1: A brief stage of light sleep, lasting 5 to 10 minutes
- Stage 2: Light sleep, during which muscles partially contract and then relax, the heart rate slows, and brain waves become slower
- Stage 3: Deep sleep. If someone is woken from this state, they may feel groggy or disoriented
Stage 3 non-REM sleep is considered one of the most important stages of sleep. During this phase, the brain produces very slow delta waves. Non-REM sleep is critical because it is when the body releases growth hormone, repairs tissues, and supports the immune system.
REM sleep is the stage in which dreaming often occurs as brain activity increases. It also plays an important role in memory, learning, and emotional processing. The entire sleep cycle lasts roughly 90 minutes and repeats several times throughout the night.
The bottom line is that quality sleep is critical to physical, emotional, psychological, and brain health. However, it can be hard for busy individuals to turn off their active minds enough to get quality sleep, which is why meditation can help. Meditation involves slowing down and paying close attention to the present moment, whether that means focusing on your breathing, repeating a silent mantra, or following a guided narrative or visualization.
What is Meditation for Sleep?
Meditation for sleep is any kind of meditation that helps deepen an individual’s quality of sleep.
Meditation can bring many benefits, including:
- Reducing stress and gaining a new perspective on your situation
- Increasing self-awareness and focus on the present
- Reducing negative emotions and increasing gratitude
- Improving attention and concentration
- A greater sense of creativity
Meditation can help change patterns in the brain to the point where it can improve adults’ attention span. It can also help the heart slow down. Given the physiological and stress-reducing effects of meditation, it stands to reason that meditation may also help improve the restful quality of sleep.
Want an in-depth overview of meditation, check out our article 'What is Meditation'.
Meditation for sleep typically involves guided meditations that gradually help release the day’s cares and concerns. The gentle voice of a guide, often through a podcast, app, or one of Sofia PRIME’s videos on demand, may encourage techniques such as visualizing peaceful landscapes, letting go of the day’s events, or relaxing the body’s muscles.
This last kind of meditation is known as body scan meditation. In body scan meditation, the individual becomes aware of stress being held in different parts of the body and progressively relaxes each area, section by section.
Meditators are often encouraged to breathe in a deep, measured way while meditating. Deep breathing is important because it can help create a sense of relaxation. It may be deeply soothing because it stimulates the vagus nerve and supports the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps the body calm down. When the sympathetic nervous system is overstimulated, people may feel a sense of danger, alertness, or restlessness, making it difficult to sleep.
Many sleep meditations draw on techniques from Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra is a traditional yogic practice that is similar to, but not the same as, meditation. It has similar relaxation benefits and is often used to help calm the body’s fight-or-flight response. Because of its calming effects, Yoga Nidra is often categorized as a form of sleep meditation.
Some practitioners believe Yoga Nidra may support the body’s natural sleep rhythms, including relaxation processes connected to melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle and is sometimes taken as a natural supplement.
Meditation for sleep allows practitioners to draw on their own body’s ability to calm down, feel at ease, and prepare for rest and restoration.
What Keeps People Up at Night?
There are many factors that keep people up at night. These can be physical, such as too much light interfering with the body’s internal clock. Cigarette smoking can interfere with sleep, as can extreme temperatures, whether hot or cold. Some prescription medications, including certain antidepressants, can also keep people up at night. Dietary habits, such as drinking too much caffeine in the afternoon or consuming alcohol, can also hurt sleep quality.
While many people drink a glass of wine to help themselves fall asleep, alcohol can often result in poor sleep quality and waking up in the middle of the night dehydrated. Similarly, eating a meal that is too heavy close to bedtime can make it harder to fall asleep.
When we talk about chronic issues with sleep, the causes are often emotional and psychological in nature. Stress and anxiety are major causes of poor-quality sleep.
Some of these factors may be difficult to avoid. Work conflicts are a fact of life; some relationships may be stressful, and many people experience general health concerns or stress from the world around them. But out-of-control stress can make it difficult to sleep. Anxiety can also lead to a vicious cycle of insomnia, where people become anxious that they will not fall asleep, which then makes it even harder to sleep.
Fortunately, stress and anxiety are among the issues that meditation may help address.
Benefits of Meditation for Sleep
Meditation, including measured breathing, can stimulate the vagus nerve and support the body’s relaxation response. On a physiological level, this can help the body calm down, slow the heart rate, and move out of a state of fight-or-flight. This may help reduce stress and anxiety, making it easier to escape the cycle that contributes to insomnia.
Meditation also influences several elements of brain function. Some studies suggest that long-term meditators may experience enhanced states of slow-wave sleep, which is one of the most restful parts of the sleep cycle. In studies of Vipassana meditators, meditators of different ages experienced these benefits, while nonmeditators tended to experience lighter and more disrupted sleep with age.
Overall, meditation can lead to a state of calm and peacefulness that is conducive to deeper and better sleep. “Calming the monkey mind”—that is, taming the cycle of endless distracting thoughts that can prevent someone from being present and focused—is one of the main reasons people choose to practice meditation. The monkey mind can be particularly active before sleep, and anxious mental chatter can be especially distracting when you are trying to rest.
Meditation can help a practitioner get more restful sleep by calming both the body and mind. It may offer benefits such as:
- Supporting serotonin production, which is connected to melatonin, the hormone that helps regulate sleep
- Decreasing blood pressure
- Reducing heart rate
All of these can contribute to a sense of well-being and, consequently, better sleep.
To learn more about the benefits of meditation, check out our article, 'Top 10 Science-Based Benefits of Meditation'.
How Meditating During the Day Can Help with Sleep
Meditation’s effects can be profound, leading to a greater sense of peace and calm, better focus and mindfulness, and an improved ability to concentrate.
With this greater feeling of self-control comes better productivity, as well as a stronger sense of groundedness in the moment.
A day spent mindfully and with a sense of clarity is a day in which you are more likely to achieve your goals, leaving you with a sense of peace at night rather than the stress that contributes to insomnia. If you live with a better mood and sharper focus, it is more likely that you will not be overcome by sudden anxiety at the end of the day.
Additionally, many of the benefits mentioned above related to meditation for sleep also apply to daytime meditation. These include a reduced heart rate, lower blood pressure, and changes in certain brain regions. These benefits may accumulate over time and support better neurological health, which can also support better sleep.
Healthy blood pressure, for example, means your body does not have to work as hard to maintain its functions. High blood pressure can lead to a range of heart and brain problems. Healthy blood pressure may support better sleep, and better sleep may also help support healthy blood pressure.
Many meditators notice that one good habit tends to follow another. If you are mindful about your daily meditation practice, you may also become more mindful about the food you consume, the exercise your body needs, and the quality of sleep your body requires.
Being more fully awake and alert during the day, while also being more mindful of your body’s natural clock and rhythms, can improve both your waking hours and your sleep.
Want to learn to meditate? Check out our article 'How to Meditate'.
Other Ways to Improve Sleep
There are many common-sense tips for getting better sleep that can be easy to ignore in daily life:
- Make sure you do not spend too much time on devices or staring at screens before bedtime. Most sleep experts agree that it is far better to read or take a soothing bath than to stare at your phone. Give yourself at least half an hour to unwind before going to bed. Screens are bad for sleep partly because of the blue light that can keep your brain awake and partly because of the often-alarming news or demands on your time that can make it harder to relax.
- Make sure your bedroom is dark. Bedrooms need to feel like spaces for sleep, not work. Along with removing the TV from your bedroom, make sure any light pollution is blocked out with adequate curtains.
- Do not drink too much alcohol. As noted above, alcohol may help you fall asleep at first, but it can lead to shallower sleep and dehydration.
- Do not drink coffee or caffeinated tea in the afternoon. Caffeine is a stimulant that promotes wakefulness, which often becomes a problem just as you are trying to go to sleep. Try cutting yourself off around noon to be safe.
- Do not eat a large meal right before bed. This, too, can interfere with your sleep patterns.
- Exercise regularly. It is logical that if you are tired at the end of the day, you may find it easier to fall asleep. However, do not time your workout too close to bedtime, as some people find exercise stimulating rather than relaxing.
- Eat a balanced diet. Avoid overly salty foods, fried foods, and excess sugar. Anything that puts strain on your body may also affect your ability to get healthy sleep.
- Ask your doctor about certain medications. Like caffeine, ephedrine can be stimulating. Certain antidepressants can also affect your sleep patterns. If your doctor has prescribed these to you, they may be beneficial, but it is still worth asking about side effects and how they can be managed.
- Consider a weighted blanket. Some people find weighted blankets helpful for reducing anxiety and supporting a better night’s sleep.
Meditation and Better Sleep: Conclusions
If you're looking for help learning to meditate and get better sleep, make Sofia Health your first stop. It's a great resource for anyone looking to improve their wellness, reduce their stress, and take control of their health.
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