Welcome to the Mastering Midlife Podcast where we talk about all the crazy fun things that happen when you are a midlife mama. I'm your host, Heather London, let's dig in. Okay, I am not going to lie. I am doing this podcast on getting really good sleep because last night I did not get good sleep and I find that it really, really affects me. I need a lot of really good sleep in order to be a good human being and I've known that my whole entire life.
When my kids were younger say early teens or I don't know from maybe like eight app kind of thing, they would always come to me late at night and ask me something and I created this rule. I said, guys, if you ever ask me for anything after nine o'clock, the answer will always be no. So ask me before that or ask me tomorrow because I knew that by the time nine o'clock rolled around, I was getting tired and I was grumpy and if somebody was asking me for something, I would just say no.
So I would give them the heads up. Like if you ask me after nine, the answer will be no. So your best bet is to not ask me after nine and that rule just penned out for everybody because it saved all of us a lot of heartache. I just really need good sleep. I feel like life is doable and I can live an amazing, awesome life. When I've had a good night's sleep, I don't know, are you with me on this? When I hear people tell me about how they only get five hours of sleep
a night, I'm like, how are you even functioning? Our whole body's health system is designed on getting a certain amount of sleep because there's so many magical things that happen when we sleep. Our body just heals itself, it repairs itself, it energizes itself, it processes all the things, all our subconscious brain stuff that's going on gets processed when we're sleeping.
It's just such a magical time that I want everybody to enjoy their sleep and I don't want anybody to not get a good night's sleep and have a miserable life because of it or have bad days because of it. So let's talk about how to get amazing sleep. First of all, I want you to understand your circadian rhythm. This is how your body functions off of the cues of nature and earth, this amazing planet that we live on.
So it balances and gets in sync with what's going on on the planet so that your body can function at its peak. Who knew this? Well, the circadian rhythm is based just on the energy of the earth and the sunrise and the sunset and all of these fun things and our food which is grown on the earth. So think of it this way. It is being in sync with Pachamama. That's what I call Mother Earth, Pachamama. So when you are in sync with earth and what is going on and the signals and the cues
that earth is giving you, you are going to naturally get good sleep. There's many reasons why you don't sleep. Like we've got things on our mind or we're up late watching Netflix. We're not listening to our body. Remember, if we just follow nature's cues and then listen to our body and trust our body, our body will always balance itself out and that's our life mission. The only objective and mission that we have in life is to get our body into homeostasis because when it's
in homeostasis, it heals itself. So for me, that's like my number one purpose in my is to make sure that my body is in homeostasis so it's super healthy. It's always healing itself. So there's so many external circumstances, but we can control a lot of it. I'm just going to give you a list of all the things that you can do to get good sleep. But anytime you listen to anybody who's talking about health and how to live a healthy life and how to have a healthy body in the top five
should always be sleep. If it isn't in there, then move on. Don't listen to them. But sleep is just so important and it's underrated. And if you don't know where to start, I'm going to give you a list of things that you can do to help you sleep and try them all out and see what works for you and take what works and then just leave the rest. So I talked at the beginning how important sleep
is to me and I have two children and they are just so different but so the same. One of them, my oldest and I remember when he was younger, he would require all the stories and staying in his room for hours in order for him to fall asleep. Like it was a full-time job and I would quite often wake up laying on the floor. Like I fell asleep before he did on the floor and I'd wake up in the moonlight and there I am laying on the floor. So he required a lot of effort to try to get him to
sleep and now I know why but my second child literally would put himself to sleep. We'd be downstairs doing stuff and he'd be like, okay see yeah I'm like where are you going? He's like, I'm going to bed. I'm tired. I was like that easy. I'm like what? Like this is a thing where our kids put themselves to sleep. So flash forward to them being you know adults and my youngest was
always he goes to bed. If he doesn't go to bed at a certain time like early, like now he's a teenager so it's like early as like he'll go to bed at 10 o'clock at the latest unless he goes over this friends but that's the way his system works and then he'll wake up at 7 7 30 like every single day. That's his pattern hits his natural pattern but my other son was like he stays up. He's like a vampire. He stays up at night. So when he was little he was hard to get to go to sleep and then
through his teen years he would just be a night owl. He would do his best work at night because that's what his body was telling him and then he would sleep sleep in and miss half the day and now that he's older now that he's almost 21 and he's super duper into his health balancing his health creating the healthiest body possible for himself. Now he knows that sleep is important and he's and he's really trying to get into the habit of having a good pattern of sleeping.
But the reason why he has trouble sleeping is because he's got a super big powerful brain and this super big powerful brain of his it's different than everybody else is it functions differently but it never wants to shut off. That's the thing is his brain always is going and so it makes it really hard to sleep when your brain is always like giving you all these ideas and
telling you all these things. So for him he has to make a really big effort in order to set up a system that works for his brain to be able to shut down when it's time to go to sleep and he's figured that out. So if he consciously puts effort into it then he can get on a regular sleep pattern and that's the best thing you could ever possibly do even when your brain is wanting you to stay up all night like it's just unnatural and so he functions better when he gets into that
pattern but it's work for him. It's like effortless for myself and for Santos to stick to our sleep pattern and for me I know when I go to bed and don't fall asleep before 10, 15 if I miss that time that I'm going to be up struggling to go to sleep and the reason I would miss that time
is because I would be watching Netflix or watching a show in bed. It's a bad habit that I've started and I've been doing it for a while and if I want to get good sleep I want to watch TV before I go to bed not in my bed and then at 10 o'clock stop because that's one of the things we don't want
blue light in our eyes after 10 o'clock but for me if I miss that it's like a cutoff it's a curfew 10, 15 if I'm watching TV at 10, 15 or later than 10, 15 I know I won't be able to go to sleep then I wonder why did I do that to myself why did I stay up and watch nonsense television and now I
can't sleep so I'm aware of this and if I want to get good sleep then I just don't do that and if I do stay up past that then I want to do some work on myself and go like why would I do that to myself why would I consciously make it harder for myself to get some sleep it's the same as if I
junk food right if I know that it's not good for me but I eat it anyway I want to wonder like why did I just do that and it always comes back to a thought remember our thoughts create our results what was I just thinking that caused me to eat the food that I know is unhealthy for me
what was I just thinking that caused me to stay up later watching nonsense television and it's just to my to numb the mind but I want to do my work around it and then I can change it and create a new habit so that's kind of the overall perspective of how important sleep is and how different
everybody is and why we can't go to sleep and how our brains work so let's get into some solutions about what we can do now remember I'm gonna throw out these ideas and you can try them take what works and just leave the rest first of all magnesium it in the evening is a fantastic
way to relax and get some sleep any night where I feel like I might not be able to go to sleep right away I will drop some magnesium like no problem because a lot of us are actually deficient in magnesium but if you take magnesium just before you go to bed it helps to dilate your blood
vessels so it helps to relax you and you can feel it happen if you allow just to sink into it I don't do it every night I only do it on the nights when I feel like my brain is is extra wired or fired up but like I said before most of us are deficient in magnesium
and it is not a problem to have that before you go to bed to help yourself sleep that's my that's the only supplement that I would recommend another reason why it's hard for us to sleep is because of we can't shut our brain now that's what I was talking about with BNX is like just ideas
ideas and thoughts and thoughts and thoughts so what you want to do if this is you is you want to get a journal or just a piece of paper and before you go to bed you want to just write down everything that's on your brain all the stuff that's coming up and just put it down on this piece of paper
it doesn't have to be a story or in in sentence form it could be sheer gibberish it doesn't matter just get it out of your brain and onto the paper it could even be drawings it could be scribblings it could be sketches it could be random words full sentences full stories it doesn't matter
just get it out of your brain and then put it on the piece of paper or in the in the journal and go like okay now here it is and I'm going to put it on my nightstand and let go of it for tonight and if tomorrow I want to think about it again not a problem I'll pick it up and think about it
again or I'll just leave it but for tonight there it goes and it's out of my brain this one is really powerful when you have that brain that just doesn't shut down another thing you can do that most people don't and I do because my sleep is so important to me create the optimal
space for you to sleep so you want your room to be dark no lights I know I'm a light sleeper so if any light sneaks in it keeps me awake I'm sensitive to light so if my kids go out and I go to bed and they come home and don't turn off the outside light it shines in my room not a lot but it
just I'm aware of it somehow I have this awareness that there's this light and it wakes me up so create a dark room and you also want your room to be cool so you want your body temperature to drop to get optimal sleep that's what it's designed to do so a nice cool dark
room quiet dark room those are optimal sleep conditions and that will create optimal sleep another thing is a fabulous sleep routine so this is what I was talking about earlier with my kids you want to go to bed and wake up around the same time every day and this creates a habit and then once we get into a habit you know it that's like for your body your body just does it on its own it's like brushing your teeth you never are thinking about how do I brush my teeth because you do it so often
you just brush your teeth so get into that same time zone and just make it a pattern make it a make it a priority and you are going to get such good sleep girlfriend trust me and then with the circadian rhythm remember tuning ourselves to the earth and what's going on we want to make sure that
when at night when the sun goes down we want to get that deep deep sunlight in our eyes remember we never want to stare directly at the sun but even if the sun isn't out and you can't see this if it's cloudy you still want to get that light in your eyes because that's triggering the whole
all the patterns in your body to say hey it's nighttime let's relax and it releases the melatonin in your body which is another sleep hormone but the light does that you got to get that light in your eyes and then the same thing in the morning when you wake up you got to get that sunrise light
in your eyes that's super bright light and again if it's a cloudy day that's okay get the ambient light in your eyes and then that signals the cortisol which is your wake up hormone and this is the circadian rhythm based on the sunrise and the sunset so your sleep is based on what the earth
is doing it is so powerful something you don't want to do is you don't want to eat before you go to bed because now your body is digesting food instead of healing itself when you sleep that's the optimal time for your body to actually heal itself because it's not doing anything
else but if you ate food before you went to bed now your body is digesting food but I'm telling you when you go to sleep that's your body processes all of the subconscious stuff that's going on it works it all out it heals all the things that are going on in your body it's just a restorative
time so don't eat before you go to bed and allow your body to heal itself you want to stay away from toxic foods in general because when you eat those foods your body has to fight it and heal it and fix it and it does that when it's sleeping but just in general to have a healthy body to allow
yourself to go to sleep stay away from the toxic foods like sugars because these types of chemicals or the smoking alcohol drugs all of these types of chemicals disrupt your circadian rhythm it wreaks havoc on your system on your body and it throws your sleep patterns out so ditch all of
those toxic foods now I am going to give you a really cool technique to do if you if all of this fails and you can't sleep but here's another one before I give you that one because it's going to take a couple minutes for them here's a spot where you can press but our bodies are based on
radians and this spot right here in traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture here's a pressure point in between your eyebrows you can just press on this this helps you to relax so if at night I can't sleep I'll do this I'll just press on it and go try to go back to sleep we're all tap on it
right between the eyebrows and just breathe deeply focus on your breath that's another thing you can do is really focus on your breath if you can't sleep just breathe in as deep as you can for as long as you can and then exhale twice as long just focusing on that will help you to relax
and go to sleep so deep deep deep concentrated breathing will help you to go to go to sleep as well and at the end of this podcast I am going to teach you how to do the New York self hypnosis this one is shortened to the point and I'm going to share it at the end of this podcast and it works
every single time if everything else fails this will work for sure actually I always taught this one by Melissa Tears I got to give her credit because she's one of my mentors and she is from New York and she's like nobody got time for a long hypnosis or in a self hypnosis or I don't got time
for this so let's make it short and sweet and this is about two minutes and if you can't do it you can while you're laying in bed you can do the self hypnosis and just put yourself to sleep it's amazing this is what I do all the time and this is this one works a hundred percent of the time
you can use this as a hypnosis for other things but for today I'll just teach you how to use it to help you get some sleep so you can get your beauty rest that's another reason why we want our sleep because it's beauty rest it just helps us look and feel so beautiful and everything is
better when we get our rest so there are many ways to set yourself up for an amazing sleep and when you get good sleep everybody benefits your family benefits but the rest of your life will benefit greatly when you are a well-rested happy mama cita I am inviting you to become someone
who takes their health and happiness into their own hands and creates a magical and beautiful life for yourself because you are the answer my friend thank you for listening always love yourself first and keep listening for the New York self hypnosis okay so this is the New York
self hypnosis you can use this for many things in your life but today I'm going to teach you how to use it for falling to sleep so we're going to assume that you are in bed and you can't sleep so laying in your bed just notice your body in your bed and find a focal point on the ceiling and
just look at it soften your gaze and then slowly close your eyes imagine a wave of relaxation moving down your whole body take nice deep breaths think of the number 10 open your eyes close your eyes and then imagine the number 10 slowly fading away some people imagine it growing smaller into the
distance and others imagine it just slowly dissolving into nothingness you do a way that works for you you're feeling very relaxed as the number 10 slowly melts away and disappears open your eyes quickly close your eyes nine imagine another wave of relaxation washing over you as the number nine
feeds out of your mind in whatever way feels good for you open your eyes close your eyes eight another wave imagine that wave of comfort sinking in and the number just fading into nothingness you open your eyes and you close your eyes seven and it's that simple imagine another wave of
comfort sinking in number seven fading away that's all you have to do with each number you'll have a wave of relaxation and as the number fades you'll get more and more comfortable open your eyes close your eyes six and another wave and the number just slowly fades away and you open your eyes and
you close your eyes five and another wave of relaxation a wave of comfort sinking in you're feeling more relaxed more tired and the number just fades away and you open your eyes and you close your eyes four even more comfort sinking in and another wave and you open your eyes and you close
your eyes three and another wave as the comfort just sinks in and the number slowly fades away and you open your eyes and you close your eyes two and another wave of relaxation just washes over you as the number fades away we'll do one more open your eyes close your eyes and one and really
let that relaxation settle in sending that comfort all the way down to the bottoms of your feet you're so relaxed you feel so sleepy and tired and even in this lightly relaxed state your mind has more power than you think let me show you how cool it is that you can think a suggestion to yourself
and even your body believes you so take a moment and focus on your legs and imagine those legs are so full of relaxation that they're heavy what would it feel like if they were heavy like cement more importantly because this is self-helpnosis think this suggestion in your mind to yourself
think my legs are so heavy when you think is a suggestion to yourself when you're in this open receptive state when you say to yourself my legs are so heavy take a moment to notice that your body believes you notice the heaviness in your legs some people notice that heaviness is even
more so when they try to lift their legs they can't just understand how heavy your legs are try to lift them notice how heavy they are they feel so heavy i just want to show you how powerful a state that you are in your legs are heavy your body is so relaxed you feel like you're fading off into a delicious sleep just drifting off into sleep where the dreams come and go and you feel so relaxed and comfortable and as you listen to my voice fading off you drift off into a deep comfortable sleep