Sleep meditation can be a great way to improve your sleep quality and reduce insomnia. A study of people with insomnia reported a reduction in time spent awake, psychological arousal, and overall severity of symptoms.
Older adults
in particular can benefit from sleep meditation, especially during the current pandemic when many are struggling with sleep difficulties. In this article, we'll explore the science behind sleep meditation and how it can help you get a better night's rest. If you fall asleep during a guided meditation or visualization, your brain may still listen, so you may still notice some benefits.However, it will be more effective if you stay fully awake. Meditation can help you sleep better by calming the mind and body and promoting inner peace. When done before bedtime, it can reduce insomnia and other sleep problems. Healthy sleep has more to do with the quality of rest than the number of hours. Sleep meditations help create the internal conditions necessary for a truly restful night.
By settling the mind, we can rest the body and make it easier to relax and let go. The best guided sleep meditations involve following an audio guide that can be played on headphones or a small speaker by the bed. Science has yet to identify what types of meditation can help with what specific problems patients face, but experts believe that this knowledge will be the next frontier in clinical meditation studies. Yoga nidra, or yoga for sleep, is a popular form of meditation for those struggling to rest at night. The course trains the mind for long-term sustainable change; individual meditation is a specific exercise to send you to sleep. Transcendental meditation is a popular branch of meditation based on the techniques of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
It is common for people to practice sleep meditation with a guided audio track, usually with a 45- to 50-minute session CD. Part of learning and growing with a meditation practice is figuring out how to increase and direct your energy towards guided meditation in a relaxed, non-physical way. Guided sleep meditation is a method to help you let go of worrying thoughts and relax your body before bedtime. It can be a game-changer for those who have trouble falling asleep. A guided meditation typical of sleep will cause you to redirect your attention from your worried thoughts to your body through what is called a body scan. Let's take a look at the specific meditation techniques that usually work well for sleep and how to do each of them.
