Get Better REM Sleep

I am running a little bit late because I wanted that extra time to trial out what I discovered about getting better REM sleep.

Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here, and let's get started in the rest of the podcast.

there is so much here. We could talk for hours about it, which is not what's going to be happening here. So I plan on having this be 30 minutes in length, just so you know what you're getting into.

But this will, I promise, if you apply it, make a huge difference in your life.

Let's start off. We all know, or we should know at this point in time, that sleep is so important. It is that opportunity for us to let our brain reprocess. It is our chance to ha- through dreams, reprocess memories, to give them maybe a lighter meaning if they are memories that are traumatic.

If you are struggling through this, I highly recommend seeing a therapist if sleep is becoming something that is a little more scary for you because you're reliving traumatic memories. I had to do this for myself, and it made a huge difference to go through trauma therapy. EMDR was huge for me Sleep is a chance where we can gain more muscle. If we are weightlifting and we're not getting enough sleep, you will not have as great of gains if you aren't getting enough sleep. If you are highly stressed, you will perpetuate the cycle if you are not getting enough sleep. So sleep, the amount of sleep can vary from person to person.

Studies are showing that women need more sleep than men. So usually it's about nine hours is really good for women. Quality of sleep matters. I recently gave a kind of a lesson on this for another coach, and, we had a great conversation around this, and it centered around this book called Why We Sleep, and it is written by Dr.

Matthew Walker, and it is an intense read. It's very research-based. His whole career is based off of this. He is a professor, so a lot there. And It's very dense. It's not for everybody. If this is something that you really wanna dive into yourself, it's hugely important. Sleep is important for children.

It helps with growth. Sleep is great, right?

So let's dive into how do we optimize our sleep? What can we do? For some people, exercise at night helps them sleep better. For other people, it makes sleep harder. Maybe it's the type of exercise. So let's take a moment to step back and think about when was the last time you woke up feeling like, "I really got enough sleep and I am highly energized"?

Even if it's been a long time, what was going on in your life that led to having a good night's sleep or that you think led to it? Let's make that mental list together. What was your stress load like? Did you do any kind of physical activity? What was your bedroom environment like? Was it darker, lighter than normal?

Were you perhaps on vacation or were you home? What was the bed like? Softer, firmer? What was the temperature in the room like?

Studies show that a cooler room helps you sleep better. And this could be something to think about if you are headed towards perimenopause and menopause

What were your clothes like, if you were wearing any clothes? Your pajamas, if you were wearing pajamas. What was the bedding material like? Think about those things, 'cause this will help you optimize your sleep.

And with that in mind, I want to share with you something that I have been working with myself, and need you to try all out with me because it has been amazing and I'm only a few nights into it.

So we live in the world of AI, I use ChatGPT. I'm sure you can use anything, Claude, whatever. And I had help from my children because it's summertime, and, I had them take pictures of me in my sleep position. I was wearing tighter clothing so that in the picture you could... it was easier to tell where my spine was, my spine alignment.

So if you want to copy this, do the same thing and take a picture of yourself, if you happen to be a side sleeper like me, from the front side and the back side. If you're a back sleeper, it would be helpful to take a side shot of you. Same with if you're a stomach sleeper. Take a sli- side shot and then above the bed shot.

So the reason why this was helpful is I was in a car accident a year and a half ago. I've done physical therapy, I've done acupuncture, I've done reflexology. I've done a lot. Massages, a lot. And I am now working with a physical therapist who works with the fascia. I've seen a lot of improvement, but I'm starting to plateau in my healing.

So for me, it's okay, what else can I add in? I started changing my workout routines, what stretches I can do, things like this, and along the way I'm realizing that I am hypermobile, which means I have more flexibility in different areas of my body, which is leading to less flexibility in other areas. And I think that is why it's taking me so long to heal in my neck.

Thinking about sleep, it's a third of our lives that we are spent sleeping, if we're getting enough sleep. So I've been trying to optimize the position that I'm sleeping in to help with my spine, especially because I roll around a little bit. I'm a side sleeper, so I sleep from one side, on my back for a little bit, and then the other side.

The goal is to not be moving around, because I'm in that deep of a sleep. So how do I do this? I've already upgraded my bed, I've upgraded the bedding, I've upgraded my pillow, all of this stuff. What's next? My body pillow feels thick enough in between my arms, but it feels too thick for my hips and my knees and my ankles.

I wanted to let you know that there are some amazing things happening behind the scenes here that I'm very excited about. The first one is I am opening my podcast up for sponsorships, so if you are an aligned brand with wellness, reach out to me. You can find me wellnessineveryseason.com/podcast/sponsor.

I also have something going on for you listeners. If you've been listening for a while, I interview people who are aligned with wellness, and they talk about the healing modalities and different modalities that they do, but it is in a very descriptive sense. I am making it so that you have the chance to experience it during a recorded episode, and other people get to experience it alongside you so that we can really see how it works.

Instead of just this zoomed-out experience, we get to really zoom in and experience it. So you can find out more about that at wellnessineveryseason.com/listenerwellnessguest.

My pillow feels comfortable for some of my neck, but not all of my neck. So I went into AI and I said these things, and then I also added pictures. And had to go back and forth. It took a couple hours, so there has to be some patience here. And if you want help working through this, I am happy to help you with this because it was so fun.

In the end, I have my youngest child's receiving blanket. It's nice and soft. I started out with hand towels, and I slept on it, but it was material-wise uncomfortable. So it's a really soft feely kind of blanket, and I have it rolled up. And I have a special ergonomical neck pillow or head pillow, but it was not doing enough for my neck.

So I have now the blanket is rolled up and it's under my neck, so it's giving my neck enough support. And I had to do several pictures of this and be very, a little OCD and do, like, one area at a time. So I have my neck aligned. And then next was working with the body pillow and realizing I actually need a little more fluff for my shoulders because I have broader shoulders.

Goes with my height. I need that for my shoulders, especially because I have some shoulder pain. I made the mistake of carrying all four of my kids on one side, so I have this lovely knot that tends to move around in my shoulder blade area. It's made a huge difference there. And then next it was if I'm not using a body pillow, maybe they make a tapered one.

It's one of those we tend to do things that are one size fits all and they don't work well, right? What I did was realizing if I don't sleep with my body pillow and I sleep with two smaller pillows, everything else feels comfortable except my waist. I have a tapered waist naturally. So we, ChatGPT and I, like I said, you can use any version of AI, we went back and forth and what worked best for me was folding up into a triangle, but not a really deep triangle, is when...

putting that right in my waist area gives me enough support, but not too much because if I have too much support, then it hurts my ribs, and I have long ribs, right? That one size fits all doesn't work idea. And then using a thinner pillow in a different position than I ever would've thought of in between my knees and letting my ankles hang.

It has made my sleep so much better to the point where my body's like, "Yes, and more please." So how does this apply to you? Do you wake up uncomfortable? Is your body waking you up because of pain? Are you rolling around because you are uncomfortable?

So think about that. Do you wake up with pain? What I found is this is one of the best places to start in your pain management because your job is literally to become as loose and flexible as possible because you're sleeping. Your body naturally does that. It loses that muscle tone with sleep, like you're supposed to.

I forget the term for that, but think, this sounds very morbid, but think dead body, right? When a body is first deceased, how everything just becomes loose and kind of floppy. So your body's supposed to be doing that when you're sleeping Why not work on your body alignment and ergonomics right here?

One of the easiest places to start rather than maybe your desk or your car, which we'll totally have some episodes on that, 'cause I've worked on my desk and the next one that I wanna work on is my car, and have the perfect setting, because I can save the setting in my car. And maybe I need to add in some things.

Especially since my car accident, I do not feel like my headrest is comfortable. I don't know what I'm gonna be able to do about that, so we'll come back to that. What feels the most uncomfortable when you are first getting into bed and you're trying to be comfortable? What needs to change?

The thing is, it might not be you need to get a new mattress. It might be. Who knows? I don't know how old your mattress is. You might have at least a, a guesstimate, an idea. But maybe it's doing a rolled towel in a specific part of your body. You don't need to go out and buy the things is the point. You can start with taking pictures, uploading them into AI.

What I did is I cut a lot of areas out in the picture so it wasn't seeing what the rest of my room looked like. You can even, cut off your face, so it doesn't need to be a lot of personalized information out there. It can be very secure still And if you're not ready to do the AI thing, just get curious.

What can you do to better your body posture and to make sure that you're not, if you're on your side, leaning too far forward or leaning too far back, or if you lay on your stomach, you're not putting too much pressure on your neck or putting too much pressure on your breasts, or is your lower back hurting when you're on your stomach?

When you're on your back, are you in a position that is making you more prone to snoring? Sleep apnea, if you have it and you are not doing anything about it, it shortens your life by quite a bit. It's actually shocking. This is one way, if you're not ready to do anything profound about your sleep apnea, maybe start here and then take the next step to seeing a professional or getting the machine Alignment makes a huge difference in your breathing airway, in how hard your heart is pumping, in so many ways.

But my focus for myself was posture because I am sick of living in daily pain, and my pain moves around throughout the day. It's very frustrating. And this has made a huge difference for me.

Let me tell you some other things that have made a huge difference for me. I went through, and you can use black electrical tape or you can buy little stickers that are specifically for this, but how many of our electronic devices have little lights on, cute little lights to let us know that they're plugged in and working?

Go through your room at night and see how much light each of those stupid little things emit. Even your power strip emits quite a bit of light just by that one little red button that shows you that it's on. I went through and I blacked out all of that, and that made a huge difference in my sleep a year ago.

Huge difference. The other thing is think about how much screen time you have right before going to sleep, and how soon do you turn it off before you go to bed. I am a huge reader, and I enjoy using my iPad to read. That thing emits quite a bit of light even when I turn it way down, and I've noticed a difference in my sleep when I unplug from that sooner

I've noticed that I sleep better when I take a bath, but if I do it right before bed and I soak for too long, I have to get up in the middle of the night to pee. That affects my sleep. So think about those things, and do some self-reflection of what impacts my sleep for good and for bad, and what can I do to make it better?

The idea behind this whole episode is, this is not a one-size-fits-all. So what would work better for you? For some people, they need a sound machine if you have one, take a minute to ask yourself, is it turned up too loud or is it too quiet? My children love sleeping with a sound machine, and my daughter in particular, she decided to move it close to her head, and I had to keep cranking that thing down 'cause it was way too loud.

There's no way she's getting the right REM cycle with that. And I started turning down the brightness on their sleep machines that they have, and it's-- I've noticed a difference for them.

So we've talked about light that's emitted in your room. Another thing to think about is, your air quality There, are smart beds that can gauge that.

Another way to gauge that is just getting an air purifier and seeing does it turn on more. Like, don't put it in sleep mode to start with. It will affect your sleep a little bit. But I've noticed that ours would crank up during our deep sleep period because the air quality would go down. So now we have it run constantly and on sleep mode, and because it's running consistently, it's made a huge difference, and we've been able to see it through our smart bed, the difference that it makes.

Do you sleep with an animal? I noticed that my sleep went down since we got a cat, and, I had to figure out how to adjust to that because she helps me fall asleep faster 'cause she'll come up and purr, and that's really great somatically for me. But it's where does she sleep on our bed so that I can roll over and I don't knock her off the bed?

That happened once. And she's the little baby kitten, so I felt terrible and had to... I woke up and quickly put her back on the bed. But adjusting where is she sleeping in relation to me. And there are studies that overall you don't sleep as well if you sleep with animals in the bed, so that is something to think about.

I know that we had dogs sleeping in our bed a lifetime ago, and our sleep quality went down with them sleeping in bed with us, especially because my husband has longer legs, and he could kick the dog off of the bed, and then she'd come up to my side. And she would slowly creep into my area, and then I would try to kick her off, and she would go down to the area where I could not quite reach, and then she'd slowly creep up again while I was trying to sleep.

So frustrating, and it negatively impacted my sleep. So another thing to think about is- Alcohol and sleep. There are studies that it negatively impacts your sleep. It can make you sleepy, but it affects your REM cycle, and the REM cycle matters because this is where your body is doing a lot of processing.

And think of mental health and physical health for this. Think about timing. Some people are naturally night owls, and some think they are when they aren't naturally because technology can make us feel like we are night owls

This is where you really need to do some reflection or work with somebody who is a sleep coach or a wellness coach who has done enough research and has worked in this within themselves and other people

Spend time thinking about what positively impacts my sleep and negatively impacts my sleep is really the whole message of this. And maybe do I need to stretch before I go to bed, and what stretches do I need? And know that day by day, what you need will change stretching wise. Maybe it's more your lower back today, and tomorrow it's more your shoulders or it's more your hips Another thing that negatively impacts your sleep, and I complain about it every six months, is daylight savings.

Did you know the amount of car accidents goes up every six months during daylight savings? Amazing

The other thing to think about is when was your last meal before you went to bed? And for some people, how spicy was that meal? Those things can negatively impact your sleep. The general rule is don't eat within two hours of going to bed because your body will be too busy trying to process the food, so it's not able to process the sleep part of things

the real thing with all of this is learning that mindfulness and connecting with yourself enough that this doesn't need to feel like something that's super difficult if you are taking that time to check in with yourself. Did I sleep well last night? Why or why not? And give yourself that space. And ask yourself, "What else?"

a couple times to get a little bit deeper. Because you know the answers, you just aren't taking the time to slow down to listen to the answers. That is the biggest thing that I have learned from coaching, is that we all know the answers, but we're not slowing down. We live in such a society that is go, go, go That we rely on apps, everything and everybody else, when we have the knowledge within ourselves.

So try different things out. See what works for you. Come back to me if you would like.

And know that your sleep is absolutely impor- important, and it is not one of those, like an old boyfriend used to say, "You're gonna- you'll sleep when you're dead," because studies are showing that your amount and quality of sleep is related to dementia, is related to Alzheimer's, and it is related to your longevity, how long you live.

If you want to increase your likelihood of having a long, amazing life, focus on your sleep. If you want to look better, look younger, focus on your sleep. If you want to function better, have more creativity in your life, focus on your sleep. If you wanna reduce your risk for Alzheimer's and dementia, focus on your sleep.

There is a caveat to this. That whole, if you've ever heard the saying, "Moderation in all things," there... You can negatively impact your sleep by focusing on it too much. Isn't that crazy to think about? If you are so obsessed with... I'm sure all of us have been here. This is why I don't like to have a alarm clock in my room, because I will be focusing on what time it is and, "Okay, I need to hurry up and go to sleep."

My eye's open, I'm seeing the time change again. "Now I need to hurry up and go to sleep." You can be focused too much on sleep. So if that is the case, maybe it's focusing on your rest and knowing that the rest will fall into place.

Focus on yourself and how you are feeling. If it makes it easier for you to start to gauge, you can use an app For me, I noticed that I can't sleep with my watch Even having it in sleep mode, when I roll over, it would get stuck in the sheets, or it would get stuck when I try to put it underneath my pillow, my wrist underneath my pillow.

Or the dial would be pressed on the side from the bedding, especially winter bedding. I like a little heavier in the winter, and it would light up right in my face. Very annoying My husband can, he sleeps better with his on and he can track it. Whatever floats your boat idea The point in all this, sleep is absolutely important, and it is personal.

The amount of sleep that you need will be different than somebody else Another thing to consider if you are trying to have an overhaul on your sleep and you want to change your sleep schedule. For me personally, I have a time of the month where I need deeper sleep and more sleep, and it's natural.

I've noticed my rhythm. Everybody has a rhythm. For me, it is around my period, the day that it would normally be starting. That is when my body craves more sleep, and that is when I can reset my sleep if I've noticed that it's been starting to trend later, and I can go to bed early, I get a great night's sleep, and then I can consistently do it for the rest of the month.

So pay attention to that. Do you have a time of month when your body craves deeper sleep? And it doesn't matter what time you go to sleep, your body is just ready to be in total unplug mode. That is the best time for you to capitalize and really redo your sleep time, what time you are going to bed and waking up.

Mindfulness. Tune in with yourself. What's going on with me right now? If you're really moody, what was my sleep like? There's so many questions you can ask yourself.

And I hope you find this helpful. I hope you enjoy being a little more creative in knowing that you don't have to go out and get a new bed and brand new pillows.

There are things that you can tweak that you already have at home to make life better for yourself. See you in the next episode

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for.

As part of the legal language, I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health. That is what I am leaning on for this. This is general advice, take it as such. See you in the next episode.