3. Nighttime Routines for Better Sleep

TL;DR: Falling asleep can be hard sometimes. However, there are things that like meditation, sleep aid products and blue light avoidance, that will aid in your attempt at dozing off while also offering benefits that exceed just sleep alone.

Welcome back UpRiver, biohacker.

Today we will be discussing some of the things that you can do up to 90 minutes before bed in order to increase your quality of sleep for that night.

While one or two of them may require some biohacking equipment, the vast majority of the practices you’ll read herein necessitate only your attention and your application for the practice’s results to pay off. Given that some people will prefer some practices and other people will prefer others, we will present this list in no particular order and encourage you to assemble your own sleeping strategy comprised of the practices that best fit your lifestyle and interests.

With that said, let’s jump straight into the first one on our list…

Meditation

We know, we know. Meditation is something we at UpRiver don’t seem to stop droning on about – but, for good reason (find our guide to meditation HERE). Meditation is widely and globally renowned for its ability to deliver one from stressful situations and place one in a state of relaxation, decompression, and zen. In light of this, mediation can be an extremely powerful unwinding and thus natural sleep aid.

Our recommendation: Perform a minimum of 10 minutes of meditation directly before you crawl into bed. To maximize these results, perform it in a dark room and potentially even while lying in bed. This will allow you to effortlessly transition from wakefulness, to theta state brain waves, and fall asleep easier.

Implementation as a remedy: While meditation is the bee’s knees all round, use meditation as a remedy to: a racing mind.

Second up we have:

Acupuncture Mat

Now, there is a disagreement amongst scholars, but the ancient Chinese practice of acupuncture dates back somewhere between 5000 – 7500 years.[1] We know what you’re thinking, “that’s a lot of needles!” Well luckily for you biohacker, today we are not recommending needles; instead we are only recommending thousands of spikes!

As the first thing that requires some biohacking equipment in this guide, rest assured (pun intended) that the purchasing of one of these bad boys is well worth the roughly $30 – $100 price point.

Essentially, how these work is as follows: these specially designed floor mats have several prongs sticking up from them (usually made of plastic). The user will lay the mat down on a bed or floor and lay their back onto these prongs. One may choose to start with a shirt or sweater on if they are new to this, but as one gets more accustomed to the practice over days, weeks, or even in the same session, may decide to do this shirtless.

Warning, this will be mildly uncomfortable for the first few moments, but while this may seem confusing or even counterintuitive, the slight discomfort is what we’re going for.

Now, the benefits of acupuncture mats are twofold – the first is admittedly kind of underwhelming but the second is really quite something.

Firstly, the fact that you lay on a spiked mat for some time creates quite the juxtaposition between it and how comfortable your bed will feel comparatively, which will allow you to quickly relax into your bedsheets and pass out. Secondly however, what the mat is actually doing for you is causing your body to secrete small amounts of endorphins.[2] In a nutshell, endorphins are your body’s natural pain killer; they allow your body to cope with moderate to significant amounts of physiological pain and discomfort by temporarily dampening the receptiveness of affected areas.

As a response to the uncomfortable physical stimulus the acupuncture mat introduces to a large amount of bodily surface area i.e. your entire – ideally completely exposed – back, your body and brain fight back with endorphins. The issue though, is that the body remains under mild stress, regardless of the subject’s perception of said stress. Maybe you see where this is going…

Basically, as a result of the prolonged stress on the body (stress in this sense is NOT a bad thing), your body exhausts itself. Additionally, the prolonged secretion of endorphins is also a tiring process for the body. With all this exhaustion, the body is primed for a goodnight sleep the second your head hits the pillow. Give it a shot!

Our recommendation: Perform a minimum of 20 minutes of laying down on your acupuncture mat directly prior to desired sleep time.

Implementation as a remedy: Use your acupuncture mat as a remedy to an energetic body.

Third up on today’s list is…

Blue Light Avoidance

This is a bit of a tricky one. Blue light seems to be everywhere these days as a result of technology’s ever-growing mobility, omnipresence, and propensity for addiction. Blue light though is the opposite of what we want when sleeping properly is our priority (more on blue light and it’s detrimental effects on sleep HERE).[3] Therefore, one must be diligent to remove blue light from one’s environment leading up to one’s desired rest time. To do so, here are a few approaches one might employ:

Beginner: Introduce dimming/red light saturation programs to one’s smartphone, tablet and computer. → This will allow your eyes and brain to adjust to a lighting environment more analogous to the light our ancestors would’ve been exposed to nearing sleep time.

Advanced: Turn off all screens including all devices 60 – 90 minutes prior to bedtime in order to completely remove artificial blue light from one’s sleep-conducive environment (more on optimal sleeping environment HERE).

Expert: Wear red-lensed blue blocking glasses up to 2 hours preceding desired sleep time (yes, they may say you will look stupid at night, but they cannot deny that you look will look well rested in the morning…)

Implementation as a remedy: Use bluelight avoidance nearing bedtime as a remedy for general poor sleep quality.

Gratefulness & Affirmations

This one is not so much a sleep quality or quantity enhancer, but is more so taking advantage of the opportunity bedtime presents one, each and every night. As mentioned above, roughly 15 minutes prior to sleeping (and 15 minutes post-arising), our brains are producing theta waves (more on sleep and brain waves HERE). When your brain is in theta, your brain is primed for its highest level of suggestivity.[4] By and large, this is the time where your brain can encode information, moving it from the prefrontal cortex, thalamus and hypothalamus (short term memory storage), to the hippocampus (long-term memory).

Whether or not you agree or believe in conventional modern hypnotism (again, we are talking about suggestibility here, not Hollywood’s rendition “mind-control”) this presents a huge opportunity. Namely, an opportunity to internalize desired messages, or sentiments.[5] We recommend that those messages and sentiments revolve around your personal affirmations, and a gratefulness practice (more on affirmations HERE; and more on gratefulness HERE.)

Our recommendation: Take 5 minutes prior to sleeping to write out 5 good things that happened to you that day, followed by reading your list of personal affirmations out loud to yourself.

Implementation as a remedy: we recommend using pre-bed affirmations and gratefulness practice as a remedy to general feelings of anxiety, doubt, depression, and negativity.

The fourth and final bedtime ritual we suggest is a bit of a more intermediate one. It is of course…

Breath Work

Breath work is phenomenal. Most breathwork practices rely on upping one’s intake of oxygen naturally as oxygen offers a whole host of benefits, many of which pertain to sleep.(6) Whether you practice ancient India’s Pranayama, more modern Wim Hof’s intermittent hypoxic training, or something in between, breath work is a staple in the routines of high performance people around the globe, according to renowned entrepreneur and author of the 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris.

While making a recommendation for everybody regarding which breathwork is ideal for you is difficult, suffice to say that we’ve tried many and none of them stick out as a waste of time. They each offer their respective and individualized benefits while all offering a clear improvement on sleep quality and conduciveness to actually falling asleep.

Our recommendation: Try various types of guided breathwork found in various areas of the YouTube-sphere 5 – 30 minutes prior to bed to see which one works best for you and thus which one you enjoy the most.

Implementation as a remedy: If you’re someone who usually takes a long time to fall asleep once in bed, try some type of breathwork before bed and observe how beneficial this new practice is to someone struggling with the actual process of falling asleep.

Author’s Motivation

Maybe this is just me, or maybe this is something biohackers have in common – likely the latter – but I love routines and rituals. Additionally, I love sleeping, which is something I’m positive I share with the vast majority of the global population. While I’ve never been someone personally with huge sleeping issues, my love for routines and rituals lead me to create a nighttime one. After recording my sleep for months and even years, I began to notice that my quality would increase every time I added one of the practices enumerated above.

In fact, I’ve either done or continue to do every one of the practices listed in this article. For those interested, I combine breathwork directly into meditation (15 minutes of each) before bed and I’m practically out in no longer than 60 seconds. It truly is the stuff of myths and legends. The funny thing is though, these two are free and available to everyone. With that in mind, my personal recommendation to you, the reader, is that you try all of the practices listed above and if you see value in the free ones, consider introducing the acupuncture mat, and some red-lensed glasses, to see how they supercharge your routine.

Conclusion

There are lots of things you can do to invigorate your sleeping routine. Some of which are free, others require an upfront investment. This list was presented intentionally in random order so as to encourage you to build your own routine. One that works specifically for your needs.

Depending on how much time you have in your day, you may want to put all of these practices together and even add on some extras (check out our list on Sleepytime Supplements HERE). If however, you’re short on time, try each of these one at a time and record how you felt the day after: Did you sleep well? Did it take long for you to fall asleep? Were you energized the following morning? How is your cognition through the following day? What is your mood like the following day? These are all questions to ask yourself when evaluating whether or not a practice ought to be permanently adopted into your new sleeping routine.

While the implementation of these practices may offer benefits to both your life as well as your quality of sleep in general, if there is just one or two that stick out to you the most, feel free to start your own routine that incorporates those! There is no requirement to do everything on this list, but our recommendation is that you give all of them a try, as you might be pleasantly surprised by a particular one’s efficacy. Best of luck and happy sleeping!

Note: If you live an active lifestyle or simply want your muscles to grow, sleep is an important factor. If you want to learn about developing your body in the gym, click HERE.

See you soon biohacker and as always, keep moving UpRiver.