MP3 Stress Reducers to help with curing insomnia

Cures for Insomnia include

• Relaxation
  The proven solution to sleep problems is relaxation.
• Ritual
  Getting in the mood to go to sleep.
  Making the transition from wake-time to sleep-time by relaxing.
  Cultivating the habit of sleep.
• Routine
  What the body wants is rhythm and regularity -
  Going to bed and getting up at the same time.

Insomnia Remedies

Other tips for curing insomnia and helping with difficulty falling asleep are listed below:-

• Restful colours on the bedroom wall
• A bedroom dedicated to sleep - divide it into a sanctuary area and storage area if short of space?
• A good mattress
• Inviting and comfortable bedclothes in restful colours
• The right duvet/covers for the season - cool enough
• A quiet, cool, dark and well-aired bedroom
• Sticking to a regular sleeping pattern for at least a month. Set the alarm and get up as soon as it goes off, even if you have not slept well. Stick to it even at weekends. It helps to anchor your body clock to these times
• Develop a thirty minute wind down ritual
• Have a 15 minute warm bath before bedtime - it helps to drop your core temperature and thereby induce sleep
• Get into bed when you are physically beginning to drop off to sleep
• An evening meal that is carbohydrate rich makes you sleepy - it triggers the hormone serotonin, which makes you sleepy

• If you get the munchies close to bed time, again, eat a light snack of carbohydrates such as bread and cereal at least 30 minutes before you go to bed
• Drink plenty of water during the day. Dehydration puts the body under stress and stress is a key reason why people find it hard to get to sleep
• Drink relaxing herbal teas like camomile, valerian, lemon verbena and marjoram, which are sedative or relaxing. (Note: valerian does the opposite for about 1 in 20 people!). Go easy on quantity to avoid bathroom visits!
• Gentle stretching or yoga can be relaxing during your sleep preparation time
• More vigorous exercise 5 to 6 hours before bedtime may help you to sleep more soundly - even a brisk 20 minute walk

• Treat yourself as your own best friend and build in more down-time during the day, so your brain isn't so active at night - read, socialise, exercise, have a massage or an aromatherapy session
• Try a hop filled pillow as an aid to relaxation or a few drops of lavender oil on your pillow
• Unclutter your mind - write your worries down and leave them till the morning
• Use a breathing and relaxation technique such as those taught on this course

Insomnia Cures

You can use these at any time to bring about a relaxed state. Remember, mind and body are one, so a relaxed body leads to a relaxed mind. Use them as part of your ritual for getting you in the mood to sleep. The first can be very helpful to aid relaxation if you wake at night.

Breathing & relaxation and stress reducers

• Make yourself comfortable - sitting or lying
• Allow your eyes to close
• Tongue resting behind your top teeth
• Go into 5/6 breathing (5 counts in & then 6 counts out) - or your variation on it
• Body scan and release of tension
• 5/6 breathing
• Eyelids - soften the muscles around your eyes and send a wave of relaxation from eyelids down through your body
• 5/6 breathing
• CALM - sense letters' shape - colour - texture - background music - CALM said to yourself on each out breath
• Relax into the alpha state - the pre-sleep state

Progressive relaxation

Work your way up from your feet to your face tensing and relaxing each muscle group at a time. Finally tense and relax your whole body. This will induce the relaxation needed for sleep.

Affirmations

While in this pre-sleep state, say these affirmations to yourself. Say them as though you mean them!

1. I sleep easily at night
2. I feel deeply relaxed
3. I feel calm and centred
4. I love to sleep at night

Why sleep?

Sleep is about getting rid of the previous day's mental rubbish - like sorting and clearing the files on a computer. It's essential for maintaining our cognitive abilities - speech, memory, creative and flexible thinking.

Nerve connections built up in the brain during a busy day are pruned back during the night in an attempt to keep the mind from overloading on junk information.

What happens when we sleep?

The sleep pattern is a recurring cycle of 90 to 110 minutes.

It consists of two types of sleep: non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and REM sleep.

Non-REM sleep

Non-REM sleep has four stages:

Stage one: Light Sleep

During the first stage of sleep, we're half awake and half asleep. Our muscle activity slows down and slight twitching may occur. We can be awakened easily at this stage.

Stage two: True Sleep

Within ten minutes of light sleep we enter stage two, which lasts around 20 minutes. The breathing pattern and heart rate start to slow down. This period accounts for the largest part of human sleep.

Stages three and four: Deep Sleep

During stage three, the brain begins to produce delta waves, a type of wave that is large and slow. Breathing and heart rate are at their lowest levels.

Stage four is characterised by rhythmic breathing and limited muscle activity. If we are awakened during deep sleep we do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes after waking up.

REM Sleep

The first rapid eye movement period usually begins about 70 to 90 minutes after we fall asleep. We have around three to five REM episodes a night

Although we are not conscious, the brain is very active - often more so than when we are awake. This is the period when most dreams occur. Our eyes dart around (hence the name), our breathing rate and blood pressure rise. However, our bodies are effectively paralysed, said to be nature's way of preventing us from acting out our dreams.

After REM sleep, the whole cycle begins again.

How much sleep do we require?

There is no set amount of time that everyone needs. It varies from person to person. Jim Horne from Loughborough University's Sleep Research Centre has a simple answer: "The amount of sleep we require is what we need not to be sleepy in the daytime."

How about napping?

A 15 minute nap when you're tired can be a very effective way of staying alert throughout the day. Avoid napping for longer than 20 minutes, because after that you will enter deep sleep and feel even worse when you wake up.

You could try the continental approach. It seems that the body's natural rhythm favours a sleep between 2.00pm and 5.00pm. Traditionally in southern Europe their rhythm has been to get up early, go to bed late and have a siesta in the afternoon.

Other facts about sleep

• Feelings of sleepiness are triggered by the hormone melatonin produced by the pineal gland. Just before you fall asleep, melatonin triggers a drop in your core temperature and blood pressure.

• Even after only 4 hours the brain has gained many of the important benefits of sleep.

• Muscles don't need sleep. They just need to relax.

Our sleep is affected by our patterns of eating, drinking, thinking, feeling, behaving and by the environment we create to sleep in.

Electrical work has closed the recording studio and the planned sleep session recording has been delayed until January 2010 - we are sorry for any inconvenience.

We have deliberately chosen stress management as our first offering. There is no doubt that stress is a big factor in many people's lives and starting to eleviate the symptoms of stress is a great place to start.

In the coming weeks we will be bringing three further downloads to you starting with Sleep which will be available before Christmas. In January 2010 there will be a new offering to help improve self-esteem, and in February this first collection will be completed with the addition of our download for confidence.

Stress is a common word in common-day work and personal life - but how do you know if you're stressed?

Individual/Subjective experience

• Popularised in 1950’s by Dr. Hans Selye – what happens when animals are put under extreme conditions
• It became an umbrella term to describe all the various pressures of life
• Stressors (demand) are the stimulus or outside events that produce the stress response (this can also be an internal event or feeling)
• Stress is the ‘non specific response of the organism (the mind & body) to any pressure or demand’.
• The organism undergoes a generalised physical response in its efforts to adapt to demands and pressures it (e.g. fight or flight).
• Disease (DIS – EASE) can result from failed attempts to adapt to stressful conditions.
• THEREFORE …it is not the potential stressor itself but how we perceive it and then how we handle it that determines the stress levels.
• Small things and unwanted demands can cause stress (e.g. phone call on holiday!)
• Psychological factors are an important part of our response to physical stressors.
• Richard Lazarus on psychological stress - “a particular relationship between the person and his environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her wellbeing”.
• Therefore those with greater resources (coping strategies) will deal more effectively with stress/demand.
• Resources are external ~ family, friends and group support and internal~ beliefs about how we handle adversity, ‘so what’ attitude, religious beliefs etc…

The effects of stress

• The effects include: physical, emotional, on thinking, on behaviour, on relationships.
• It is important, therefore, to recognise signs of stress in self and others.
• Equally important is a supportive environment where people notice others’ stress and give help and support.
• Faintness, dizziness, headaches
• Poor concentration, anger, short fuse. Poor sleep, poor diet, alcohol, drugs etc.
• Accident prone, anxious, depressed, mental health issues, fatigue, manic, psychosomatic diseases, relationship problems and many more.

The causes of stress

Stress can be the result of:

• personal factors - what we believe, think feel and do, loss, life events, death, divorce etc etc.
• and/or interpersonal and organisational factors - colleague interactions and relationships, working conditions, relationships with colleagues, lack of recognition, changing role, ambiguous role expectations, personality clashes, ‘presenteeism’ etc.

Stress Prevention

• Physical Fitness
• Diet
• Awareness of Values
• Self Awareness
• Clear Goals
• Time Management
• Support Systems
• Assertiveness
• Interpersonal Skills
• Counselling

Stress Management

• Exercise
• Relaxation
• Support
• Review
• Assertiveness
• Self-talk
• Breathing control
• Take positive action
• Treats
• Keeping things in perspective