10 Minutes to Better Sleep!

If you are tired all the time, cannot shut your brain off at night, or feel like you never fully recover, this episode is for you. Today on Wholeness Wednesdays from Completely Whole, we are building The Recovery System, simple routines to help you sleep better naturally and restore your energy.

How can I sleep better naturally?

Support your circadian rhythm and nervous system with a consistent wake time, a short wind-down routine, less stimulation at night, and morning light and movement. Adults generally need at least 7 hours of sleep for good health.

In this episode you will learn:
•Set Signal Soothe Sustain, a simple sleep and recovery system
•A 10-minute wind-down routine that is easy to repeat
•How to create a digital sunset and reduce stimulation at night
•Why sleep affects emotional regulation and stress resilience
•A weekly sleep review to keep progress consistent

Download the free lead magnet: Sleep Reset Kit here: [link]

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you keep trying to fix your life with more discipline, but your body is running on empty, I need you to hear this. Your discipline cannot outperform your depletion. Sleep is not laziness. Sleep is leadership and for wholeness. Sleep is spiritual and physical. Today I'm teaching the recovery system. Simple routines to help you sleep better, naturally, recover your energy, and stop living in survival mode. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Completely Wholes Holmeness Wednesdays. I'm your host, Beatrice Hutcherson. And this month, we have been talking about the body reset. In week one of May, we talked about the energy audit. Week two, we talked about walking is the workout. And in week three, we talked about the nourish system. And today we close the month with the foundation that makes everything else easier. Sleep and recovery. So let's answer this question right up front. How can I sleep better naturally? Start by strengthening your sleep timing, building a short wind-down routine, reducing light and stimulation at night, and getting bright light and movement earlier in the day. The goal is to support your circadian rhythm, calm your nervous system, and make your bedtime a cue for rest. Adults generally need at least seven hours of sleep for good health. So, as you know, on this channel we talk about wholeness. So let's examine why sleep matters when it comes to wholeness. Well, it's because sleep is very important. Sleep impacts a lot of different areas. Sleep impacts your mood and your emotional regulation, your cravings and your appetite. You ever stay up really late and you just are constantly hungry. It also impacts your focus and your decision making. It impacts your stress resilience, energy for movement and meal prep. And it also impacts your patients and relationships. Sleep is not a luxury add-on activity, right? It's a foundation. You need it. Research reviews describe that sleep deprivation can increase emotional reactivity, including amplified amygdala response, making emotions harder to regulate. One night of sleep deprivation triggers a 60% amplification in amygdala reactivity. Now let's dive in. Let's talk about the recovery system. And again, here I go again with another system or framework. I call this system set, signal, soothe, and sustain. The four S's. Set, signal, soothe, and sustain. So first you want to set your schedule. Signal your brain that sleep is coming. Soothe your nervous system and sustain recovery with a simple weekly rhythm. You do not need perfection, you need repeatability, consistency, something that you can repeat, a system that you can repeat over and over again that will produce the consistency that you need. So step one, set. So this consists of like your sleep timing and your anchors. Let's talk about that. So the goal here is that you want to create a consistent rhythm your body can trust. So pick a wake time you can keep most days, right? So you, if it's 5 o'clock or a.m each morning, you want to choose a time that you can wake up every morning and try to keep it within about an hour, even on the weekend, so that you do not throw off your system. Then back into your bedtime range. Some practical moves here are set a wake time alarm, and you could do that on your phone or if you have a physical clock. Also, you want to set a bedtime alarm 45 minutes before you sleep so that you can start preparing yourself for sleep. And if you nap, keep it short and much earlier in the day. When your wake time is consistent, your sleep gets easier. Step number two is to signal. So you want to reduce light and stimulation during this time. Your brain, it actually reads light as a cue for wakefulness, right? Think of it as the sun coming in through the window. It you realize that it's morning. And so it your brain tells you it's time to get up. The same thing with any light that we have. So here are some simple signals here that we could do or put in place. Dim the light 60 minutes before bed. Reduce your screen brightness and use night mode. Avoid heavy scrolling or stressful content, and then set a digital sunset time. And you can put that alarm on your phone. If you must use your phone, choose low stimulation activities, things like calming music or short devotional or some reading or a simple journal prompt. Step number three is to soothe. So this is a 10-minute wind down that you want, a routine that you want to put in place. This is the heart of your recovery system, the 10-minute wind down. So what we want to do is we want to choose three of these. Number one is a two-minute longer exhale breathing, right? So we've done some breathing exercises in the past. You want to do that for two minutes and have a longer exhale when you're doing the breathing exercise. Number two, two minutes of gentle stretching for neck and shoulders. Number three, two minutes of a warm shower or a warm mug. Four, two minutes of gratitude or prayer. Or number five is two minute, a two-minute brain dump to list all of the things that are on your brain, right? And so sleep starts before you get into bed. So the routine that you put in place, that wind-down routine, can really position you for recovery and good sleep. Step number four is sustained. So this is where we talk about the weekly recovery rhythm. If you want your sleep to last, then you need a weekly rhythm. Once a week, do a 10-minute sleep review. And what you want to look at, and see, we talk about being intentional, right? So even with your sleep, be intentional. Do a sleep review and ask yourself what helped me sleep this week? What hurt my sleep this week? And what is one adjustment that I could make? And then choose one recovery block each week. Whether that's a slow walk or a nap, remember to keep it short and earlier in the day, even having a stretching session or making your rest time your Sabbath, right? Having a Sabbath rest time. Also an earlier bedtime one night, so that you can maybe get a head start or maybe make up for some of that sleep that you did not get. I want you to remember this recovery is not a reward, it is maintenance, it is something that you need to do intentionally to maintain your body and to be a good steward over the body that you live in. So that you can follow along with me. And so you can choose a piece of paper to write this down on. You can also access the link in the description and get your own toolkit or your own resource packet for the month of May. And so I know that it is uh we're in the last week, right? But you also can have uh it covers all of the different tools that we use for our demonstrations throughout the entire month of May. So even if you're just tuning in now, you can go back and and watch those, but you'll have the toolkit where you can look at each of the different tools and implement them in your life. And it will really, really move you towards this body reset that we've been talking about all month long. And so, for the purposes of today, right? So we're talking here about our sleep, our recovery system, right? So, and this is a recovery plan that we want to just build together, something very quick that we can do. And so, you want to identify what is my wake time, what is my bedtime range, right? So we talked about having seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, right? Our body needs that to recover well. So, what is that range going to be? And then what is your digital sunset? What time is that? So remember that's the 10 minutes prior to the actual bedtime, right? So if you say that your digital sunset, right? So that's that 10 minutes before the sleep time, and so I'm gonna actually fill these in so you can see the examples, but my wake time is I'm gonna say 6 a.m. So then that means that my range here, if I'm getting up at 6 a.m., that means I have to be to sleep at least by 10, I'm gonna say 30. That'll give me seven and a half hours, right? So that is 10:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. That's gonna be my bedtime range, and then what is going to be my sunset time, right? So if I say 10:30 is my time to go to sleep, then that means this has to be 10 minutes before, right? So that's gonna be at 10:20 p.m. And so that is my time for sunset, and so my routine for this time is going to be turn off. I'm gonna say bedroom lights. Um the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to brain dump into my journal, right? So that I have nothing on the brain, everything is out, and then I'm going to turn off the lights, and then I'm going to do uh some reading. And if I read, usually I'll read on the Kindle app, right? So I'll read with reduce light. I'm going to say reduce light because if I'm on a device, I need the reduced light. All right. So those that's going to be my 10-minute wind down, right? So I'm going to brain dump into my journal, make sure that there's every that everything is out of my brain. And then I'm going to turn off the lights, and then I'm going to do some reading, right? Reduce light on my tablet, uh, on my iPad, and but I'm going to do some reading. So that's going to be my wind down routine. And so you would choose whatever would work for you, right? So you want to put in your wake time and your bedtime range, and then your digital sunset, right? And then your what is your what are the steps of your 10-minute wind down routine, right? So you want to put that in, and then my one sleep adjustment this week is my sleep adjustment would be I'm going to say uh drink a warm cup of herbal tea before bed. Yes, that works. And then so that can be one adjustment, and that may differ from week to week, right? If the if the warm tea, or I put that in as my example, but if that works for me, right? Maybe some camel mill, something really nice and soothing before I go to bed, even some lavender. Uh, so I could do that. And so if it works for me, then I can implement that into my window schedule and adjust something else, right? Maybe the brain dump is taking too long, so I'll replace it with the tea. So we really can adjust it however we need to based on what works for us. But we really want to be intentional about enhancing our sleep time so that the body has the time that it needs to recover well. And so I hope this is very, very simple and quick, right? But it gives you some idea, uh, allows you to put a plan in place of how you'll wind down before bedtime. And it gives you a structure to be able to stick to to ensure that you are able to get to bed at a reasonable time or the time that you set and to have a good quality of sleep, right? Not just the amount of hours that you sleep, but the quality of sleep also matters. I'm gonna ask you to do something for me. If you can comment, sleep reset and tell me what your digital sunset is going to be. What time is it going to be? Now let's talk about some common sleep blockers and some quick fixes for those blockers. So if you're a mind racist, keep a notebook by your bed. Write the thought down, tell yourself I will handle it in the morning, right? I'll handle this tomorrow. Not important for me to handle right now. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it in the morning. And if you wake up at night, do not grab your phone. Try breathing, a short prayer, or a dim light reset, right? So, but do not pick up your phone because you'll start scrolling. And then the brain will say, Okay, we're awake. Let's you just I let's stay awake for this time. Another one is if you, another blocker is if you cannot fall asleep, get up after 20 to 30 minutes and do something calm under a dim light, and then come back to bed. If you have persistent insomnia, loud snoring or severe fatigue, consider talking with a licensed clinician, right? Or even your primary care physician to address some of those issues. So if it's something physical that's a that's interrupting your sleep, then you want to address that, or even something um psychological, you want to make sure you address that. And so I alluded to this earlier. If you would like to have this laid out for you, I did create what I call it is the the May Body Reset Toolkit, but the last part of it is the sleep reset. And so that's what we talked about today. So it includes like a 10-minute wind down what we talked about today, our digital reset plan, a seven-day sleep reset checklist, and a simple sleep tracker, amongst some other things. So just a few tools there to give you so that you will have to use and implement right away so that you can get your sleep on track because it's important. Your body needs it. It cannot rejuvenate, it cannot replenish itself if it does not get what it needs. So you can go down in the description, grab the link in the description box below and get your copy. And if you missed the earlier episodes, go back and look at it. Uh, because the toolkit does include all of it. But in week one, we talked about the energy audit. So go back and and look at that because each week built upon the prior week. All right, and as we close, as we always do together, we're going to say some affirmations because we believe that our words shape the world around us. So please repeat after me. Rest is part of my wholeness. I honor my body with recovery, I release hustle and choose healing. God renews my strength as I rest. I am becoming completely whole. And I'm going to leave you with this scripture, and it's Psalm 4 and 8 from the NIV version. In peace, I will lie down and sleep. For you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety. And so my prayer is that you will be able to get your sleep and your recovery system on track, and that you get the much needed rest that you need. And so I hope that you were able to implement all the things that we talked about this month. If you followed through or followed along with us as we talked about the body reset, and so tonight or this evening or morning, whatever time it is where you are, being able to be intentional about getting the sleep and the rest and the recovery that we need is imperative. We must be good stewards over the body that God has given us to live in. And sleep is very, very, a very important part of that. And so until we meet again next time, my prayer is that you will get the rest that you need and that the quality of your sleep will be phenomenal, and that you will be completely made whole.