And thank you very much for that, Megan. Welcome to our, our, our session 5. Gosh, it's gone so quick.
And you'll be pleased to know, Billy isn't with us tonight, so I do apologise for last night, last time when he kind of woofed his way through the webinar, he's outside. So, tonight's session is of, of choosing sleep, is what I really want to focus on tonight is when we, occasionally still find ourselves getting overconcerned with the the effects of what happens if I don't get a good sleep tonight because there's something really important happening or I've had a couple of bad night's sleep and we start to get again overconcerned or do you remember we did the unwelcome guest at the party and are focused. Switches to the stuff of life and the stuff of sleep that just actually keeps us stuck.
And thank you to all those people that emailed this week. I think I got back to everybody and it was quite interesting because it fits very well with what we're looking at because a number of people were talking still about, you know, I, I'm sleeping much, much better until there's something. And looming in the distance and it's when something's looming in the distance that we find ourselves getting.
Where we find ourselves just sort of, getting a little bit stressed. There is Billy, even if he's not flipping it in here, he's making a noise. And so if we Just have a look at the first slide.
I was really making himself known today. And again, a couple of you have come forward and I've been really glad to help and happy to help with, with issues of sort of panic and we had other people really getting to, struggling to get to grips with a few things. Please do email if, if that's the case.
And I'm really happy. So I sent through some stuff to, to work with and. Had some really positive replies there, but also don't forget that you do have the MetLife helpline on the website to make use of as well.
So where are we? Well, those of you that are, and I know so many of you are doing so much better, which is lovely to hear, but people are really beginning to use the relaxation and actually enjoy it, and you're probably finding that you don't need the recording anymore because, you know the routine, you know, start down there, clench the toes. Clench the toes on the left, but some people will always rather like a guided.
Relaxation and that's fine as well. For those of you who, are working shifts, I'd be really interested to see how you're doing with finding that sort of diurnal slump. So the time when it's probably best, so we're not rushing around trying to get to sleep.
As soon as possible because, you know, it's so important that I get myself up to sleep because I'm working again at sort of 6 or 7 o'clock, rather than what we would prefer you to do, which is just relax into that and just, you know, I'm going to rest and I'm going to go to bed at a time when I get my diurnal slump. I'm going to do my cognitive shuffle. I'm going to maybe listen to leaves on a stream.
I'm going to put the day to bed and be interested to see how people who are working shifts are doing now with worrying less, I suppose, and as a result of worrying less, actually just sleeping better because that's what happens. And I would say that not enough of you who are worriers are using that structured worry time yet, you know, from the polls that we did last week, but it's, but we hold it all lightly, you know, see the hedgehog there, you know, there's no thou shalt and there's no thou must. It's just there is this resource that you could use.
What I would say to you is if you're mindful. And you realise that your sleep is becoming that you're waking more, you're not getting off to sleep as well as you were a couple of weeks ago, just have a little look at your life and see whether or not you've started to get into a bit of a worry habit again. And at that point just resume the structured worry time in order to let your brain know that you're driving your bus, you know, and your thoughts and your worries aren't telling you where to go in life.
You're choosing to address them at a time of your choosing. Lots of people, as always, are doing very, very well with leaves on the stream, and I can't tell you how, how often I get people in Northamptonshire where I live. It happened in a pub about a year ago who I thought was a complete stranger, a woman sort of said, Oh, she said, I recognise that voice.
She said, Oh, I, I, I still get off to sleep every night listening to leaves on the stream. And I said, Oh, how long ago did we do that? And she said, about 2 or 3 years ago.
And you know, that's fine. If, if it helps, and that's what gets you off to sleep, use it. And I've got to tell you, the cognitive shuffle has been a bit of a saviour for me this week and in more in a number of ways, really.
So I run a sleep course and I see lots of people for sleep therapy, but like last night I went to bed late because I worked too late. So there's something for me to think about because I was still writing something at about midnight. And then rather than wait for my next sleep window because I'd missed my sleep window, rather than wait for that drowsy period, I just sort of took myself up to bed and then found myself lying there not feeling sleepy at all, and I just began to use the cognitive shuffle.
And then stopped myself and said, Give this a chance, Mike Scanlon, you know, read for a bit because your sleep window won't be coming round again for another 35, 40 minutes. I knew I had a pretty early start, but I just relaxed into it and I read for a little bit, and then I began to feel that real feeling of drowsiness coming and then I used the cognitive shuffle and got off to sleep. Billy came up about 4 o'clock and woke me up, and once again I Did the cognitive shuffle.
So this is, I think, the way to use that tool. And the other thing is, the real overall sort of macro, change that we hope people are making to their lives as a result of this course is being much more mindful about, you know, The values that are really, really important and Living our lives in touch with what is most important because actually sleep isn't. Sleep is, is something we need to get.
Sleep feels very important, but you know, when you look at it and you look at the real things that we value in life, and those things are much more important. And if we can get that sense of perspective, our sleep improves paradoxically. And then we started to look at using some diffusion techniques, maybe, you know, really rather than connecting with thoughts, just reducing the intensity of thoughts, and I would guess that if, if you're using a variety of these approaches or you've found that there are 2 or 3 that absolutely work for you, my guess is that most of you would be experiencing improved sleep by now.
So Normally at this stage, it's a few people and are still finding that there is that. Sort of issue around control. And the control issue is very much linked to look at the italics at the bottom there, still that sort of if I don't fall asleep right now, my performance will suffer.
So tomorrow I'll go to bed earlier. And it's that sort of thinking in order to feel like I'm making changes to . Hold on grimly to a sense of control when we know that the more we try and exert control over our sleep, the more problems we have with our sleep because control behaviours linked to sleep actually paradoxically just make it worse.
Now. An exercise I'll sometimes do in 1 to 1 therapy just to illustrate that, and it's, people do get a surprise. So in my therapy room, I have a length of rope, and quite a thick piece of rope, and if somebody is still stuck with this urge that I must be in control of my sleep environment.
I must be in control of when I go to sleep. I must be in control regarding the noise that's around me. I must be in control about the comfort of the bed.
I must be in control about the temperature of the room. And if somebody's getting into that fight ostensibly with themselves and their urge for control, I'll say to them, please, would you just get up? And I'm quite large, so quite often they're a bit smaller than me, and I'll say, OK, you take that hold of that bit of rope and I'll be, and I'll be sleep and I'll be the anxiety that goes with sleep.
And just like that picture there, so I'm the sort of monster and I'll say, OK, now you start trying not to have, trying to sort of fight against, Any problems with sleep, fighting in order to gain control, and I get them to pull and I hold on and then I might say to them, OK, you see something you'd really like to do now, like to go and hug someone that you love, try and hug them whilst you're in battle with yourself fighting in order to sleep as well as I want to. Try and battle and what you find is that you can't because you're so engaged with this urge for control. And after a while when they're looking a bit tired, I say to them, OK, you've got choices.
You can either carry on playing tug of war with me and get hot and sweaty and frustrated and cross, or Why don't you just try letting go of the struggle? Drop the struggle. Except that actually sometimes I don't sleep brilliantly, except that sometimes I wake more than I want to.
And the moment you get to that place of acceptance and drop the struggle. Then the muscle tension changes, the urgency changes, the frustration drops away. And it's that word again paradoxically we just feel much, much more relaxed and if we're more relaxed, hey presto, we start to sleep.
So for those of you that are still getting over tied in to, Controlling Lots and lots of stuff about your sleep. Maybe it's time to let go of that struggle a bit. Now what I don't mean is if you've got great sleep hygiene, I don't mean, you know, stop doing it.
No, no, no. What I mean is hold that hedgehog lightly, you know, if I'm going to bed at the same time and I'm waking up at the same time, if I'm making sure that my room is cool, I'm doing so because it's a wise and sensible thing to do. I'm not doing so because it's imperative that I sleep and I hear that urgency in my voice, and your brain hears that urgency and your brain misinterprets that as threat.
So immediately we get into that sort of hardness about our sleep and that. That controls stuff, you know, that's what nearly always causes us problems with our sleep. So in line with that, what I'd like us to do please is to do a little experiment.
So we're going to do a, an exercise now. It's a meditative exercise. And what I'd like us to do in a moment, I'll share it with you first, and then I'm going to ask you to close your eyes and just to have a go at it.
Now, this is a very short meditation, and it's called the three stage breathing space with difficulty. Is the one. And what I will do at the end of the session is we'll just ask, Megan or Dawn, if this week when they send out the recordings, they could also send out the three-stage breathing space with difficulty.
Because it's a great meditation for just allowing stuff that worries us in. Well, I won't explain it. Let's experience it.
So in a moment, I'm going to ask us to relax and to go to the breath and to find our breath. And to anchor your attention to your breathing. Once you're anchored to your breathing, I'm just going to ask you to think about something that's happened this week that's made you feel a bit anxious about your sleep.
Now that might be a meeting the next day. It might be one or two. Less wonderful night's sleep because of the heat at the moment.
It might be annoyance of being woken up by children or dogs, whichever one it is, I'm going to ask you to just allow in and make space for whatever that anxiety is. And then what we're going to do is we're just going to sit with it for a while and make space for it, and we're going to look at it from the stance of a curious scientist. And Allow ourselves and allow our mind to just go wherever it wants to and noticing whether it shifts itself straight away to that urge for control and if it does, just to smile at that and to allow it just to be.
And then let go. Of the anxiety, let go of the urge for control, and that's the way we go with this meditation. So This is probably best done lying down.
And it's a really good one to add into your repertoire of meditations that may well help with sleep. Probably not one that you would do. Just before bed, I would stick to leaves on a stream.
I would stick to acceptance of thoughts and feelings maybe, and definitely the one we're going to do a bit later, the body scan, but this is a really good one to do if you notice that you, you've been worrying about your sleep. So I'm not expecting everybody out there to be lying down now, and if you want to, you can, but if you're going to do it in a seated position, can you just get yourself into a sort of upright seated position so your back's quite straight, your feet are firmly down on God's good earth, but your palms are resting in your lap, and your eyes are very gently just beginning to close. So if we just close our eyes and just Take your attention.
To the sounds Outside of the room. In which you're meditating. Just labelling what it is that.
You here. Cars But And then bring your attention into the room. In which you're meditating.
The harm of the computer. And then narrow the focus of your attention right in and find your own breath. Just follow the in breath in.
And just stay with that breath as you breathe out. Bring a curious attention to where your breath begins. Does it begin in your tummy?
Does it begin in your chest or in your throat? Or maybe just below your septum if you're a nasal breather. And find where your breath begins.
And notice where the in breath shifts and becomes an out breath. And then the out breath ends. And the in breath begins once more.
Just following that breath. Right in this moment. Deliberately and on purpose, choosing just to be.
With the breath. Let the breath go now, but notice that it's there for you. Always there for you for the rest of your lives you have your breath.
As an anchor point to bring yourself into the present moment. Right now. Then what I'd like you to do please is just ask yourself, so.
What worries have I had? About sleep this week. What worries have pushed their way in about the consequences of not getting.
What I perceived to be enough sleep. And just open yourselves up and allow Whatever anxieties is still there. That manifest themselves linked to sleep.
And Move out from yourself and. Observe There's thoughts about sleep, there's feelings about sleep. There's concerns about sleep.
From the stance of a sort of Curious scientists. As you look in, With a wry smile. Noticing your short term mind urging you that So important.
Crucial. Just smile at that. Make space for your wise, sensible long-term mind.
That says Do you know if I don't sleep? One night very well, or I get disturbed sleep on another night. In the long scheme of things.
It really doesn't amount to a whole heap of beans. And just sit with that. Noticing that What we're going to do next is we're just going to let go.
Of all those urges, all of that need for control. We're just gonna to let go of it. And bring our attention back.
Find your breath once more. Breathing in. And breathing out.
On each outbreath Just letting some of that tension and some of that. Thanks just go. Just breathing out.
And relaxing. Letting go of that urge. The control.
And taking that sense of equanimity and calm and Choice. Into the rest of your evening. And when you're ready, vary gently.
Just come back to the ring. Well done. Now The three stage breathing space that Megan and or dawn will, will send out.
It's slightly different to that, but you may choose to, Use the recording, but actually, it's still a really nice meditation. So the one we're getting is a three-stage breathing space, with difficulty. Now This is quite a meditative week really in this course because it's really important at this stage to Develop a degree of mindful mastery.
Whilst always holding that hedgehog lightly. So that we can recognise when Muscular tension when stress is manifesting itself in our physicality. Now, what we know is that, there are nearly as many neuroreceptors that are, stored in their gut as there are in the brain.
So If we're mindfully aware of our gut, if we're mindfully aware of our muscular tension, We can start to smile, recognise, gosh, my shoulders are up past my ears or my tummy is churning because I'm anxious or worried about something and just begin to gain some mastery over just kind of letting that go and using the breath to re-anchor ourselves in the here and now. And the best meditation. To really practise with in order to gain that mindful awareness of our physiological stress reactions is the body scan.
So the other meditation that we will ask Megan and Dawn to send out this week with the recordings will be the short body scan meditation. Now this, a lot of people, when we do the mindfulness based stress reduction course with the webinar that, a lot of people, the feedback we get after week one is, you know, Mike, I really enjoyed the body scan, but I've never once got to the end of it without falling asleep. Now, if that's the side effect of the body scan, perhaps we ought to use it.
So if at the moment you haven't found that the relaxation, does it for you or the Leads on a stream. Well, maybe it's time to sort of blend the body scan into your pre-sleep routine and just before you go to bed to do a quick 6 to 8 minute body scan and see whether that helps with just switching off the brain and helping you to sleep. So this meditation is nearly always done lying down, and if you'd like to, I'll start in a few moments.
You'll hear the Things say bells go, and that will be the signal that we started. And so I'll just let people get themselves if they are going to lie down or But if most of us, I imagine, are going to do it in a seated position, which is also fine. So the purpose of this one is to get really, really very, very in tune with our own physicality.
And To the point where we are able to stress dump. There's my shoulders up around my ears. Let them go.
There's my tummy really, really tight. Breathe into my tummy. Let it go.
So that's why we're doing this one. So what I'd ask you all to do, please, is just get yourself into either your sitting mountain position or laying down on the ground and with our eyes either closed or fixed on a spot on the wall in front of you. And let's let's do a short body scan.
So we begin this meditation. By just finding our breath once more. I'm just connecting.
Deliberately and on purpose with the in breath. And the outer. Not manipulating it.
Or changing the way you breathe in any way. Just being at one. With our breath.
Accepting it as it is. And then as we breathe out just directing our breath. And sending our attention down our body.
All the way down until we find. The toes of the right foot. And just see if you can find.
Bring your attention to with curiosity. The gaps between the toes and your right foot. Bringing awareness to the temperature.
Of your feet and your right foot in particular. And where your foot is in contact with the ground. Just bringing a curious mindful attention to the pressure that you find there.
And then shifting your attention. To the left foot, not changing anything. Not tensing or relaxing, just allowing it to be.
I'm bringing that curious scientist. Attention to your left foot. I've been curious about.
What sensations exist between the toes of your feet? And then letting your attention move up your body. Up past your lungs and your chest.
Let's just find his scalp. Just sit. Being at one in this moment.
With your scal. Noticing any tingling? Any itch that may be there.
Running your attention down. I'm finding your jaw now. Just Curiously exploring our jaw and our face.
And if we find tension. We find pain. Tightness.
Just smiling into that. I'm letting it go where we can. And then bringing your attention.
To the right hand. I'm bringing your thumb and your forefinger together. I'm bringing that attitude of the curious scientist.
And just exploring the worlds. On your finger and your thumb. Noticing where resistance sits.
Where there might be smoothness. And then letting go. And taking your attention to the thumb and forefinger of your left hand.
Once again, just. Allowing Your thumb to explore your finger, your finger to explore your thumb. And then bringing our attention to our shoulders.
With a real nonjudgmental curiosity. Are they a line? It's one shoulder higher than the other.
Is there tension there? And if we choose to let it go, let it go. Noticing the difference between how it feels.
Before we let it go and then. As we just allow that tension to leave. How about feels?
I'm bringing our attention back now. And refinding the bra. And anchoring your attention to your breathing.
I'm noticing the breath and the way that you're breathing. Noticing whether the in breath. Brings your lungs upwards and outwards.
As you breathe out, everything softens and relaxes into place. And just to sit. For a minute now.
Choosing to Explore different parts of your body. Maybe to go and find your right knee. And then maybe to go and find your left earlobe.
No judgement, just curiosity. So for the last minute of this meditation, You choose. What you explore.
In terms of your body. If your mind wanders away, smile. Gently escort it back to the task in hand.
Now if you're someone who is quite stressed, is quite anxious at the moment, the body scan is a really very, very valuable tool, and in terms of sleep, its real value lies in us letting go of that tension whenever we find it in our wakeful time. In order to reduce that sort of toxicity that occurs when we are walking around with our heart beating too fast and our jaw clenched tight and our shoulders up around our ears and our stomach churning and our fists clenched, if we can find that unclench, let it go. And if we're doing that, the more we're doing that in the day, the better we're going to be able to sleep at night because the more we're doing that, our cortisol comes down, and as our cortisol comes down, our stress reaction shifts and we sleep better.
So If we notice ourselves, Putting up those internal psychological barriers. Or relaxing a little bit too much and maybe losing some of our sleep hygiene that we've been doing so well with. And we find ourselves reverting back to those creatively hopeless ways of managing our concerns about sleep.
It's probably because we've started to fuse again. Fusion means our mind has begun to spend too much time all mired up and caught up in those paradoxically unpleasant thoughts about sleep, you know, it's so important, it's crucial. I had a nightmare last night, that stuff.
Just check out whether You've become a bit fused with your thoughts regarding sleep again. And then mindfully appraise whether the expectations you're applying to yourself are actually excessive. The I must get 8 hours.
I must. Sleep every night without being disturbed. I must, I should, I ought, and then just to kind of smile and say oops.
Excessive expectations let that go. And if we find that we've started to avoid living a valued life, Because sleeping is so important. Now only today I had a great example of that.
I saw a chap today and he said, Oh, my mates were all going out. It was someone's birthday and because of my sleep, I thought to myself, Well, if I go out with them and we're really late and I don't get much sleep, it might leave me feeling really knackered for the whole of the weekend. And I stopped him and I said, you know, remind me of how important your friends are, where 0 is not important and 10 is.
Uber important. And he stopped and he smiled and he said, Oh yeah, friends, he said, are a 9 for me. And I said, OK.
And how important did you tell me that it is that you sleep every night, you're 8 hours, and that you never get a bad night's sleep? And once again he just smiled and said, Well, actually that's, that's not that important. And once again it's that sense that we start avoiding stuff in order to get as much sleep as we like rather than wisely and sensibly accepting that if I live a valued life and I stop worrying about my sleep, I'll be OK.
And so just check in on yourself and make sure that you're living your life in touch with most, with what's most important and that you're not allowing. That urge to be the perfect sleeper to pull you away from the stuff of life that is so, so important. And Just being able to think fear.
And, and, and, and that acronym just allows us to just check in on ourselves to see that we're, remaining true to this values-led approach to, Choosing to sleep. And one of my favourite mindfulness exercises that perhaps you might like to try this week. In order to check in.
And to check in on yourself to see whether you're, mithering a bit or worrying about something that doesn't need to be worried about, or whether you're charging around like a mad thing when you could be walking. You know, in a sort of Julie Andrews up in the hills, smiley way, rather than charging around with gritted teeth. And so what we do here is, what I ask a lot of people to do if they think that they're probably not mindful enough of their, Of their day to day levels of stress is to use bold, and what you do is you just set your phone.
To go off maybe 5 or 6 times in the day as a little reminder. And when your phone goes off, you just stop. You take one breath.
You move into your observing self, which is the bit that looks in at you and goes, so Mike Scanlon, Megan Halewood. Do you want to be the sort of man that is running around? Do you want to be the sort of woman that is, gnashing her teeth and worrying about stuff that doesn't need worrying about?
And so we lean into what we really value in life, and then we make a decision. Am I OK where I'm dealing with stuff today, or could I deal with it a bit better, a bit more mindfully? So the best way this works is to sort of make a bit of a commitment to yourself that I'm going to be much more mindful of how I am in the day this week.
So this is a daytime emphasis on this sleep on tonight's sleep session. It's about being much more aware of whether we're living that valued life. In a manner that allows us to be mindfully in charge of the way that we respond.
Look at the word respond. So we'd no longer react with aversion and stress and tightness to the stuff of life. We respond to it with a kind of curious wisdom.
Bold, really a very, very useful exercise. Which brings us a bit quicker this week because we didn't use a poll, but I think we've gone over every single week up to now. So we'll have a bit of time for questions.
So keep doing what works. That's the stuff on the, on the slide, but let's start thinking about the daytime now. Let's start placing some emphasis on just being a little bit more relaxed and smiley, on just being a little bit less stressed, a little bit less tight in the day.
Let's just see with that curiosity rather than any urgency, whether the less stressed we are in the day. What, what, what sort of impact does that have on the quality? Of our sleep.
What impact does that have on how rested we feel when we wake? And so your home. Practise this week is to keep doing what works.
Retain that real sense of living that valued life, but a particular emphasis on being in charge, mindfully in charge of not allowing. The stuff of the day to tighten us up and cause us to be too stressed, because I guess remember that a really good sleeper never tries to sleep. It's not a bad little Kind of rule really, if we're gonna have any.
The good sleeper never actually tries to sleep. They just sleep and accept when it's good, and they accept when it ain't so good. And that is perhaps the way forward.
So, oops, Billy's just come in and Doubtless is going to bark. So I'll hand back to, Megan and Dawn and just see whether we, whether people have questions or comments or thoughts or any, any queries they'd like us to address this week. Thank you, Mike.
That was one yet another wonderful session. Thank you very much for that. I am there's a bit more mindfulness.
I did. I really enjoyed it. It was good to, relax.
I've definitely been on a, I've had a bit of a busy day, so it's nice to sit back and enjoy the, the meditation as well. So thank you. So, as Mike said, if you have any questions at all, and it came up throughout the session or anything that you've asked in a previous session and we haven't been able to answer it, now is your chance just to pop those into the Q&A or the chat box.
And as usual, just the usual drill, we have put together a short survey, so any feedback at all. If you haven't provided it before, please feel free to do so now. With the recordings I mentioned at the start, we do record every session and put them on the website.
So you can access those under the archives section under Sleep Series 2017. So all the previous sessions are available to watch in your own time as well. If there's a particular session you'd like to go over or if you'd like to go over them all, you can do this as many times as as you wish.
OK, so I'll just, we'll wait a couple of minutes just to see if there are any questions that come through. Or any thoughts or comments or what's, you know what, what, what's working well is always nice to hear as well. Yeah, absolutely.
We've had some fantastic feedback in the previous sessions. So if there is anything that you've been working on this week and you'd like to sorry questions just popped up, if you'd like to pop it in, you can do. So Mike, any tips on turning on tuning out a partner snoring tends to put me in alert mood.
Thank you for that. You know, that is, that is one that comes up so time and, and, and other than divorce or or, or, or, or actually sleep in another room, I suppose, there are some really good, there are some really good, snore aids on the market, and you know if somebody's snoring is interruptive, then, It can make a real, I know we kind of, you know, it makes us smile this question, but I think it apparently I snore and I'm told that it's deeply annoying, so . I, I'm, I'm sorry, I don't really have any really good stuff there.
I mean, the cognitive shuffle, if you're woken up, will get you back to sleep a lot quicker. And maybe . Maybe, just giving them a shove so they roll over, I guess, you know, I don't think I've answered that one at all well, but, but it does come up and it does leave us, those of us who work in sleep and do a lot of sleep therapy, it is one of those ones that's a real, it's a real difficult one because you find yourself, you know, if they go quiet, you find yourself waiting for the next snore to come.
So, and it is a bit torturous. I'm sorry, I don't think I answered that at all well, but I did my best. Thank you, Mike.
I, I have a suggestion for good earplugs. The the there are wax ones they have . I, yeah, they, they, they are really, really good.
If you heat them up properly before you put them in, and they, they are amazing. I don't know how loud, don't they, Megan, and you tear a bit off. Yes, they can come like that as well.
Yeah, absolutely. My clients have had those before. They come in a sort of stick of wax, and you, you sort of chunk off a bit big enough to fit in your ear.
And then you warm them up slightly so they're malleable and then you shove it in and and they are the best ones for drowning out sound. You're right, Megan. Yeah, they're really good.
Fabulous, thank you for that. Thanks, Mike. Oh, similar, similar sort of question.
What's the best thing for outside noise if you're trying to sleep and earplugs, yeah, that's what we've, just chatted about. Noise cancelling headphones, I'm not too sure about that. I real big one I would say there is try and cultivate that level of acceptance.
Or the other one is to have some white noise. There's a lot of research that talks about the, how helpful it can be to have a sort of drony kind of, sound in the background. And there are, there are even some apps that you can buy which have sort of white noise that you can just have going on because weirdly enough, the brain doesn't actually like it that much if we are sleeping in absolute silence, you know, because absolute silence can be quite unnerving.
So maybe what you need to do is get is, I sometimes, will, will, if, if it's test match special and there's, a test match going on at night down in Australia, then I'll have that on all night and, and, and boy do I sleep well on those nights. You know, because I'm wanting to listen to the cricket and not sleep, but weirdly I sleep like a top. So just having some background noise can be really, really useful, but do you know what the difference is, is you choosing to have some background noise, not being annoyed by background noise interrupting you.
It's that paradox again, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Mike.
We just had a couple of comments from Robin, so thank you. She just said how much she looks forward to these sessions they've become part of a routine, so that's very nice and I've done. That's, that's a good sign.
And the same person also, thank you, . Gave a suggestion for snoring and it was acceptance, which is which Mike's just covered and be grateful. And she said she has had the similar experience herself and she just says, I am grateful for it, so thank you for that.
That was lovely. That was lovely comments. So it's definitely working.
. We've had another comment, somebody who plays bridge, once or twice weekly. They finish work at 7, drive for about 20 minutes, play for 3 hours, finishing at 10:30 p.m., and then they drive home and experience difficulties sleeping because their mind is so switched on.
Yeah, do you know what I think I would do there is really get into a, you know, get a place of acceptance that I've played bridge and my mind's still wearing, so there is no point coming in and going straight to bed. I mean what I do is I sit down, I do it relax, I maybe read a couple of chapters, and I wait for my next sleep window to come round. And then when it comes round, and I go, that's when I go to bed intending to just relax and if I drop off, I'll fab, and I think you'll find that that will start to sort itself out.
It's all about trying, trying to sleep is where the problem lies. Yeah. Thank you, Mike.
We've had this question before, I think I'm sleeping through chronic severe pain. We've had a similar question before, I think for you. Yeah, I think there's a different, there's .
Pain, pain is, is, is so interruptive and it can be so difficult to sleep. I'll tell you what you, you might really benefit from is the body scan and mastering the body scan. But if this person, I'm pretty sure they haven't emailed me, I think I said last time, email me.
If you email me, I'll send you the pain meditation to do before bed. So there is a pain, a pain, a body scan, especially for, allowing, so what you do is you sort of take your attention to where the pain is. And then you deliberately on purpose kind of allow it in, breathe into it, and then take your attention to another part of the body whilst accepting that the pain will stay.
Now that meditation would be very useful for this person. So maybe what they need to do is just email me and I'll, and I'll email that on because that's not one that's with you guys. OK.
Oh, that'd be brilliant. Thank you, Mike. I've just passed on your email address, and it's also in the chat box as well.
Thank you. Just a comment from somebody, after doing the meditation the last, in last week's session, I slept the best night's sleep I have, in a long time, felt extremely tired and just wanted to go to sleep. Interesting.
Not sure how long it lasts, but I almost felt like I'd been hypnotised. Wow. So definitely had a good, really good, the great psychologist Steve Dehaza, that's honestly his name.
Steve, Steve Dehaza says, find out what works and do more of it. You know, simple as that. Find out what works, do more of it.
Just comments on white noise that it's worked to them, so thank you for that, Mike in the background, yeah. OK, fabulous. Lots of thank yous.
Oh, and yep, somebody's mentioned about your advice so just thanking you for that. I'm sure they will, they'll email you that as well. Thanks, Mike.
I think that's all I'm just gonna scroll through and make sure I haven't missed anybody. Another pet one, so my pets often interrupts my sleep. One in particular wakes up as soon as I turn off the light.
Thank you for that comment. When somebody asked me if I put Billy on one of the slides, I will for the last week. So I do, I meant to, and then I, I, I, I forgot just so that you could see what the cause of our disruption has been.
Oh, that'd be lovely. Thank you, mate. One last week at the beginning.
Sorry, say that again. You barked again at the beginning this week. I think he just wants some attention, doesn't he?
On the webinar. Just a final question, how important is exercising early in the day when I finish work, oh sorry, make make such a difference if you can. You know, if you're going to run or you're going to take exercise, try and do it in the morning, you know, try and do it in the morning, definitely not within a few hours of going to bed or even sort of 4 or 5 hours because it just wakes you up so much, just gets your body really sort of like, you know, moving and that's not good at all.
So there's a study by a guy called Petra Zello who did a big piece of work looking at Sleep, anxiety, and exercise, and Petrazello's research made it really clear that again, you know, with this exercise, make sure that you're not, I'm going to go for a run in order to sleep. I'm going to go for a run because it'll feel lovely, I'll feel healthier, and I'll be more relaxed. So be careful of your intentions there, but certainly if we exercise in the mornings, our sleep improves.
I think that's all from everybody that I can see if I want to get, if I have missed out any of your questions, I do apologise, but please feel free to ask them on next week's session or to email into the office or to Mike. Yeah lovely, yeah, and thank you all so much. Thank you and thank you for your lovely comments as well.
Yeah.