Turn Restless Evenings into Rejuvenating Sleep

Unlock the secrets to restful slumber and say goodbye to sleepless nights with techniques from sleep expert Adil Hulak. 

Struggling with wakefulness and mental chatter in the middle of the night? Discover how resisting the urge to check your phone and mastering a simple eye-rolling technique can enhance your sleep quality and duration. Adil's insights are not just about surviving the night but thriving with better sleep routines.

Join me, Kevin Oakley, your peak performance mindset coach, as we dive into the physiological and psychological benefits of Adil's methods. Learn why avoiding screens is crucial and how mimicking natural sleep processes through eye-rolling can stimulate alpha waves, leading to a relaxed state. This episode offers not only practical advice but also empowers you to reclaim your nights and embrace restorative sleep. Get ready to transform those restless nights into a thing of the past and wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Winning Edge Coach Podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:03

I'm your host, kevin Oakley, and, as always, I'm here to provide you with tools, tactics and techniques to help you to unlock your group potential. Today's episode is our shorter Wednesday episode of the podcast, and today it's the third part and final part of our three-part sleep series of Wednesday short podcast episodes. Today's episode I'm going to give you two techniques where you know when you wake up in the middle of the night your mind's racing and you can't get back off to sleep because you've got an endless stream of thoughts just running around in your head. Well, I'm going to give you two very simple techniques that will help you fall back off to sleep very quickly and basically enhance the length and quality of your sleep. Welcome to the Winning Edge Coach Podcast. I am Kevin Oakley. As well as being your host, I'm also a peak performance mindset and life coach. In each episode, I want to share with you the tools, tactics and techniques to create a winning edge mindset to help you to live the life you were meant to live. It's nothing worse than when you've established a good sleep routine. You've been consistent with the time you're going to bed, the time you're waking up in the morning to only then wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts about the next day or some problem in the future running around in your head. It impacts on your sleep quality and your sleep length. So what we want to do in today's episode, I want to give you two techniques that will help you get back off to sleep very quickly.

Speaker 1: 1:43

The first one is from a sleep expert called adil hulak, and he recommends a very simple technique to fall back asleep quickly. The first thing he says to do, or recommends people do, is don't check your phone. We touched on it and I think the very first episode when we did the descent into sleep episode, in terms of the series of things you need to do to get yourself back off to sleep, turning on your phone, looking at the screen, is the equivalent to telling your brain that it's morning. There's the light you're going into your eyes actually activates the part of your brain that says it's daylight, time to get up, so you're just going to stop yourself from going back to sleep, so avoid picking up your phone. The next thing a deal recommends is don't stress about being awake. What you're going to do that is create a tension or almost an anchor, that sort of associating your bed with being awake. So the next thing is not to stress about being awake at sort of when you shouldn't be. So it's like I say you're just creating parashifrithel, creating stress and also you're beginning to associate your bed with being awake.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Adele recommends a very simple eye rolling technique. All you need to do is very simple. When you find yourself awake in the middle of the night struggling to go back off of sleep, is this Gently close your eyes, then roll your eyes to the top of your sockets as if you're trying to look at your forehead. Take a few deep breaths, maybe a long exhale, to calm yourself down, and then let your eyes fall back to the natural position. Then repeat that process. You'll find that very quickly, that you'll feel more relaxed and you'll actually feel tired. That eyes to the top of your head, trying to look at your forehead, a couple of deep breaths, maybe a long breath in that short breath in, long breath out rather and again eyes back to normal, you'll find will help you to relax and fall asleep quickly.

Speaker 1: 3:58

Why does this technique work? Why is it so effective? Firstly, there's the physiological effects that eye-rolling movement actually mimics the natural sleep process. Rolling your eyes upward mimics what happens when you naturally fall asleep, so it's signaling to your body that it's time to initiate which is not easy for me to say today that sleep cycle. The second bit is it produces alpha waves. The act of rolling your eyes upwards stimulates the production of alpha waves, which are again associated with a relaxed state and awareness between waking and sleeping. Also, it exercises the eye muscles. This technique gently exercises the eye muscles, which can tie them out and promote relaxation. So those are the physiological aspects and or effects of that eye rolling technique.

Speaker 1: 4:48

What are the psychological effects? Well, the psychological effects are quite simple that rolling eyes that reduces the mental chatter that's going on your head. By focusing on your eyes, you're taking, you're shifting your attention. It's an attention shift, your pattern interrupting. So you're taking your thoughts away from what's going on, your worries, what's racing around in your head. To actually focus on your eyes. It induces relaxation. As we said, the alpha waves, the rolling up and down of the eyes and the act of focusing on your breathing. The shorter in-breath followed by the longer out-breath helps you to relax, so it actually helps you to fall back off of sleep quickly. So that was technique number one.

Speaker 1: 5:33

Second technique is a technique called cognitive shuffling. It was developed by Dr Baudoin, a professor at the Simon Fraser University, to facilitate faster sleep onset and improve overall sleep quality, which has been one of the aims of the three episodes we've done on sleep is basically to improve your sleep quality, your sleep length, to basically wake up in the morning feeling fresh, raring to go, and to give you that energy you need to tackle the day ahead. The whole principle of cognitive shuffling is very simple. It involves engaging the brain with random, emotionally neutral thoughts to prevent it from focusing on worries or anxieties that may be hindering sleep. The technique works by distracting the mind from stressful thoughts, exploiting the brain's reduced coherence detection during sleep onset and creates a mental environment conducive to rest exploiting the brain's reduced coherence detection during sleep onset and creates a mental environment conducive to rest. And the technique is really simple.

Speaker 1: 6:39

So this is how you do it. So you've woke up in the middle of the night, you're struggling to get back off sleep, or you're struggling to get asleep anyway. So what you do, very simply, you lie in your bed, ready to sleep, and the first thing is to think of a neutral word with at least five letters. Probably five, I think, is the optimum. Anything shorter is probably not going to engage the brain in this neutral process enough. Six or seven words may be too many. It's got to be a neutral word.

Speaker 1: 7:10

I like to use categorization, so I like to think of inside the house words or outside the house words. So for this exercise, a nice neutral word is the word table. So you've come up with the word table. The next part of this is to actually then, for each letter of the word table, you think of words starting with the letter, and visualize that object. So with table, and you've got to keep to the category as well. So you've thought of inside the house. So you need to then start to work your way through the word table, thinking of items within your house that begin with that letter and visualize that object.

Speaker 1: 7:51

So let's take the word table as an example. You're lying there in your bed. You've come up with the word table of an item inside your house and you would work your way through and visualize each item. So the first one for me would be tea, a cup of tea, so tea. So you'd imagine tea, a cup of tea. However, you would take your tea and whatever mug, cup, etc. So you would visualise that. Then you'd work on to the next letter, which is A, so you might visualise an armchair, so you get a mental picture of that. Then you'd move on to B, that's the one here is bed. Try and keep all these objects neutral, emotionally neutral. The next one would be owl, which could be for a lamp, so you would visualize a lamp. And finally you've got the letter E and you could because it's inside your house you could come up with an egg or an envelope. Again, the key here is to make sure it's a neutrally emotive object. Again, the first time round, if it doesn't work, you might want to pick one of those five letter words that you've come up with. So, for example, you might want to go with armchair a bit long, but again, but repeat the process.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Why does cognitive shuffling work? Well, it gives you the benefit of faster onset of sleep or falling to sleep quicker, reduced anxiety and stress at night. You're basically distracting your brain. It will improve your overall sleep quality, which is the key. You want the best sleep quality you can get by simply distracting your brain, lowering your cortisol levels. Cognitive shuffling can help you to relax both mind and body and helping you to fall asleep quickly.

Speaker 1: 9:45

So that was today's Shorter Wednesday episode, with two techniques for instances, where you wake up in the middle of the night and you're struggling to get back off of sleep, that can help you fall back off of sleep quickly. Of course, you could also use these techniques to help you go to sleep in the first place. So experiment with both. So remember we did. The first exercise was the eye-rolling technique. The second exercise was cognitive shuffling. Thanks for listening. See you next time. That was the Winning Edge Coach podcast. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode of the Winning Edge Coach podcast and you'd like to help support the podcast, please hit the subscribe button and, if possible, leave a rating or a review. Also, please feel free to share the podcast with others and post about it on your favourite social media platform. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on Twitter at winningedgepod. Thanks again. I'll see you next time.