How Practicing Wellness Impacts Your Sleep
Living well and practicing wellness is a lifestyle choice that more and more people are making. While there are many reasons to practice wellness, most of the benefits that people highlight are all experienced during the day: more energy, more confidence, stronger immune system, feeling happier, etc. But what about at night? You better believe that practicing wellness does absolutely improve your quality of sleep.
What is wellness?
Before diving into how wellness impacts sleep, we need to first talk about what wellness really is.
Wellness is the actioning of daily practices that all contribute to overall wellbeing in all aspects of your health. It’s about balancing everything that contributes to your health and tackling healthy habits from a holistic standpoint.
When talking about wellness, the big point to understand is that it is not just one thing. Practicing wellness is about paying attention to all aspects of your health.
If you want to learn more about wellness, we’ve got a whole article on the topic.
How wellness impacts sleep
Practicing wellness impacts your sleep a few ways:
It helps you fall asleep quicker
It improves how deep you sleep and the quality of your sleep cycles
It plays into your sleep habits
Wellness helps you sleep quicker
The biggest cause of insomnia is stress, anxiety and depression. When you practice wellness and are looking after yourself mentally, physically and emotionally, you’ll find yourself feeling more balanced overall. This lifestyle approach to reducing daily stress and anxiety will help you sleep quicker.
Another reason you will fall asleep quicker when practicing wellness is because your days will probably be a bit busier and active than normal. Wellness doesn’t mean being on the go 24/7, but it does incorporate activity beyond watching TV or sitting around.
Don’t get us wrong: having rest time and enjoying leisure activities and lazy days is 100% a part of a balanced life. In general though, the more energy you burn throughout the day by moving around, the easier you’ll find it to sleep at night.
Daily activities that can help you practice wellness and sleep better at night do include physical activity and exercise. But it also includes mental stimulation. Working your brain does contribute to lower rates of insomnia and higher quality sleep.
Some activities that can help you sleep include:
Visiting friends and/or family members
Going for a walk
Running errands
Reading a book
Cooking
Gardening
Working on a puzzle or craft
Wellness helps you sleep deeper and get enough of each sleep cycle
Sleep and quality sleep are not the same thing. In order to truly feel rested, you need to cycle through deep sleep and REM. These cycles are when our bodies heal and recuperate. We process emotions, balance hormones, develop our brains and convert experiences to memory while we sleep through these cycles.
There is no hack to getting enough of these sleep cycles. The only way to improve the quality of your sleep and sleep cycles is to practice proper sleep habits. These habits include:
Avoiding drugs and alcohol
Having a consistent sleep schedule
Not drinking caffeine later in the day
Exercise
Staying hydrated
Having enough fruits and vegetables
Eat more fiber
If you are aware of your lifestyle habits and are conscious of practicing wellness in your day, you’re more likely to be doing all if not most of these things naturally. Feeling more rested when you sleep is an inevitable outcome of living a life of wellness.
Wellness contribute to your sleep habits
There are a number of sleep habits that are encouraged to help you get the most of your sleep.
Have a wind-down sleep routine before bed
Go to sleep at the same time every night
Sleep in a dark room
Lower the temperature in your bedroom
Wash your sheets and bedding regularly
When you feel better overall, you’re more likely to have the capacity to practice these habits on a regular basis.
Practice wellness to improve your sleep
If you live a life focused on wellness and holistic care of your body and mind, you’ll see an improvement in your sleep. How you live and how you sleep go hand in hand. So live well and sleep like a rock!