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What if you could sleep yourself kind?

Learn how sleeping well helps you be the kind person you want to be.

Why a late dinner is bad news for your waistline

Is it bad to eat late at night? This question is coming up a lot in my work with clients. Luckily, several research groups are investigating how meal timing affects metabolic health. (And sleep – but I will talk about that latter point in more detail in a different post). In this blog, I will summarise the findings from two recent studies, and I focus on how the timing of your biggest daily meal and eating late can impact weight loss. And the opposite, weight gain and obesity.

Is your inner critic giving you a hard time for not sleeping well?

When we make a mistake, we often blame and point the finger at ourselves for what we perceive as a major personal short-coming. Within seconds our mind starts to beat us up, wielding an invisible measurement stick and complaining that “You should have done this better, you are simply not good enough! Who will like you? You are a failure!” And these might be some of the ‘nicer’ thoughts that your mind hurls at you. But even when we are not making mistakes, our critical mind, the inner bully, is constantly evaluating what we are doing and how well we are doing it.

Bedtime procrastination – why bedtimes are different to bodytimes

Bedtime procrastination means that people don’t go to bed and sleep ‘on time’ although there is nothing preventing them from doing so. It’s an intention-behaviour gap. They intend to go to bed but then stay up for another while. What’s the big deal you might ask? Well, less opportunity to sleep and therefore more sleep deprivation and tiredness the next day at work.

What is Insomnia and How Sleep Therapy Can Help

Often, we get stuck in spirals of fear and guilt about not sleeping or insomnia. Our minds race, our hearts pound, and anxiety piles upon anxiety. We feel alone and disconnected from our loved ones.

A holistic approach based on science

I blend evidence-based practices in my approach. The result is a combination of sleep science and chronobiology with Compassion-Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Training, and Mindfulness. In this post I explain what they are about.

A compassionate approach to poor sleep during the perimenopause
Download my free White Paper Poor Sleep During the Perimenopause here. Learn more about how a compassionate attitude helps you to alleviate your struggle with poor sleep and its daytime consequences.
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Want to make sense of sleep?

I wrote Sleep Sense to share my fascination with sleep with all of you. To help you understand why sleep is important for every single one of us. My aim is to empower you to take steps that are right for you to sleep well.

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Somnia

5 days ago

Things I learned from Vogue Wellness RetreatOne of our hosts shared with us, a thought that resonated with me, and I think it will with you, too! I recognised it in the lives of clients, friends, and as much as I don’t like to admit it, areas of my own life too. That is… the often performative, goal-oriented nature of ‘wellness’ in this day, age and society. The retreat was designed to sit away from this, to help to reclaim ‘joy in the pursuit of wellness’ and not perfection or performance. @funmifetto’s welcome note embodied at least 3 of the values that tie so closely to my sleep practices and that, if you’ve followed me for a little while now, you’ll have heard me speak about often.So here are the reminders I took away from the wellness retreat a couple of weeks ago…🩵There’s power in community.Community is important for health! I’ve spoken about this before (and will pin the post); a woman’s sleep quality is impacted by her social support. Her social life matters to her health.When we feel supported, we feel safe, and our nervous systems allow us to rest more easily.🙃 Joy nurtures our inner child - and that’s important.The benefit of embracing joy and looking after the inner child is that our approach to sleep is eased, it allows us to go into the state of rest with less tension, and carrying fewer ‘should’s’, allowing us to accept what is. A childlike attitude in our day-to-day can support sleep and naturally help to avoid fearing failure, both throughout the day and in finding restful sleep.Ask yourself, “What do I feel like doing?”. 🪷 Goals don’t always help us.Yes, consistently getting a good night’s sleep is the ‘goal’, but going back to Funmi’s note, having a goal-oriented mindset for any wellbeing practice can undo some of the good we’re trying to do, as we chase the end goal and negate the benefits.If we enter the state of rest thinking I must get to sleep and have a good night’s sleep, we’re putting pressure on ourselves, and the likelihood of that happening then reduces. More in the comments ⬇️ ... See MoreSee Less

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