Fitness > How Does Meditating Before Bed Every Night Benefit You?
5th Aug 2022
Meditation Before Sleep
Fitness

How Does Meditating Before Bed Every Night Benefit You?

Are you aware that meditation can help to rewire your brain? If you lack the motivation to begin morning practice, attempt meditating before bed. A mere 5-minute meditation is a great way to relax after a tiring day at work and a super busy schedule. It can relax your body, empty your mind from toxic thoughts, contemplate the situations, and get you to forget everything that bothered you throughout the day. It helps to reconnect with your inner thoughts and sleep well. Meditating before night can be the key to saying goodbye to night-time woes. Understand how meditating before bedtime can immensely help your mind, body, and soul.

 

1. Better Sleep

Today’s fast-paced world comes with loads of competition and a continued race to steer clear of the crowd and be the best. This is not easy and thus comes in stress, sleepless nights, endless thoughts in mind, anxiety, depression, and so much more. Transcendental meditation before going to bed is one routine that will help you to send signals to your brain that you are calling it a day. According to studies, daily practice can increase sleep quality, relax the mind and relieve the body from unwanted stress. You feel rejuvenated after a good seven hours of undisturbed sleep. A good night’s sleep is essential for your overall health. If you are a beginner of this technique, start slow with simple Om chanting for meditation.

 

2. Soothes away stress

Meditating every day for five minutes is the key to ruling out all the anxiety and tension that bothers the human mind and body. Did you know that when you’re anxious, the body produces hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that keep your body supercharged? A hyperactive body also shows a high risk of coronary artery disease, hypertension, elevated blood pressure, and many more medical concerns. A mind relaxing technique breaks this unwanted energy by focusing on the brain and relaxing the nervous system. Meditating helps to drift your mind away from the worries and relax.

Several moments of sleep meditation can elicit a relaxing response in the human body, which causes the parasympathetic nervous system to generate melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone. Melatonin releases spikes around an hour ahead of our sleep, so meditating before bedtime can help you get a peaceful sleep.

 

3. Improves Mood

Seeing or touching stress is impossible, but feeling it in the mind and body is noticeable. When you’re anxious, your emotions run high. Your reactions are quick and disruptive in many situations. Everyone feels anxious after a long and hectic day. Irritability and disinterest in everyday life tag along with this too. A night-time practice helps you wipe out these emotions and restores your mental balance. Mindfulness meditation also allows you to develop compassion, love, and empathy for people around you. It enables you to view things in their current state without any judgment and react to them with better knowledge & comprehension.

 

4. Strengthens relationships

Spiritual meditation teaches the mind to stay in a non-judgmental state. It helps to look inside you at how others perceive you. Eventually, you will learn to recognise that there is not just one correct method. It teaches you to embrace yourself and the circumstances, even when they appear bad or hard. You will learn to endure the pain, deal with it and very well overcome it. This understanding mind will bring you inner peace and make you feel more empathetic for others, automatically resulting in more positive connections. You will feel less vulnerable to being misled by the negativity surrounding you. With time, negative emotions and depression will start taking a back seat, and you’re better prepared to deal with challenging circumstances.

 

5. Boosts Creativity

Emotions always get in the way of one’s thinking abilities, but that’s where home meditation is essential. It boosts creativity, problem-solving skills, and better planning, and strategizing. Did you know that the neocortex is the evolving part of the brain and is the most active one? Meditating is a great way to activate the neocortex part of the brain. You can focus better, think better and act better.

 

6. Relieves Pain

The mindfulness technique is a unique way to treat pain. In a major meta-analysis of approximately 3 million trials, the relaxed state of mind was linked to a lower prevalence of long-term pain in a problem. It was also discovered that individuals who practised guided meditation regularly were more equipped to deal with discomfort than those who did not meditate. In reality, the scientists found that persons who meditated have less chronic discomfort. It motivates you to take a moment to detach from your thoughts and emotions. This is directly proportional to your behaviour and reaction to pain and discomfort. It impacts the brain and helps in dealing with such situations better.

 

7. Encourages Self-care and insight

Self-love and self-care are vital for humans. Morning meditation calms the brain and helps to concentrate on what is more important. This way, you can set priorities and exercise self-care easily. Daily practice improves your ability to deal with stress, worry, sadness, and sleeplessness better. The art of meditating enhances the quality of life and boosts general well-being. The stress hormone is the primary cause of disruptive human behaviour like confusion, anger, depression, irritation, violence, hatred, and more. However, a relaxed mind can recognise and let go of such emotions before they become overwhelming.

 

8. Improves self-confidence

You can improve your sensation of awareness, vigour, and happiness by practising regular meditation. You may also train yourself to recognise when you are worried about a subject, such as relationships, a career, or any other issue. Whenever you discover yourself doing this, take a moment to reflect and question what you’re truly experiencing. Then you can either let those emotions go on or attempt to alter them.

 

9. Reduces Age-related medical issues

Insomnia and dementia are age-related medical concerns that worry everyone in the family. However, a simple and easy way to reduce these complications in life, if not totally rule out, is by meditating. Daily practice of the best meditations develops the power to focus and concentrate better, and improves memory and thinking ability.

 

10. Fight addictions better 

Addictive behaviour is disruptive to not just the individual, but the entire family. It is imperative to learn self-control and break dependency of any kind – mental, emotional, food craving, alcohol, and drug addiction. With an improved state of mind, coping with addictions is easy and often successful. It helps to redirect the emotions, fight the cravings and be self-aware of the triggers.

 

11.Overall improved health 

Lastly, meditating for about ten minutes daily can help improve your overall health. You may try and adopt a few types of meditation to enhance your well-being, relieve stress, and raise your overall health. Keeping up with the frenetic pace of today’s world today is not easy. Thus comes the pressure and a bunch of lifestyle disorders or non-communicable diseases like obesity, hypertension, thyroid, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory infections, liver diseases, and more. Meditating before hitting the bed is an emerging and effective solution to all these diseases.

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Conclusion

A healthy mind and body set the proper rhythm of the day. And to achieve this daily rhythm, a good night’s sleep is highly imperative. Whether you are someone who has a stressful day at work or one who is dealing with emotional stress and baggage, stress and anxiety are bound to take a toll on your daily sleep routine. Meditating daily is the best answer to deal with lifestyle disorders. Meditation music for sleep before hitting the bed can help you with quality and undisturbed sleep. However, it is not a one-day task. It is a continuous process that relaxes the mind and allows you to develop a deeper understanding of life’s most important lessons. However, once you begin meditating, you will not want to quit!

 

FAQs

Will meditating before bedtime improve my sleep?

Yes, as there is compelling evidence that guided sleep meditation provides relaxation to mind and body and immensely improves sleep quality.

 

How should I sit when meditating?

Sit in the centre of a seat, legs uncrossed, feet firmly planted on the ground, and arms on the thighs or your knee. The vital point is to position your body such that the muscles can shut off and rest.

 

Is there a specific method I should breathe?

A good breathing technique can help you to sleep better. Follow these simple steps:

  • Sit straight
  • Breathe through your nose till the count of four.
  • Hold your breath and till the count of 7.
  • Exhale through your mouth and count till 8.

 

Is it true that meditation can beat my anxiety disorder? 

Anxiety for more extended hours is a concern. The body releases far more serotonin than required, thus making you feel stressed, tired, worried, confused, and restless, and meditating before sleep relaxes your mind and helps you to sleep better.

 

Read more:

Meditation: A Miraculous Way of Healing for Elderly

Sleep Hygiene: Importance and how to achieve it