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Benefits of a good night sleep and… please write in and share your advice on ways to deal with insomnia!
Published December 3, 2011 | 
A good night sleep is a worthy cause.
Restful sleep on a regular basis provides us many benefits including:
1. Improved memory and cognitive abilities
2. Weight control (we tend to over eat when we are sleep deprived)
3. Better mood
4. Our immune system works better
I know I really notice a difference in how I feel if I don’t get a good night sleep. It is not a subtle thing. I really feel terrible if I don’t sleep well. I am sure many of you can relate.
If we don’t feel well after losing just one night of sleep, think what chronic sleep deprivation does to us if insomnia is a regular occurrence in our lives?
If you have found ways that help you sleep better at night, I encourage you to write and comment here at The Warm Milk Journal so that other readers may benefit from your experience.
We can help each other and offer support to live a well balanced life by day and sleep restfully at night.
In peace,
Debra
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Insomnia keeping you awake? Here are six tips to help you sleep better tonight.
Published October 8, 2011 | 
Six tips to help you sleep better:
1. Take calcium and magnesium supplements a half hour before bedtime (please see doctor before taking any new supplements)
2. Snack on cheese and crackers
3. Increase your light exposure during the day.
4. Go to bed earlier. The hours we can sleep before midnight are good quality sleep.
5. Sip on a cup of lemon verbena tea
6. Take a bath or find other ways to pamper yourself
Source: Woman’s World October 3, 2011
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Lying in bed and can’t sleep? Here’s what to do…
Published February 13, 2011 | 
Lying awake and can’t sleep?
You can get up and write, read, and eat a light snack such as a bannana, toast, and warm milk. Keep the lights dim. Soon you will get sleepy again.
Or, if you just do not went to get out of bed:
1. Focus on one word such as “peace” and meditate on it repeatedly.
2. Do tension exercises from head to toe.
3. Create a story in your mind: Think of a plot, setting, characters, etc.
4. Make love or masturbate.
Whether you stay in bed or get out the common element in all of these insomnia busting strategies is to get your mind refocused on something
else. The last thing you want is to be tossing and turning and thinking about how you are not sleeping. Redirect. Refocus. Soon enough the peace of
sleep will return.
Good night and sweet dreams.
Debra : )
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A cure for snoring? Try cutting down on red wine consumption.
Published September 12, 2010 | 
Recently my boyfriend who has been snoring quite a bit lately went to see a doctor about acid reflux issues. The doctor recommended that he cut down on his red wine consumption. He has switched to beer for his evening beverage and now is sleeping very quietly. It is quite amazing. Give it a try or encourage your snoring partner to try. Red wine is an absolute wonderful thing but if it means getting better sleep at night and more peace with each other…
I, by the way, am still enjoying my glass of wine still but he does not seem to mind. Who says life needs to be completely fair?
Debra : )
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To get a goodnight sleep: create a story in your mind as you drift off.
Published September 5, 2010 | 
This is a technique I have been doing myself for the last several weeks and it really works. When you are lying in bed, settle in and get comfortable. Close your eyes and imagine a story that you would like to tell or write. Think of all the components that make up a good story: character development, a conflict of some kind, setting, and climax. Let your imagination go wild. I find I fall asleep very quickly doing this. I have usually nodded off before I get very far into any kind of plot.
Give it a try.
Debra : )
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What is the secret of getting a good night sleep? Here are twenty ideas.
Published August 29, 2010 | 
A lot of variables can affect whether we get a good night sleep or not. How to increase our chances:
- Being tired enough to begin with at bedtime. Work or play hard by day. Sleep well at night.
- Having peaceful relations with other household members.
- Letting the stresses of the day go.
- Taking care of yourself by eating properly and exercising.
- Meditating
- Listening to relaxing music before bed.
- Making love.
- Reading something relaxing and inspirational (but not too exciting).
- Not watching or reading about anything too violent right before bed.
- Playing with children and pets before bed
- Reading stories to children
- Writing
- Saying prayers
- Feeling at peace with yourself.
- Knowing you did your best today.
- Investing in excellent quality mattress, pillows, and linens.
- Having your room as dark and quiet as possible.
- If your partner snores, have ear plugs handy.
- Don’t drink too much liquid before bed.
- Think calming, loving thoughts at bedtime.
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Journal exercises to get you sleepy
Published July 25, 2010 | 
“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep” ~ Dale Carnegie
We can use our journals in a variety of ways: recording life events, recording dreams, writing down things we are thankful for, writing down our worries, a spiritual/prayer journal, and we can do exercises that are designed to get our minds doing “busy” work so that we can get sleepy again.
If you are being challenged with insomnia, the last thing you want to do is stress about the fact that you are not sleeping. If you have tried various things in your bed such as tension , breathing, visualization, and meditation exercises and you are still awake- I recommend getting up. You will only grow more frustrated as you lie there awake and watch the clock’s time move minute by minute….
Get up with your journal, with enough light to write but make it a soft light. Make yourself that cup of warm milk or herbal tea and relax….I am not going to suggest you think too hard about anything now. The writing exercises I am going to offer are “busy” exercises to get your mind occupied and doing something besides worrying about the fact that you are not sleeping.
You can try:
- Lists: favorite places to eat, a list of every friend you have ever had that you can remember starting back at kindergarten, list of movies, places you would like to visit, words that start with the letter “f”, every geography word that begins with the letter “h”. You get the idea. These can be fun and will get you sleepy again in no time. These are also great exercises to do, by the way, to kill time in the car during a long road trip.
- Poetry: have fun with language. Write down any kind of verse you want, It can rhyme or just free form it. Whatever you want- nobody needs to see it but you. Have fun with it. Describe in as much detail as you can something you are looking at in the room you are sitting in (a piece of furniture for instance). Or write an alliterative type of poem for a letter of the alphabet. For example, I will share a little poem I did just the other evening in my own journal:
My “C” Poem
Cozy
Comfy
Crazy for you I am
Cuddly
Caring and
Cute you are
Contented
Couple we are
Have fun with your journal. You can be as creative or mundane as you want.
Sweet dreams,
Debra : )
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Ten things to do if you get woken up in the middle of the night
Published July 13, 2010 | 
Some of us have no problem going to sleep right away but then wake up or get woken up in the middle of the night or early in the morning and have difficulty going back to sleep. What to do? Here are ten ideas to try:
- If you get up to go to the bathroom, try to do so safely in the dark. Turning lights on may wake you up more.
- When wanting to go back to sleep, try to access the dream world you were in before you woke up. Try to remember a dream you were having or any dream you recall having. This technique is called dream remembrance. This gets our mind quickly back into that sleepy sub-conscious state before our minds are awake and conscious enough to start thinking (and worrying and keeping us up).
- Don’t stress about being awake. Don’t look at your clock and worry about the rest you are losing. The more you put pressure on yourself to go back to sleep, the harder it will be to do so.
- If you get woken up by pets, prevent them from having access to your bedroom.
- If light wakes you up, you can invest in heavy blinds or drapes.
- Are you waking up cold? Try going to bed with socks on your feet.
- Are you waking up hot? You may want to adjust your thermostat, open windows, opt for lighter linen fabrics, or wear light pajamas or nothing at all to bed.
- Being woken up by snoring partner? There are good ear plugs out there. If they are comfortable enough, you can try putting them in first thing at bedtime to prevent your getting woken up to begin with. If you don’t want to wear ear plugs all night, then have them at your bed stand and be ready to insert them as soon as you are woken up. I also recommend having an extra heavy pillow nearby to place over the side of your head to muffle out any sound. This works very well!
- Breathe and focus on your breathing.
- Say a very simple mantra repeatedly like “peace”.
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“And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.”~ D.H. Lawrence Ten Things To Do To Get A Restful Night Of Sleep
Published July 7, 2010 | 
We all could benefit from regular nights of blessed, restorative sleep. The more research I do for The Warm Milk Journal, certain ideas emerge to help people with insomnia. Here is a simple list (in no particular order) of ten ways you can foster a good night sleep for yourself:
- Eat a healthy diet
- Exercise regularly
- Surround yourself with supportive loving people and do what you can to nurture those relationships.
- Do work that is meaningful to you.
- Invest in a high quality mattress.
- Wear ear plugs.
- Turn your bedroom into a peaceful sanctuary with soothing colors, plants, beautiful linens, well circulated air, artwork.
- If you or your partner snore consider seeing a doctor to see if a more serious health condition such as apnea is causing the snoring.
- Don’t exercise, drink alcohol, caffeine, water, or eat too close to bedtime.
- Before bedtime, do things that calm your central nervous system down to prepare for a good night sleep: read something inspirational, write in your journal, meditate, make love.
Debra : )
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5 things to do If you can’t sleep tonight…
Published June 28, 2010 | - breathe
- don’t stress about the fact that you’re not sleeping
- do tension exercises
- get up and read something boring
- get out your journal and write: worries, how you are feeling, a story, just write!
Debra : )
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