Need Better Sleep?

While Tara is busy launching her newest book, Simulation, and I'm busy trying to catch up on the laundry pile, we asked the marvelous Annalisa Crawford to do our work visit! Annalisa is a trainer and physical fitness buff from the United Kingdom. To get her here, all we had to do was float a trail of biscuits (AKA cookies) across the Atlantic. 

Welcome Annalisa!!

How to get a good night’s sleep  by Annalisa Crawford

Hey, it’s Monday. Are you up and raring to go? Or feeling a bit groggy, like you didn’t get quite enough sleep? Did you lie there last night, tossing and turning, getting more and more frustrated? Did you watch the sun rise and realise your quest for sleep was in vain yet again?

Never fear, I’ve got a few tips that might help if you have the odd few days of sleeplessness.

1.       Massage your feet. Find a really thick, aromatic foot balm and spend a few minutes rubbing it in - run your thumbs directly up the middle of your foot, make deep circles just beneath the balls and into the arches, sweep your fingers along your toes and pull. As an added benefit, your feet will be beautifully soft in the morning!

2.       Keep a notebook beside your bed and write your thoughts down. Write down any worries, important to-dos, the name of that actor from that film you were talking about and just remembered. Get it all down, and your mind will be freed up.

3.       Just lie there. Get comfortable—perhaps in a position you wouldn’t normally sleep in—and just enjoy the fact that you are resting and you don’t have a hundred different tasks to complete. Just rest. Allow your mind to wander into daydream territory:

a.       What would you do with a million dollars?

b.       What award are you up on stage receiving?

c.       Imagine you’re lying on a beach, in a mountain cabin, in Paris or Milan or Venice, rather than in your own bed.

4.       Breathe. Properly. A lot of people don’t—we’re shallow-breathers (using only 50% of our lungs) or we manage to bypass our lungs and fill our stomachs with air instead!

a.       First, picture your lungs like the branches of a tree. The trunk (your trachea), the branches, the twigs, the buds.

b.       Breathe in. Focus on getting your breath as far up the tree as possible. When you’ve breathed in a much as you can, pause for a second, then breathe in a little more. Let the breath out very slowly. It takes practise to get enough air to reach the very tips of the ‘branches’, but—hey!—you can’t sleep, you’ve got the time.

c.       Make sure you aren’t breathing into your stomach. If you can see your stomach rising, then you need more focus.

Do you have any tried-and-tested methods? I’d love to hear from you.

Besides being a pro at getting healthy, Annalisa Crawford is a multi-published author of literary fiction and dark, psychological suspense. She lives near the beach in Cornwall, UK with her musician husband, her two boys, and some furry critters. Check out Annalisa's work HERE.