English Comprehension That Helps You Sleep At Night Ep 783
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Hi there, and welcome to this podcast from Adept English. Do you have trouble sleeping? One of the problems I suffer with, and one of the problems I try to help my clients with, getting good sleep. That's sleep, S-L-E-E-P, and we are meant to spend at least

a third or 33% of our lives doing it. Sleep, that is. If you're a child, even more of your life is spent asleep. And health studies and neuroscience are discovering more and more about just how important sleep is to our general health and in particular the health of our brains. So those of us who struggle to sleep, knowing this,

really doesn't help late at night or early in the morning when we're trying to relax and go to sleep and we just can't. So, today's podcast is first of all an English language learning podcast. So, don't forget to listen several times so that your brain remembers the vocabulary, the words that are new to you.

So today's topic is how to get your busy brain to sleep. Having a busy brain is not something that's useful if you want to go to sleep. Today, I'm going to talk about some things that you can do to help with that.

Hello, I'm Hilary and you're listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works. Go

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So it's English language learning on topics that are actually interesting. You can sign up for our subscription service on our website at adeptenglish.com. Just think what it will do for your English. And in this podcast, here comes another interesting topic. How to get your busy brain to sleep. So when people talk about their difficulty sleeping, I am full of suggestions because I've tried most of them myself.

There are all kinds of things which disrupt sleep. And actually, I talk about some of these other things in Subscription Episode 29. But in this podcast, I'm going to talk about one of the main psychological reasons why we have trouble sleeping. And that is a busy brain.

A brain that won't switch off. And I know all about this because I have one of those. I'll give you some advice and some tips on how to manage this better. How to get a good night's sleep despite having a busy brain. This problem is very common. Lots of people can't get their brains to switch off at night. Some people are just made that way. Sometimes I think it's modern life. And it can happen to anyone if you have something particular on your mind.

a particular worry, if you like. That's W-O-R-R-Y. Normally during the day, we really value busy brains. Being alert, A-L-E-R-T, or as we say in English, being on the ball. This is how we solve our problems. Many of us need to be thoughtful, productive,

creative for our work. And I think our brains have adapted to these demands. We're trained to think constantly. So the act of switching off that thinking so that we can go to sleep can be a real challenge. The pace of modern life, the way we value quick thinking and all the demands on us can mean that the art of relaxation is lost.

Think about that state you're sometimes in first thing in the morning. When you're lying in bed, you've had a really great night's sleep and your alarm goes off. You may wake up and jump straight out of bed. But if you're like me, it takes a while to surface. It takes time for your eyes to open.

and for your brain to get going. And bed just feels wonderful. For me, if I'd felt like this last night when I was trying to go to sleep,

that would be great. And what's more, that alert, busy brain that I had the night before when I was trying to go to sleep, well, that would be really useful now when I have to get up, wouldn't it? So it can be quite frustrating. What can we do about that? One of the mistakes that people often make is trying to move between this alert, on-the-ball state and going straight to bed.

and expecting to sleep. If you're alert, that's A-L-E-R-T, you're the opposite of sleepy. You're very much awake and paying attention. You may have been gaming on your computer. You may have been working on your laptop until late at night, or you may have had a really interesting late night conversation with a friend. All of this can make you feel quite energised and make going to sleep difficult.

Think about getting a small child to bed. Most adults know that in the half hour before bedtime,

It's not a good idea to race around the house, making your children laugh, playing energetically with them. That's going to make it difficult to calm them down so they go to bed. Most adults know that about children, but we don't always realise the same for ourselves. We also need quiet activity before bedtime. We need to have a calm down time too. That means perhaps an hour or an hour and a half calm down time before bed.

It's best during this period of time not to look at your emails and messages, especially if they're from work, because you'll go straight back into work mode. Passive activities like listening to music, reading a book or watching TV are much better. They're all good for winding down. Just watch the amount of blue light from screens.

A TV in the corner of the room isn't going to be a problem, but your phone or your laptop might be. But basically focus on quiet, calming activities and keep the lights low.

And just like for small children, bedtime routine is really good for us. Routine, R-O-U-T-I-N-E, means the same set of activities, the same sequence of actions before you go to bed. Children might have a bath, a drink, a story. Think what your bedtime routine might be.

Second tip, what if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't get back to sleep? Well, good advice is have a plan. That's P-L-A-N. That means your plan can kick in automatically. You don't need to decide what you're going to try and do to get back to sleep.

Sometimes sleep experts advise that if you've been awake for a while in the night, it's better to get up, do something else and wait until you feel sleepy again. This doesn't work for everyone and it doesn't work for me. I find that if I get up,

go downstairs, sit in my lounge with my cats watching television. For a time, it takes me even longer to get back to sleep. I get cold and it just doesn't work. What works much better for me is to stay in bed and to stay warm and focus on calming my mind and relaxing my body. I ask myself, what

What is getting in the way of sleeping? What's stopping me sleeping? Am I comfortable? Am I too hot? Is it my body or my mind that can't sleep? If I'm worrying about something, if there are things on my mind, I might quickly note them down. I try slow breathing and I try to focus only on my body. My rule is

to think and focus on only what's in the bed, nothing outside the bed. I find that much easier than trying to clear my mind completely, as you would in meditation.

I might try working on my muscles, perhaps tensing and relaxing each set of muscles in turn until I've been all around my body. That can help have a calm body. And if it's your brain that's particularly busy, listening to something really easy often can help. Or it might be a sleep exercise.

app. I need something that's just enough to take my mind off my worries and my thinking, but which isn't stimulating more brain activity, which isn't making me think more. And that's my plan if I'm awake in the middle of the night. It kicks in. It starts automatically when I'm awake. And these techniques can also work if I can't get to sleep at the start of the night.

Third technique is to schedule worry time. If you find that your sleep's disturbed because you're worrying about all kinds of things, scheduling the time to worry during the day can help with this. There's a verb to worry, W-O-R-R-Y, and worry.

a noun. And worrying might mean thinking about things that might happen in the future or processing what happened today. If you choose to spend 20 minutes worrying during the day, it means you've already done this before it's time to sleep. You've already processed these things so that they don't come in the middle of the night and keep you awake. It

It may sound a bit crazy to schedule time to worry on purpose, but it just gets it out of the way. Choose a time of day which works for you most of the time. Set a timer on your phone maybe, 10 minutes or 20 minutes, however long you think you might need.

It is important to have an end time to the worrying. And for this 10 minutes, worry as hard as you can. Make sure as many worries as possible come to mind and then you've made a list of them. This simple act of worrying on purpose can mean that your worries are not then arriving in the middle of the night, keeping you awake. You've already acknowledged them.

You've already put them on a list. Often that's enough. You don't even need to solve them. You just need to know that they're there. These three techniques, these ideas can work really well. They've made a real difference to my sleep. But you do have to practice. You get better at putting this advice into action with practice.

like many other things. Let us know whether you found this podcast helpful, both to your English language learning and to calm your busy brain and help it sleep. Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye. Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And please share it on social media.

You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com.