Over the past decade there’s been an increasingly furious barrage of information about the importance of sleep. And the dangers of not getting enough Zs. Dr Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep might be seen as the catalyst and the bible of this wave of propaganda compelling us to take our nighttime zonking seriously. Or else…
Watch the full chat with Holly Hannigan-Mills below:
…or else our short term functioning and long-term health might be in serious jeopardy. It’s enough to keep you awake at night!
And that’s why restorative sleep coach Holly Hannigan-Mills, who lives in Gloucester and works in both the city and Cheltenham believes that for many people to maximise their sleep they have to approach it in a different way to other health-boosting activities. This isn’t like exercise or eating your vegetables. This isn’t about discipline and doing, hitting targets and worrying about numbers. This is the anti-do:
“For a lot of people, rules and restrictions can actually cause more stress and anxiety. So the program that I run is very much about working on relieving that anxiety because we all sort of experience difference levels of stress and anxiety in our lives.” Hannigan-Mills told Sport and Life.
Hannigan-Mills says that a lot of her work with clients at GHS Clinic in Cheltenham is identifying the stressors in their daily life – rather than trying to fix their nighttime struggles in isolation.
“For some people the struggle with sleep is the result not the problem. More often it’s a deeper rooted anxiety or something in your life. So we take that time to really understand their world and what’s going on for them.”
Another big takeaway from the conversation with the very becalming coach is her underscoring of sleep as a very natural process. It will catch up with you eventually if you let it.
“We add in acceptance of sleep as something that we as all human beings are created to do. Really building back to that trust that you as a human being can sleep. It might not have been as you’d like it to be but you can and you will connect back into your ability to sleep.”
If this sounds a little philosophical, Hannigan-Mills also offers some very practical tips. For example, did you know getting daylight first thing in the morning is a significant step towards feeling snoozy at bedtime?
“It doesn’t need to be a bright, sunny day for your skin and your body to absorb and get the benefits of daylight. It will help support the circadian rhythm and also help our production of melatonin and our body’s understanding of when we should be awake.”
So getting bright daylight in the morning is a smart move. But sitting around under blazing artificial lights come nightfall is an anti-sleep strategy.
“Through the bright lights we have in our homes, we keep ourselves in that alert, awake state for much longer into the evening. And that can have a knock on impact on how easily it is to fall asleep when you want to go to bed.”
Candles then might not just be a romantic mood setter, but also create an environment for nodding off? Hannigan-Mills concurs with this theory.
“It again goes back to historically before we had electricity and bright lights it was fire or candles people would use in the evening and it’s signalling to the brain (to get ready to sleep)”
As a former shift worker herself, Hannigan-Mills is also sensitive to the unique challenges of people who don’t work the conventional nine-to-five. In particular, for those ’on nights’ she says don’t worry about trying to get the generally recommendation of eight hours because it’s still important to get daylight.
“If you got home in the morning, you would want about three or four hours. Then get up and do the rest of your day. And then you might a power nap before you go into your night shift just to give you that reset.”
For more on Hannigan-Mills’ work as a restorative sleep coach CLICK HERE to take you to the GHS Clinics website.
