Unlock Better Sleep: 3 Strategies That Work

Well, it's hard to believe it's another month. I don't know about you guys, but it feels like I did this other one yesterday. It's, wow, time is flying. So I wanted to remind everybody, if you have a question that you want to ask, you can type it in and then Maya will, you know, read it back to me because I'm not really watching it, but she's paying attention to that. If you have a question, you don't necessarily want to identify who you are. If it's a question you just want an answer to, you don't have identify who you are. And even if you can't make a webinar, you can always send in a question. I'll answer it on the webinar if I can, if we have time. So anyway, so today's webinar is all about sleep. And as we all know, sleep is pretty important and a lot of people have difficulty sleeping. So I'm going to talk. You probably want to have a pen and paper because I'm going to have a lot of different things that you can write down to use that could be helpful. So if you want to take a, a second here or two just to grab. So some of these things are going to be that I'm going to talk about are like hacks that you can use and some are going to be good strategies. So they'll fall under one of those other categories. So a lot of people, for example, when people come in saying they have insomnia, insomnia is sort of a different thing. That's a longer term issue. Some people just have trouble sleeping periodically here and there that could be coming in from something different. But insomnia is basically something that's developed in your brain for a period of time a thousand years ago, when you think about it, it wasn't really safe to sleep. Right. So that's why they formed tribes because some people would sleep and some people would stay awake to protect them. So we don't have that, but our mind still can have a little bit of uncertainty and lack of safety about sleeping, especially if you've got a lot of, you know, traumatic events or abuse earlier in your life that can be very common. You know, I talk about my wife Bridget. She had trouble sleeping, but she's living in a violent home, right. So it wasn't really safe. So she slept very, very light and it wasn't very much to wake her up. I mean, I used to joke that if I came in the room and I did a button on my shirt that would wake her up. I could be sitting in the family room listening to TV at a low volume. She would then come up from the bedroom and say, you really need to turn this down. I can't sleep. And I'm like, I'm hardly able to hear it. So it was either I'm losing my hearing or she's just hypersensitive to sound. So it was really more into the hypersensitivity for sound.

So what I want to talk about is some of the things that you can do. Sometimes when we can't sleep, there's two different things that can happen. It can be a conscious issue, or it can be a subconscious issue. The conscious issue is this frontal lobe. That's our executive functioning. That's going to probably keep you awake. If you're dealing with something current, some stress that you're dealing with. And that's not uncommon. It's not anything to worry about. Obviously, we don't want to have it happening. But if you've got a current issue that you're dealing with, sometimes it's hard to get the brain to quiet down because it's wanting to solve the problem. It doesn't want to sleep until it solves its problem. So the idea is, is you want to go from. And you've learned this in the tip program. You want to go from beta to alpha to theta to delta. That's basically the process that you use to go to sleep. So if you remember, beta is operating at about 15-30Hz or cycles per second. That's a very heightened awake state. So alpha is the relaxed focus state. Now, what most people have difficulty when they have trouble sleeping is when you go into theta. Theta is the state where you're dreaming. And so you need to get into theta state to start the process of sleep and then to move into delta. And you'll be moving around from theta to delta while you're sleeping. Theta is the dream state. It's between 4 and 7 Hertz. Delta is below 4 Hertz, and that's the deep sleep. So you need to get deep sleep to heal. That's where the maintenance gets done, is in deep delta sleep. So a lot of people have difficulty getting delta sleep. So they'll say, oh, I slept nine hours, but I'm exhausted. Well, they didn't really get into the deeper sleep. So that's really the key. So aura rings measure that. Whoop band measures that. Apple measures that. You want to get a maximum amount of delta sleep in order to physically heal. And I always Talk about. I think that was one of the keys for me because I didn't have a lot of trauma or I didn't really have any trauma growing up. I mean, I could sleep on a wet rock. I mean, I would just fall asleep and. And I got into the deeper Delta sleep, so I was healing faster. So I would get an injury in hockey and be back playing two or three days later where my teammate would be out for a week or two. And that was because they weren't getting enough Delta sleep. Chances are they had more trauma than I had and they had difficulty getting into. Out of that Theta into Delta. So theta is a good stage. Nothing wrong with it. It's a processing state. So your mind is consolidating and processing information.

So the problem most people have is they're in a high beta state trying to go to bed. And if you go to bed and yours, especially your frontal lobe is in a high beta state trying to jump alpha and get into theta. So as soon as you lie in bed, you're like, sleep, come on, I just got to sleep. Well, the frontal lobes, like, no, we're not jumping, right? We got to resolve this. So then you can't stop thinking. That's a conscious issue. So it's. Chances are it's more dealing with something that's currently going on, and you're trying to force the sleep. So I'm going to give you some tools to help break that. A subconscious issue is coming in from trauma. And we all know that that's what the TIP program was really designed to do. Is your mind sometimes wake up subconsciously or has trouble going to sleep because it's still in a fear mode? And that's coming from that trauma loop. So if it's not conscious, it may be coming from subconscious. Now, TIP program is designed to really help with the subconscious. I'm also going to give you some tips now to deal with the conscious issues in trouble. When you have trouble going to sleep. Have you ever had that situation where you're physically exhausted and you can't understand why you can't sleep? Like, you're just. You're so exhausted, you lie down in the bed, right? And you're like, this makes no sense. I've never been more tired in my life. But the brain's not shutting off. The body is exhausted, but the brain is still running, and it's probably running in a higher beta state. That's why you can't sleep. So it doesn't make sense. I should be able to sleep if I'M this tired. And then you sort of go from that exhaustion point. The brain amounts for about 2% of the body weight, but takes 20% of the oxygen in the body. So it's a major drain on the oxygen in the body. So there's where the body can get exhausted, but the brain is still operating. It's got a lot more oxygen. So that's just sort of good to know. There's nothing. If you're having problems sleeping even though you're exhausted, these are some of the things that will help with that. So.

One of the things that I think is important for me, and this is what I sort of like to do, and it sounds sort of simple. There, there was a admiral in the Navy that gave a talk to the University of Texas, the Longhorns, a commencement speech. And one of the things he talked about is how to be successful. But this is also, I think, one of the things that I think is also important. He talked about making your bed in the morning. And I don't know about you guys, but whenever I go to bed and there's a nice, neat bed already made, it does feel psychologically different going to. As opposed to getting into a messy bed. So it's a great start if you can have the bed made. And if you make it in the morning, it's sort of welcoming to, to go to bed. So that's one tip that I think is a good thing to do. Now, you may already do it. If you don't do it, start doing it and see if you notice a difference, right. And start recognizing the difference. Sometimes those little things just allow the mind to start relaxing. Another thing that I think is a good thing to do is writing. And reading before you go to bed is very good way to start bringing the brain from beta down into alpha. If you remember, Alpha is between 7, excuse me, 7 and 14 Hertz. That's where the mind is relaxed and focused.

So when the mind slows down, that's what you want to do. And when you read and write, what is the mind doing? You're getting very focused. You're not taking in a lot of stimuli from the environment. You're really focused on reading and writing, and that's why the brain slows down and it starts the process of getting ready to go to sleep. So write a short story about something that you're doing now or something that's relaxing. So I. I play golf. So one of the things you could do is just sort of, before you're ready to go to bed, write down Your round, what you did. First hole, I birdied. Second hole, I birdied. Not really, but that would be a great way to do it if you actually birdie the first two holes. So. But don't focus on any of the negative stuff. Focus on the positive stuff. So, for example, if I didn't have a great round, I'm not going to think about the bad shots. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to focus on the good shots. How many fairways did I hit, how many greens did I hit, how many putts did I make? Right? And I focus on all the positive stuff. So you could write that down. It's also one of the things that I'll talk about that I also do to. To fall asleep. So when I'm going to bed and I lie down in bed, one of the things I'll do is replay the round as soon as I get into bed. And, I mean, I really get into detail, too. I want to see the tee shot. And again, I'll ignore the bad shots. I'll focus on my good shots and I replay the round. I almost never get 18 holes in. It will just knock me out. And a lot of times I'm asleep by the time I get to the, you know, six, seventh hole. Sometimes I get out of the back nine, but honestly, very rarely do I get to get 18 holes in. I'm just. It's just a great way to relax the mind. So without even playing, another tip is to browse through a photo album. So take out a photo album and start browsing through some of the pictures. What it does is it brings back some really great memories, and that's relaxing the brain. So again, if you're sort of stressed out from what happened during the day, and all of a sudden you start looking at these family vacation photos or holiday photos, right? All of a sudden, your mind's now streaming with all this positive energy, and so that relaxes the brain. So it's another good thing. Now, this one will sound sort of silly, and maybe the wives will really like this, but wash the dishes, hand wash the dishes. And so you generally rinse them down anyway before you put them in the dishwasher. But it's actually a really good exercise to do before you go to bed again for two reasons. One, you're. You're getting the dishes done, but it's also very relaxing. What are you doing when you're doing that? You're focusing on cleaning the dishes, but the other psychological advantage to that is you're not Going to bed with that left undone. So again, it's another thing that's, oh, okay, I got that out of the way. I don't have to worry about that. So you're solving some of the things. Because if you go to bed and everything is messy and then you have to wake up in the morning, you come back out to messy, right? Your mind's not looking forward to that. And it starts the day without that soft, you know, enjoyment coming into the day. So that's another one. This is another really big one is create a bedtime routine as much as you can. So you want to have at least 30 to 60 minutes before you're ready to go to bed. You should have that routine down. That could be whatever it is that you do.

Just start to do. So, for example, if you're watching tv, and this is one of the things I hear a lot of people do, is they'll try to watch TV and then go to bed. Well, there was too much stimuli, so your brain was into too much activity plus the light. So the, the pineal gland is what produces melatonin, and it doesn't start producing melatonin until it starts to go dark. So that's sort of the start of the produce. Production of melatonin is. And think about it again, a thousand years ago, it would just slowly start to get dark. That was the response that the brain says, oh, it's time to go to sleep. It's time to rest. So we still have that same system operating. So try to cut down any of those electronics, even watching your phone, doing those kinds of things. So lying in bed thinking, oh, I'm just relaxing here, sending emails or searching through, you know, social media, you are not allowing the mind to get the rest that it wants to. Plus, you've got a lot of light in your eye, and that's not positive. So some people say, oh, yeah, I can do that and still fall asleep. Well, if you can, that's great, but if you're having trouble sleeping, these are some of the causes of it, right? Too much light before you're ready to go to bed. Too much activity in the brain before you go to bed. So create this routine. Because if you remember what I talked about in the tip program, what's the number one fear for the human mind? Uncertainty. So certainty takes away fear. So if the mind gets used to a particular routine, that's why we end up forming habits and behaviors. Even if habits and behaviors aren't beneficial, the reason we're forming them is because it's creating certainty. And the mind likes certainty. So your subconscious mind doesn't distinguish between good, bad, right, or wrong. It just follows a pattern and it will build the pattern for you. So you want to make sure that you create a healthy pattern before going to bed. And then that's the signal to the brain to start to go to sleep. And it just does it automatically. You're building basically a code. If you remember, we talked about how we need to build codes.

So one of the other things, and we have it in some of the audios, is we have audios that do progressive relaxation. And if you've done any of those already, we're, we have some more, we're building some sleep audios as well that will help. But one of the sleep audios is progressive relaxation. So what does that mean? What you'll do is you'll do this when you get into bed, or you can do it before you get to bed. But it's basically taking the body through a series of exercises to start winding down.

So, for example, what we'll do is you can start at the head, you can start at the feet. So if we start at the feet, what you're going to do is you're going to curl your toes up really, really tight and count to one, two, three, let go, right? Then pull your feet up and create that tension between your feet pulling up from the ankles. And again count from 1, 2, 3, let go. Then tighten up your calves. So what we're doing is we're going all the way through the body. And what we're signaling to the body is if it's feeling tense, then it's just letting go, tense, let go. And so that starts to change the system. It starts to go into a relaxed state. And you go all the way up from your thighs. You can do it with your stomach, tighten your stomach, tighten your chest, right? Again, if you've got a neck problem or back problem, be careful doing that stuff. But you can even do it with your hands. Tighten your fists, right? For one, two, three, let go. And what you will feel is you'll feel the blood flow starting to go when you, when you let go. And that's the sensation that we want to get, is that sense of relaxation. So you're training your brain so you can do that before you go to bed, or you can do that if you're lying in bed having trouble sleeping, just do that. The other thing you can do when you're lying in bed is breath work. So you can do some breath work exercises and Again, as that's again relaxation. So I like to use the 5, 6, 7 method, which is what we did in the and the tip program where you inhale. So first, the first thing you do though, before you inhale is you exhale. We want to clear the lungs of any other air so you breathe out. So.

Until you exhaust the air and then you breathe in through your nose. Important to do it through your nose for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then hold it for a count of 1, 2, 3, 4,. 5, 6, and then release through your mouth for 1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6, 7. Repeat that several times. What that's doing is activating the parasympathetic system. So it's training the brain to go into a parasympathetic state, which is the relaxed state. And you'll come out of sympathetic into parasympathetic. And if you remember, when we do the clearing techniques, I have you do a breathing exercise right after. The purpose of that was to start slowing down the system so it's again something you can do while you're in bed before you fall asleep. And again you'll find yourself falling asleep. Reading a book is good as long as you're not doing it in really bright light. So again, reading a book is another good thing because it's slowing the brain down, right? And then that's going to allow your mind to start getting very relaxed and focused. Don't read a horror, right? Don't read a Stephen King novel, right? Something that's relaxing.

The other thing is listen to music is. I don't know if anybody does that, but listening to music is really, really good. And again, we're not looking for, you know, punk rock kind of stuff or anything that rap. We want something soothing and quieting. And there's lots of music out there. So we've got some audios as well that we're going to be releasing on pain. On how if you got something that's creating pain for you, back pain or whatever, again, it's another tool plus the sleep audio. So those are. New things are going to be coming. But calming music is really, really powerful. So it's just really how the brain works. So I want to show you.

Maya, if you can get the first video here ready. And this is talking about the brain and how we learn. Yes. Let's start out.

It's 4am and the big test is in eight hours, followed by a piano recital. You've been studying and playing for days, but you still don't feel ready for either. So what can you do? Well, you can drink another cup of coffee and spend the next few hours cramming and practicing, but believe it or not, you might be better off closing the books, putting away the music, and going to sleep. Sleep occupies nearly a third of our lives, but many of us give surprisingly little attention and care to it. This neglect is often the result of a major misunderstanding. Sleep isn't lost time or just a way to rest when all our important work is done. Instead, it's a critical function during which your body balances and regulates its vital systems, effecting respiration and regulating everything from circulation to growth. An immune response. That's great, but you can worry about all those things after this test, right? Well, not so fast. It turns out that sleep is also crucial for your brain, with a fifth of your body's circulatory blood being channeled to it as you drift off. And what goes on in your brain while you sleep is an intensely active period of restructuring that's crucial for how our memory works. At first glance, our ability to remember things doesn't seem very impressive at all. 19th century psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus demonstrated that we normally forget 40% of new material within the first 20 minutes, a phenomenon known as the forgetting curve. But this loss can be prevented through memory consolidation, the process by which information is moved from our fleeting short term memory to our more durable long term memory. This consolidation occurs with the help of a major part of the brain known as the hippocampus. Its role in long term memory formation was demonstrated in the 1950s by Brenda Milner in her research with a patient known as HM. After having his hippocampus removed, HM's ability to form new short term memories was damaged, but he was able to learn physical tasks through repetition due to the removal of his hippocampus. Hydraulic hm's ability to form long term memories was also damaged. What this case revealed, among other things, was that the hippocampus was specifically involved in the consolidation of long term declarative memory, such as the facts and concepts you need to remember for that test, rather than procedural memory, such as the finger movements you need to master for that recital. Milner's findings, along with work by Eric candle in the 90s and have given us our current model of how this consolidation process works. Sensory data is initially transcribed and temporarily recorded in the neurons as short term memory. From there it travels to the hippocampus, which strengthens and enhances the neurons in that cortical area. Thanks to the phenomenon of neuroplasticity, new Synaptic buds are formed, allowing new connections between neurons and strengthening the neural network with where the information will be returned as long term memory. So why do we remember some things and not others? Well, there are a few ways to influence the extent and effectiveness of memory retention. For example, memories that are formed in times of heightened feeling or even stress will be better recorded due to the hippocampus link with emotion. But one of the major factors contributing to memory consolidation is, you guessed it, a good night's sleep. Sleep is composed of four stages, the deepest of which are known as slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement. EEG machines monitoring people during these stages have shown electrical impulses moving between the brainstem, hippocampus, thalamus and cortex, which serve as relay stations of memory formation. And the different stages of sleep have been shown to help consolidate different types of memories. During the non rem slow wave sleep, declarative memory is encoded into a temporary store in the anterior part of the hippocampus. Through a continuing dialogue between the cortex and hippocampus, it is then repeatedly reactivated, driving its gradual redistribution to long term storage in the cortex. REM sleep, on the other hand, with its similarity to waking night brain activity, is associated with the consolidation of procedural memory. So based on the studies, going to sleep three hours after memorizing your formulas and one hour after practicing your scales would be the most ideal. So hopefully you can see now that skimping on sleep not only harms your long term health, but actually makes it less likely that you'll retain all that knowledge and practice from the previous night. All of which just goes to affirm the wisdom of the phrase sleep on it. When you think about all the internal restructuring and forming of new connections that occurs while you slumber, you could even say that proper sleep will have you waking up every morning with a new and improved brain ready to face the challenges ahead.

So the reason I wanted to show you that is obviously it talks about sleep, but it also confirms why the TIP program works. So if you notice what happens when we do a TIP process, we take a memory that was being traumatic or disturbing, that's being stored in high resolution and what do we do during that session? We take the intensity out of it. So it's almost like creating a new memory. So it's basically reconsolidating that memory and then during the night it's processing it at a much faster rate to go back in to the cortex, which is where we store the memory. So that process is so critical in the and that's Why a lot of people say, most people generally say that they got a great sleep after going through the TIP process. That's why. Because your brain was taking that new information and reprocessing it through the hippocampus and, and then storing it into long term memory. But now it's got a new formula and it's not the old high intensity formula. It's a less intense memory. So it's not going to activate your nervous system. So that's why the sleep is important. Afterwards we want to go from theta to delta, which is again processing it. It's also, that's why the audios are, if you remember what it was saying in that video is the theta memory is processing that high definition, which is the actual event that we've, we've redone. The delta sleep is processing the codes that got built. And that's why the audios are so important. Because the audios are going to do what repeat over and over and over, right. What you're trying to change. And it just continues to reinforce it. So the more delta sleep you get, the better it's going to reinforce it. And the audios are basically confirming and making sure that the data is consolidating. So doing the four hours plus the audios are the perfect combination. Will we make a change with just the four hours? Absolutely. Will it be better? Absolutely. But the audios will help also work on the coding that got associated with the old memory. So the two together. But that basically was confirming why TIP works. It's a very simple process and it's very easy to do. Just got to follow the process. So.

The other thing that we want to talk about is.

Other things that you can sort of do. And you're sort of getting the idea here. We're calming the mind down so you can do some simple mindless tasks that will help simply like something like clean out a drawer, clean out a closet right before you're getting ready to go to bed. So again, it's sort of mindless work, but it's slowing the brain down. You're not thinking about anything else. You have to focus on where do I want to put this? Where do I want to put this? Do I need this anymore? Or throw it out? Even working on a home project, if you've got something that you're working on, try to finish it up. So our mind likes closure to things. So working on a home project, cleaning the drawer, cleaning a closet, something like that, again, is just slowing the brain down. And if you just try to consciously do that. So if you're just sitting there saying, oh, I can't believe. I just can't. I can't get to sleep. The more you focus on sleep, the more pressure you're putting yourself under to sleep. And so we want to do the opposite. We want to take the pressure from sleep and move it more into a restorative, restful kind of a process.

There's other things that we can do as well. So I'm. I'm just checking time. I want to make sure I get all of this in. We got quite a bit of stuff to get in.

One of the things is telling yourself a story, even in your own mind, or remembering a story. So this is something that I've actually used it, and my wife and I have both used it, and it works really, really well. And this is a story, and you can remember this story, or we can maybe even put it out. But it's a very short story. But one of the things that I talk about is sometimes you need to take a nap before you go to sleep. And what I mean by a nap is resting. So you're not taking a nap, just take a nap and get up. I'm just using that sort of as a way to explain it. How you get into sleep is by getting into a restful state. Do you ever know that feeling when you just turn over in bed and you just go, oh, that's such a good position now? I feel so good lying in this position. That's what rest is. You need to be able to rest before you can sleep. And if you try to jump to sleep, it's too much sometimes of a jump. So this is a little story that I use, and I've used it with people. And like I said, my wife and I both used it. So this is a story about Sammy. And Sammy is a person that works at. I don't know if they have them all over the country, but Rooms To Go is a. Is a store that they use here. So Rooms To Go obviously sells furniture, bedding, things like that. So this is a story about Sammy, and I want to introduce you to who Sammy is, so you can actually go through this process, this story in your mind, and you can add in whatever details you want. But the basic premise of the story is you want to see yourself going into a Rooms To Go, and you're going to look for the bedding department. That's where you want to go, because that's where Sammy works. And so you go into the store and you realize that the bedding is downstairs. So you have to go down some stairs to go to the bedding department. And that's where Sammy works. So once you go downstairs, as you're looking around, you can see all the beds, you can see all the stuff dealing with mattresses, things like that in the bedding department. And in the far corner is Sammy, and you can see him sitting there, and he's just resting in a really comfortable chair. So as you come in, Sammy notices you and he comes up to greet you. And he'll say something to the extent of, so nice to meet you. My name is Sammy. I'm a rest expert.

And he's got a button on his shirt, right, that says, I'm a rest expert. Now, Sammy's an older gentleman, very kind. When he shakes your hand, he uses both hands to shake your hand. He's got big hands, and it's a very warm greeting. And you want to put your own detail into this. But Sammy could be wearing sweatshirt, sweatpants and slippers. So he's super comfortable. He's not dressed like anybody else in Rooms to Go. They're all in suits, and they're trying to impress you with how professional they are. Sammy could care less about any of that. He is just the world's leading expert on rest, and he's going to tell you all about it. And so he talks about. He says, you know, I actually like rest more than I like sleep. He says, I'm actually sometimes disappointed when I fall asleep in the middle of my rest. He says, and I wake up in the morning, I realized, oh, I really enjoyed the rest more than the sleep. He says, now let me tell you how I do that. He says, so when I lie in bed, he says, I'm just focusing on that feeling that I'm getting that sensation of rest. And he says, it's really beautiful feeling if you just got into enjoying that rest. And you notice on the other side of his, Shirley has. I'm a rest expert. Ask me about rest. So he says. So when I lie in bed, he says, what I do is I start to feel the pillow between my two fingers. I'm just slowly. And you can do this as you're feeling your pillow, Just sort of the tactile touch of the way the pillow feels. He says, and then I just sort of stroke along the bed sheets, right? Even the comforter, just getting that feeling, right? That nice soft feeling. And sometimes even just the trim around the comforter, it's just got that little silky. It's sort of feel that and touch that and the idea is to use the tactile right to sort of calm everything down. As you're feeling the pillow you're feeling the sheets you're feeling the comforter the silky frim trim around it, frill around it even the bed sheets. He just enjoys just resting with that feeling it in his fingers and his hands. Now if you ever see a baby sleep you ever notice when you had our babies they when they lie in bed they love stroking the blanket especially the silky they'll always have it in their hands. It's a part of that tactile touch that softness that you're going for and you just tell your story to yourself about Sammy as if you're just sort of talking with Sammy. What else can I can I learn about rest? The idea is the story I'm telling you I've used this story and fall asleep in two minutes and you can have your your partner, your spouse actually tell you the story if you.