If you wake at night, skip the bathroom trip and try the 4-7-8 breathing technique: inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. Do 10 to 12 cycles. The counting and controlled breathing lower your heart rate and help you fall back asleep.
What do I do if I wake up in the middle of the night? First thing I tell people to do is if you can avoid it, don't pee. If you gotta go, please go to the bathroom. But a lot of people, they wake up and they don't actually have to go, but when they go from a lying position to a seated position to a standing position and they walk across the room, it elevates their heart rate. I have people help put themselves back to sleep. My favorite way to do that is with something called 4-7-8 breathing. It actually does 2 things at the same time. Number one, you're counting. So you count 1, 2, 3, 4 to breathe in. You count to hold till 7, and then you count to 8 to push your breath out. But while you're counting, you can't think of anything else. Also, if you're breathing while you're counting, that's lowering your heart rate. If you can get to 10 to 12 cycles of this, it works fantastic. Then you just kind of come with the breath, and then all of a sudden, before you know it, the natural sleep cycle is taking over and you fall right to sleep.
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