There are two times of day when we are procedural-meaning we do things based on a routine. Routine is doing the same thing the same way. Another word for routine could be ritual. We have our waking rituals and our sleeping rituals.
When we are in our procedural brain, we are not thinking, we are on automatic pilot. We have established a protocol and we simply go through it.
If you are having trouble sleeping, and it's a new issue,
1. take a look at your night time ritual and see if you have inadvertently changed something in your routine. If the answer is yes, change back. We need our routines to establish safety.
If the sleep issue has been an issue for awhile now,
2. look at what the routine was when you were sleeping well.
3. When did you used to sleep well, and what was the routine then?
4. Have you dropped any part of the night time routine that you might require at an unconscious level to give your brain/body the message that now it is time to go to sleep.
We have an internal circadian rhythm that is a twenty four hour cycle that affects the physiological process of all living beings, including plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria. We have an internal biological rhythm and it can be thrown off kilter by any number of things including changes in light, temperature, barometric pressure, electromagnetic shifts, geopathic stress, emotional tension, travel, and more.
If you are very sensitive, changes in weather patterns can affect your sleep.
If you have never slept well, look at what the night time ritual was when you were a child, for a clue to what could be out of balance. This works whether it is your internal child that can't sleep, or your own child that has a sleep issue.
There are several things you can shift and some of it is you.
1. make going to sleep a routine/establish a clear ritual. "Now we get ready for bed." "Now we do this, then this then this." When you have clear procedure, with clear expectations, it establishes safety in the mind and body. You know what is coming next. And listen to your internal dialog as you are doing this-if your background voice is saying "I'm never going to be able to get to sleep" while you are trying to talk yourself into it-who's voice is that one in the background?
2. make it safe to go to bed, and not a punishment. Forget about the old "go to bed without supper" punishment. If you link punishment with bed, or bedtime, you are going to establish a troubling confusion later.
3. make the bed for sleep only. Don't watch tv from bed, don't eat in bed, and don't work in bed. Bed is for sleep. And remember: your children will do what you do and not what you say, so if you do any of these things-break yourself of the habit. Eat at the table. Work in the office. Sleep in the bed.
4. Keep the bedroom sacred. Don't send them to their room as punishment. We used to use the laundry room which in our home was just off the kitchen. It was someplace that wasn't fun and wasn't so far removed that it was considered Siberia. By the same token, a time out was 2-5 minutes and it was so we could both catch our breaths! It wasn't for hours on end. Keep it short, and bring them back to love.
5. Blow your nose before sleep. Add this to your/their bedtime ritual because if your nasal passages aren't clear, your oxygen levels will be off and this will interrupt your sleep.
6. Cuddle. Safe touch raises oxytocin levels, and relaxes us. Cuddling, stroking and holding all relax the body unless there are other factors. Petting animals too, will do it. So, cuddle with the cat and the dog to relax. Pet, don't go play frisbee at 9pm.
7. Allow for more winding down time. Don't plan activities right up to the brink of bedtime. We need time to do nothing. Read, watch some tv, do a puzzle, journal about the day, take a slow walk around the block before bed. If you are over scheduled with activities, it's much harder to shift gears to bedtime.
8. Notice when they are sleepy naturally. Are they signaling sleepy before you are ready to put them down? Establishing bedtime at a reasonable time helps. Children need an earlier time to bed than adults, but many many adults are not going to bed early enough. We have over-scheduled our days, and we are teaching our children to do the same thing.
If we pass our natural sleep, we can have a harder time making ourselves go to sleep. My youngest son would come up to us and say "I'm ready for bed" when he was little. It would always be 9pm and he would already have his pjs on. While this is unusual (he's a Virgo) all children are actually saying it in some way. This son has never had a sleep issue. He knows when he is tired, and he heads for bed. But his bedtime was often earlier than 9pm and we would miss it for one reason or another.
He also wasn't just saying "I'm tired" he was saying he was ready for his bedtime ritual. We would go up, brush teeth, then lay together on his bed and cuddle. We would pick 3 beanie babies from my basket and they would tell us both how their day had been. Then they would read a book with us. He would put them on his shelf above his bed for the night, we would send blessings to everyone that popped into his head, turn out the night-light
(I would always be saying 'are you sure you don't want a light on which was MY issue, and he would patiently say 'no mom, no light)
and he would turn over, close his eyes and be asleep before the door closed.
Our beanie baby ritual established a diffusing of the day's stress and separated 'this is what happened in the daytime' from night time.
As an adult, you might try journal writing.(But do it with a pen and paper-journaling on the computer can throw you off for up to two hours from the light affecting your eyes-true.)
On the other hand, part of our morning ritual was and still is, sharing our dreams, and by doing this, if there had been a rough night we were saying it was ok to talk about that too. Messages from the unconscious come up during sleep and dialoging about dreams is a great way to begin to decode the dream-time symbols. And saying it out loud helps you to understand.