From: care2.com
3 Keys to a Better Night’s Sleep
How Your Heart Can Help You Sleep Better
Tip 1: Reset your inner rhythm.
Your heart beats in a rhythm. When you are worried, anxious, stressed or overstimulated that rhythm becomes irregular. The more stressed you are, the more chaotic your heart rhythm becomes. So what makes the heart rhythm smooth out quickly? It’s sincere positive feelings, like love, care, gratitude, appreciation, compassion, kindness, peace and ease. These feelings not only feel soothing and good, but they are good for you. They bring a smooth order to your heart rhythms, reduce cortisol (the stress hormone) to help you sleep more soundly and increase DHEA (the vitality hormone) so you wake up more refreshed.
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Tip 2: Have you ever noticed what happens when you go to bed without resolving a real or imagined conflict with someone? Your mind won’t stop rehashing what you could have or should have said. Your heart can help. Here’s how:
If you can, communicate with the other person, even by phone, before you go to bed. With a caring open-heartedness and latitude, try to work it out. First ask yourself if there’s something you need to correct within yourself to help the situation. Apologize if you need to and listen from your heart with an attitude of genuine care. Ask questions to sincerely understand where she was coming from, even if you think you know. If you can’t reach the person, talk about the problem with someone who won’t automatically take your side and may provide another point of view. Then talk to the person as soon as you can. Don’t chicken out. Even if the situation doesn’t resolve right away, you can release yourself more knowing that you tried.
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Tip 3: Realize that emotional reactions during the day can affect how you sleep at night.
If you allow stress to build-up during the day, it throws off your body’s rhythms and can lead to overload, headaches, backaches, indigestion, energy drain and more. Your heart generates the strongest rhythmic pattern in the body, and your brain and nervous system entrain to your heart’s rhythm whether coherent or incoherent. Shifting your heart into a smooth coherent rhythm a couple times during the day helps release stress as you go and resets your body’s rhythms for better sleep at night. Here’s how.
Take a coherence break in-between activities, at your desk or anywhere.
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To speed up the process, you can sign up for HeartMath’s Better Sleep Campaign to receive more tips or try the emWave2 Personal Stress Reliever heart rhythm feedback technology to watch in real-time when your heart rhythms shift into that smooth coherent state.
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