As a teenager, I often stayed up all night watching TV, and then I slept when I was supposed to be in class. I got depressed, I was failing academically, and I was struggling to maintain supportive friendships. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the importance of good quality sleep, and I have gradually developed a set of tools that help.
In the last few years, I have also been helping my wife, Cindy, to sleep more effectively. When she was a little kid, she was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and beaten (she has no idea why). This led to years of insomnia in her teenage years, and then extreme difficultly getting to sleep and staying asleep as an adult.
When Cindy and I started sleeping in the same bed, she would lie awake for hours even though I would fall asleep in less than five minutes. Throughout the night, she would often startle awake in a state of panic. She seemed to be suffering from PTSD. My desire to support Cindy in going to sleep more quickly and sleeping more deeply has motivated me to continue to learn about and experiment with approaches to improving sleep. Because we use the tools that I list in this article, Cindy now falls deeply asleep within ten minutes on most nights, and she sleeps like a log all night.
Because of the way we feel after sleeping well, we all know how important quality sleep is. This…
