Did you know that 50 to 70 million Americans have sleep disorders? Isn't that an amazing or astounding
number? But I'm not really surprised because I hear this from a lot of my clients. I myself do
struggle with sleep sometimes. And so today's episode is about the ultimate self-care evening routine
for deep and restful sleep. Let's get into it. Before we get started, I want to share with you
something new I just created. It's called the ultimate self-healing toolkit. It comes with a
audio download of my stress less meditation. It comes with a burnout recovery checklist.
It comes with a shadow work journal with over a year worth of journal prompts. It comes with a
nervous system reset guide with over 20 somatic practices that you could do today at home.
So this is a complete package to help you heal from stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout.
So go to the show notes and grab your free toolkit today. Okay guys, let's get into today's episode.
You're listening to the Seoul Aligned Self-Care Podcast. I'm your host Tina Stinson and I had a
stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout that shook my world. Now I'm laying it all out.
The deep level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that can be healthy,
balanced, and thriving. Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience,
and a soul's journey to alignment. This is where real conversations about deep level self-care happen.
Let's get into it.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Seoul Aligned Self-Care Podcast. This week we are continuing
the self-care routine series and we're talking about the ultimate self-care routine for deep
restful sleep. Now this is obviously something that is needed because as I shared at the beginning
of this podcast that 50 to 70 million Americans have sleep disorders which is disturbing because
sleep is so important and it really affects our health. Now I'm going to be very openly honest with
you guys. Most of my life I've slept really good. Like I don't really have trouble sleeping, but
right now because I am going through menopause, my sleep is just not what's the word. I don't know,
I can't always count on myself to have a good night's sleep or I shouldn't say myself because I
feel like sometimes it's out of my control, but as I will openly admit it's not and that's what I'm
going to talk about today. So like I'll have nights where I sleep pretty good, pretty solid. Most of
the time I have trouble sleeping because of like hot flashes and night sweats that just continuously
wake me up like on and off all night. And so most of the time I sleep pretty good but every once
and while I just have a night where I don't sleep at all and it really has like a profound effect
on my life. I used to be able to handle it when I was younger, you know, not sleeping great maybe
for one even two nights. Now I have one night I don't sleep well and I am just off. I'm so I don't
know about you guys, but I am off the next day. So that's what I'm struggling with right now. So I've
decided to really focus on how I can improve my sleep. Now I know all the things I'm supposed to do
and I'm pretty sure you know a lot of them too. I hope I could offer you maybe some new things that
you could try on today's episode. But one of the things that I think is really interesting
about myself and about other people is that we know what we're supposed to do but we don't do it.
Which is what the lot of things like we know we're supposed to exercise, we know we're supposed to
eat well. We know we're supposed to do all these things but we don't do them anyway. And even though
not sleeping has such a profound effect on the way I feel the next day, it's almost as if I went
out binge drinking all night or something. That's how I feel, right? I still don't do all the things
and I'll tell you why I think I do this. Okay. So like I know that I shouldn't be scrolling on my
phone right before bed, but I do it anyway. As a matter of fact, sometimes I scroll on my phone
until I fall asleep, which is like the worst possible thing you do. I sleep with my phone next to my bad.
Okay. Like there's all these things I do. Sometimes I drink caffeine like well into the day, you know.
And everybody has a different reaction to caffeine. We all kind of process it differently. Some people
keep it in their system longer than others. But I know for a fact that if I cut back on caffeine,
it would be helpful. I know this. Okay. So one of the reasons I think I don't always do these things,
like you know, two hours before bed shutting the TV off, not going on my phone at all, doing those
things is because, you know, I work hard all day and at night I just want to do what I want to do.
You know what I mean? Like I want to watch my TV shows as long as I freaking want. Like I don't want
anybody restricting what I want to do. It's almost like the way a little kid, you know, reacts to having
like rules. Okay. And then I want to scroll on my phone. Like I don't scroll on my phone most of the time
during the day. And I want to do my little, you know, TikTok scrolling and just I don't want any limitations.
You know, I don't want anyone telling me what to do, including myself. And so I just want to have this
down time. You know how you like you look for a TV show to watch that is kind of like you don't need
to think to watch it. It's just kind of like that down time that you need for your brain. Even though I
know scrolling on my phone is not down time for my brain, it's just like that pass of kind of thing
you do that helps you like disassociate from like your life, you know. And so I think that's the real
reason that I don't do all these things even though I think it'll be life changing for me. So for this
week, you know, this is the self-care practice for the week. So if you need a self-care practice to focus on,
I'm going to ask you to join me in focusing on improving sleep even if you sleep pretty good.
Maybe you don't get enough like deep sleep, right? Maybe you're just lightly sleeping. Maybe you
can fall asleep, but you don't stay asleep. Maybe you go to sleep and you sleep really good, but you wake
up really early, you wake up at three o'clock in the morning. Okay. I definitely have that happen.
Now one of the things I learned about the three o'clock in the morning thing is that is when your
cortisol just begins to rise to wake you up, right? So it's normal. Cortisol is a hormone that we all need.
It's not all bad, right? And it slowly rises and it like slowly wakes us up. That's what it's supposed to do.
Now when you wake up at three o'clock, a lot of times it could mean that you have too much cortisol,
like you have high cortisol and it just like jolt you awake instead of like easing you into your morning.
And I think that's probably definitely what I experience sometimes and I think a lot of people
also experience this. So keep that in mind as we move forward with today's episode.
Well, what happens during the sleep that's so important to us? So I'm going to just give you some
like really basic things because I am not a sleep expert, but I think I would like to find a sleep
expert to come on the show. So if that's something that you would like definitely reach out to me on,
I guess the best place to reach out to me is either on my Patreon. You can leave me a message there
or you could also leave me a message on Instagram and both those links will be in the show notes.
So like if you don't follow me in those two places definitely go follow me. Yes, you could follow me
for free on Patreon. That's something new that they do now. So follow me definitely in both those
places. I am more active on Patreon than Instagram. So I would love to hear from you. Like if that's
something that you would like me to do have a sleep expert on definitely reach out to me because I'm
going to start looking. I think that's something that would be very beneficial to most of us.
So what happens during sleep? So one of the things that happens is our brain detoxes. Our
lymphatic system clears out the toxins. I kind of knew this because I did read a book about sleep once
a long time ago and that alone is a good reason to make sure you get enough sleep. The next thing is
your hormones rebalance. Your cortisol drops, your melatonin rises. Also very important. We're not
getting enough sleep. Our cortisol might just get really, really, really high and that really
affects your sleep, right? So very important. And your body repairs muscles. It consolidates memories.
So I really, I mean, I never really thought about it. It makes sense that your body repairs muscles,
but I never really knew that's what my body was doing as I slept. Also it consolidates memories like
what? Like, so there's a lot going on when we sleep, all right? And it's really important. And the
consequences of getting poor sleep is the next day we could have brain fog. We have more cravings.
Did you guys know that? Now I've noticed this about myself that if I have like, don't sleep at all,
I do. I like crave like, like, I would say I crave like, glutinous food, just like bread and stuff
like that. So I crave carbs. So I definitely noticed that about myself.
So long term, what happens is you gain weight. Your immune system is weakened and it actually
accelerates aging, right? So, okay. So all these things really make me want to do this more.
And I am committing, even if it makes me super uncomfortable, not to scroll on my phone at night,
I am committing to this this week. And I am on next week's podcast, I'm going to let you know how I did
if I stuck to it. And I'm also going to let you know how I feel and any noticeable differences
that I have. And I would love for you to do this with me, okay? I also want to point out that a lot of us,
you know, especially the type A's out there. And I'm definitely one of them. Sometimes
when I am doing working on a project that I really want to get finished or I have a lot of work,
I have to do. I'd rather get the work done than sleep. But sleep is so important. It doesn't mean
that you're lazy. It's just a necessary component to a healthy lifestyle. So I want you to kind of
also reframe the mindset that, you know, hustle, hustle, reframe the muscle, hustle mindset into
you're more powerful when you sleep. You're going to be more powerful, more successful when you sleep
more productive, okay? So let's get into some of the things that we can do before we go to sleep at night
or maybe just throughout the day that will help us sleep. So the first one is a 90 minute winddown.
So this is the digital detox. So 90 minutes before an average bedtime for you. So I would say for
me an average bedtime during the week would be 10 p.m. Okay? So this is about trying to stay off of
anything that has like blue light. So turning the lights down in your house, staying off your computer,
staying off your phone, maybe not even watching TV. You could use those, I guess you could use those
glasses that block out the blue lights. I don't know how effective they are. You could even light a
candle instead of having your lights on. So it's like a little, like a little ambiance and really,
I think that really would help relax the energy in the room, okay? And I think I might try this. I
have no trouble shutting off the TV. There's not a lot of good things on TV lately. So I have no trouble
doing that. The phone thing is definitely going to be my struggle point. So tonight I am going to
light a candle, shut most of my lights out. I have twinkle lights that I have up kind of over my windows.
So I might just have those on and maybe light a candle. And the next thing is the scrolling,
like giving up the scrolling. I'm going to swap it out for reading a book or writing in my journal.
I'm a very avid reader so I always have at least 10 different books that I'm reading at once.
And so I have plenty to choose from. If you're tired and you don't want to read, maybe listening to a book,
you know, as long as you're not staring at a screen, I feel like you could listen to the book.
I don't feel like that would be overstimulating, okay? So that might be something that I go to.
Environmental tweaks that you can make. So the ideal room temperature for sleep is 65 degrees.
Like I have no problem with that. I don't use air conditioning in the summer. You don't really need it
when you live in the mountains. There are some days where it gets super hot and you know, maybe like
two weeks total that I'm willing to work through instead of sticking in air conditioning in my window.
I love hearing the outside sounds. I live in the country so there's always, you know,
there's the birds, there's the frogs at night. It's just the crickets. Like I love all the sounds,
just the wind blowing. I'm not willing to give that up, okay? And I feel like that would be helpful.
Now, if you have to sleep during times when the light is out, when it's light out, I would think about
getting blackout curtains. Some people like white noise. That's not something I really need to sleep.
I think the room temperature is important for me because of like what I talked about earlier with
the hot flashes and the night's wets. It's like crazy sometimes. How I'll just be hot. Like I feel like,
like I'm like on the surface of the sun. And then two seconds later, I'm like shivering because
I'm all sweaty and then I get cold. So it's like this vicious cycle. And I feel like
trying to find that perfect temperature and wearing like the perfect clothes and having the perfect
comfortable blanket or just having the sheet. So like set the stage for yourself to sleep. So like
that might be some of the things I do. What's like the perfect thing for me to wear when I go to sleep?
What kind of blankets do I want to keep on? What temperature do I want? You know, like how can I make
this more comfortable for myself? Now another thing is just making kind of like that somatic transition
for your body. Your body needs to know that it's safe and that you're ready to wind down. So just
like a little routine. It could be a shower or a bath. It could be a light yoga stretch, you know,
which is something you could do instead of scrolling or watching TV. Legs up the wall pose,
which you could look up on YouTube if you don't know what that is, is really, really, really
relaxing. Now one of the things that I like to do at night is I also like to do this in the afternoon,
but is a yoga-needra meditation. I think that yoga-needra meditations are absolutely one of the most
powerful things like life-changing things that I've decided to do. So they call it non-sleep deep rest.
That is four times more restorative than naps. So when I have one of those nights where I don't sleep,
I will do yoga-needra in the afternoon when I start to crash because it gives you that deep rest
without sleeping. It's like you took a power nap. Most yoga-needras are around 20 minutes long and
they can be as long as 90 minutes. If you have trouble sleeping at night, they're very beneficial.
So I am not trained in yoga-needra. I'm actually doing a certification right now and I'm also
going to do another certification probably in June or July because it's been so helpful to me.
It's like one of the best meditations. I used to have trouble meditating, especially for a long
period of time. It would be hard for me to just sit through a five-minute meditation. Yoga-needras
are one of the most relaxing things I've ever done and I just love it. One of the things I do is
I'll do like an easy stretch, like a yoga stretch. I'll do like a short 20, 30-minute yoga class.
It's all stretching, very chill and then I'll do a yoga-needra right after that and right that right
there sets me up. It really sets me up for just my body is ready to relax and I don't just do this
at night. I do it during the day sometimes like if I'm stressed or like I said I didn't sleep all
the night before. It's so powerful. I can't recommend it enough. I will put my favorite yoga-needra
person in the show notes. Her name is Ali Booth. I'm not sure if I'm going to say this right. I think
it's Boothroyd or something like that. But I'll put a link to her YouTube channel and that is who I'm
going to be doing my training with later on in the summer and I love her recordings. There's many
you would find many free recordings on YouTube but hers are my favorite. So excuse me. One of my
favorite ways to do a yoga-needra is to get really really comfortable. I think that's really important.
So like after I do my yoga stretch, whether it's a yoga full on yoga class where I get all sweaty
or if it's just a yoga stretch, I make sure that I'm warm enough because when you sit still for a
certain amount of time you get cool. So I like kind of put my socks back on and kind of get dressed. I
always have a blanket. Sometimes I cover my eyes with like an eye like mask. I get as comfortable as
you possibly can and make sure you're not going to be interrupted and just to make it more powerful.
Now another thing that you could do to wind your body down is 4, 7, 8 breath and or a lot of different
types of breath work you could use. But 4, 7, 8 is inhaling for four counts, holding for 7 counts and
then exhaling for eight counts. And I would do that for at least four rounds to settle down the body.
But just slowing down the breath and making sure your exhale is double the length of your inhale will
help you relax your body. So this is a great thing to do once you get into bed to really calm the body
down. Now let's get into some other things that can affect your sleep that you wouldn't always
normally think so. So all the food that you eat and the things that you drink have a pretty
profound effect on your sleep. So avoiding alcohol which disrupts your REM sleep and caffeine after 2
pm. Okay. Now everybody's different when it comes to caffeine. Some people kind of metabolize it
very quickly and it's out of their system. Some people don't. Sometimes it stays in your system
really long. So the key is to really know yourself. Like I know as long as I drink coffee before like
three, I'm good. Now I used to be able to drink coffee and then go to sleep. Like but that was my younger
self that had a different hormone structure in her body. And so now I think caffeine stays in my
sister longer. Maybe my metabolism has slowed down and so that's why I'm not sure the reasoning of it
but I can definitely feel it pulsing through my veins if I have a cup of coffee at like dinner time
and I try to go to about a 10. Now if I know I'm going to be up late, you know like Sam going to
like a family gathering. We're going to have dinner. We're going to be up late. I don't mind having a
cup of coffee at you know after dinner. It's kind of like you know part of the whole social hour you know
what I mean. And so also there are times where I just want to have a good time and enjoy company with
friends and family and I'm not going to let's like like like micromanage myself. I'm going to drink alcohol.
I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to do what I want. But the majority of the days when I'm just like
you know it's a regular week and I have to work the next day. You know definitely avoiding alcohol and
caffeine is really important. Now I notice now that I am in you know going through menopause that
alcohol affects me completely differently and I feel really really shitty after I drink too much
the next day. And so I'm really careful not to do that now because I don't want to feel that way.
I just don't. So some of the things that you could switch over to are like you know an herbal tea.
Like I drink a lot of herbal tea because it's my way to be stay hydrated without having the caffeine.
I don't like drinking a lot of water. I just I don't know why I just don't like drinking a lot of water.
It's like really boring. Also in the winter I can't drink a lot of water because it just makes me
so cold. So I drink herbal teas. Another thing that a lot of people talk about is tart cherry juice.
Now I find it to be absolutely ridiculously expensive and I don't like anything that's sour.
So this just doesn't for me. What it does is it adds like a natural melatonin.
Right. Now there are different teas that can help you sleep at night like chamomile tea.
I like drinking like lemon balm, tall CT, chamomile. Like all these things that are going to really help
chill you out. Okay. You could have a magnesium rich snack. So like pumpkin seeds, a banana.
People a lot of people use as magnesium sprays or you can take a bath with magnesium bath salts.
I find that to be very relaxing. And a really nice part of you know settling down in the evening.
Like I talked about earlier. I like to take a bath. Maybe do a yoga stretch. And so I usually always have
like bath magnesium bath salts in the house, but I just don't have them right now. So maybe I'll
like switch over to having like a little like pumpkin seeds. I always have those in the house.
So another thing that I want to point out that is not the norm. And I'm not sure why we eat like this.
But a lot of us eat three meals a day and our biggest meal is dinner for the majority of the people
in the United States at least our biggest meal is dinner, which I don't know. It doesn't really make
sense to me. You know, I did this when I was raising my children and you know, but now as an adult,
I live by myself. And so I can eat the way I want. And what makes sense to me is to have a big meal
for breakfast and lunch, you know? And it really just depends on how I feel, what day it is, like what
my workout schedule is. You know, if I'm doing heavy workouts, I'm probably not going to have a big
breakfast because I'll eat breakfast after I'm done with my workouts. So I'll just have a smoothie or
something. But I will have a really big lunch. But like the smallest meal to me should be dinner,
right? Because we don't need all those calories later in the day. Also, we have to digest that food.
And our body is working to digest it and you could have stomach upset, you could have gas.
Like all these things can come up when you have a big meal right before bed and it can keep you awake.
So like eating a small meal for dinner just makes more sense for me. Now I remember when my kids
started getting older and they were still in school, what would happen was they would come home from
school and they would just, they were hungry, right? So they would snack and snack and snack and snack.
And then I would cook the biggest meal dinner and they wouldn't really eat it because they've been
snacking since they got home from school. So what I started doing because, you know, my schedule
allowed it was I started cooking dinner like early so that when they got home from school,
there was a meal ready for them and they could eat it right down there. And then they could snack
later instead of having dinner later, right? Which just makes more sense, doesn't it? And I think
they liked it too because it was something home cooked ready for them when they got home. Now I wasn't,
you know, very religious about this like it didn't happen all the time but I tried to make a point
to do this and I think that it was brilliant and I think it's something that kids need when they come
home from school. And if you have the ability to be home with your kids, if you're lucky enough to
have that, like I always feel like I was very privileged to be able to always be home with my kids.
You know, I was a stay at home mom for years and then even when I did work, my schedule, because I
was self-employed, my schedule allowed, you know, I allowed myself to be home at that time. And so if you
have that ability, creating like a nice meal when your kids, so when your kids get home, when they
are really, really hungry, like they were just at school a day, they were working hard at school,
they were doing all this stuff, right? Sometimes the kids go to like practice after school, if they play sports,
they come home like starving, you know, so just have it ready when they get home, you know.
What else that I want to talk about? Let me see what else that we have here. So, oh, this is really
important. So nighttime anxiety hacks. So a lot of times at the end of the day, our mind is so busy,
right? It's just like you're thinking about all the things that happen that day, you're thinking of
all the things that you have to do, you think of all the things that are coming up, you have like
all these things like going swirling around in your head and you can't fall asleep, right? And it could
just be personal things, it could just be the state of the world, it could be so many different things,
it could be worrying about your kids, whatever it is. So it's really good to use some of these different
like wind down routines. One of them is what I call brain dump journaling. Now a lot of you might have
heard of this, but basically what you're doing is you're just gonna write out everything that's going
through your head. It does not have to be grammatically correct or spelled correct, it doesn't even have
to be legible. It's just about taking everything that's swirling around in your head in that moment
and putting it on paper, okay? Now after you get everything out of your system, all your complaints,
all the things that you're pissed off about, all the things that you have to, you know, think all the
things that are going through your head. Then I want you to write down all of your to-dos,
right? Because you know how when you're going to bed and you're like, oh my god, I have to remember
to do that tomorrow. Oh my god, I have to remember to do that tomorrow. Like sometimes when I'm in bed,
I actually get up and go over to my desk and write down some of these things, right? So it's good to
have like that journal next to you, write down all your to-dos so that your brain can just like let it
go. You're just get your emptying out all of that craziness that's going on in your head, right?
You're emptying out all of that, all those things that are swirling around in your head. So
and you're just putting it on paper so that you can go into sleep, relax and feel and good.
Now another thing that you could do is the breath work. You could do the yoga,
knee-drameditation, but I think one of the most beautiful ways to go to sleep is to end your day
with gratitude because that'll be your focus as you fall asleep. And I think that's just a great
thing to be focusing on when you're going into sleep and dreaming and all that stuff. So it's
basically just say to yourself, "What is one thing that happened today that I'm grateful for?"
And just think about it and you know, "Why are you grateful for it? How does it feel?"
Like go through, like it doesn't have to be a list of 10 things. Just one thing that day you were
grateful for. And that practice comes from a book that I read that I can never remember the name of.
It was actually a manifestation book, but it's such a beautiful practice and she actually said
to take like a crystal or a stone. So if you're a crystal person, like I have all these stones,
I just grabbed one right next to me and I keep one at my bedside. And so when I see that, it reminds
me to do this practice, okay? And it's just a wonderful way to go into sleep. Now if you also have
trouble, like grounding and like winding down and getting back into your body,
I would definitely suggest listening to a meditation that does like progressive muscle relaxing or
you know, just kind of wind you down slowly. You know, it definitely makes a difference to me sometimes.
I feel like the breath work really works really well. Just taking like five deep breaths before
you settle down to slow the body down and to really get grounded is so helpful. So just to kind of like
recap, we're going to do the digital detox. We're going to try the yoga, Needra. We're going to
try to do a magnesium snack. I'm going to like limit my caffeine and alcohol and you know, maybe
add things to my routine like turning all the lights out and taking a bath, maybe a yoga stretch,
just doing like reading books instead of watching TV, writing in my journal. Maybe even I didn't
mention this, but maybe even doing some art if you like drawing or anything like that. So I really hope
that you do this with me, but either way, I'm going to kind of go over next week and share with you
what kind of effect this had on me. I am so like adamant about doing this. Now one of the things I
just want to talk about before I hop off is that some of these practices like the yoga Needra and the
meditation involve having your phone with you. So just limit the amount that you're staring at your
phone. If you need to use your phone for a meditation or like or the yoga Needra, that's fine. You know,
I do not set an alarm when I go to bed. I don't usually talk on the phone. I don't usually text
message people. I don't have like a bunch of people text messaging me. It doesn't wake me up when
somebody does either for the most part. So I don't think it's bad having my phone next to me when I go
to sleep. It's not disturbing me. I think the bad thing I do with my phone is scrolling on TikTok, which
is insanely addictive or Instagram or any of the social media apps. So my goal is to not be looking at
my phone with my eyes and not no scrolling. So I feel like I should set like a time limit to when I
can't scroll like maybe no scrolling after dinner. So I think I'm going to stick with that. So let me
know if you're doing this with me by following me on my Patreon or on my Instagram and messaging me
and let me know if you're in. If you're going to do this with me. As I said earlier, I'll put Alley's
YouTube page for the yoga nita and definitely as I spoke about at the beginning definitely go and
download your self-healing tool kit. It's totally free and it's absolutely amazing support for you.
All the stuff that you could do for yourself in the comfort of your own home in your in your own time.
Okay guys, I love you and I will see you next week. Bye.
