Hi everybody, Robin here and I am so excited to be back with y'all for another episode
of Dear Headspace.
Now today I am joined by Dora and in the spirit of National Sleep Awareness Week we got
questions for you that are all related in some way to sleep.
So we'll be talking about restless leg syndrome, we'll also be talking about binging on YouTube
or other comedies before you're trying to sleep and we have a question about when your
neighbors are making noise and keeping you up at night.
I am exhausted just thinking about that loud neighbor.
Alright, so let's get to it.
Let's see if we can offer some solutions to these folks.
Here we go.
Have you ever wished you had a wise meditation teacher on speed dial?
Someone you can call after a long day.
Someone you could lean on for their advice.
Someone to listen and help you to see things differently.
Welcome to Dear Headspace, a podcast where I sit with a meditation teacher and we answer
your questions.
Alright Dora, you're looking fabulous, you're looking well rested, which is good since we're
going to be talking about sleep.
Oh yeah, I did get a nice eight hours of sleep last night.
So thank you for listening.
Your traditional is eight hours?
Eight to nine hours.
I sleep well.
I sleep good and I sleep a lot.
Some would call it escapism but I just need my rest.
Listen, we're doing the best we can.
Alright.
And listen, today we've got a tired group of callers so I think we better get right to
it.
Alright, here is our first question from Mayan.
Hello, this is Mayan from India.
My question is that whenever I'm tired, I feel a lot of urge, a lot of craving to
binge on comedy videos, comedy movies.
And whenever I do that, what happens to me that I feel more drained down.
I do not feel relaxed, I do not feel fresh and I mess up with my sleep.
So my question is that can you please suggest me some good wind down routines when I've
had a very long hard day at work and I'm very tired and I feel like doing nothing.
What, what wind down routines can I follow that will help me go to sleep?
I feel like I'm going to go to sleep early and help me feel fresh the next morning.
So that's what I want to do.
My end, this question is real.
I mean, Dora, I want to hear if you're better than me.
I already know you are.
But like I can open up the Instagram Reels or TikTok or YouTube shorts and I can just scroll
and scroll and then turn around and 90 minutes went by and I'm like, what happened to my
life?
And that's not restful.
Yeah, not at all.
I have been since I was very young, a person of structure and routine.
I remember when I was in the ninth grade and my mom had traveled and I had friends over
before we went to a party and I'll never forget this, but my friends made so much fun of
me because I had a calendar on my wall and it was like 6 a.m. wake up, 605 brush teeth,
610 wash face, you know, like breaking down my morning and my night routines.
And that's just how I've always lived and I think that when it comes to sleep, having
routine is so, so important.
Ridiculous.
It's critical.
Yeah.
And the interesting thing is that we all have a routine, whether we know it or not, so
your routine, what it sounds like is before bed, you scroll and you fall.
Scrolly, scroll, scroll.
Yeah.
And so it just takes a little bit more intention of like, how do I want to feel in the morning?
Okay.
I want to feel refreshed.
What can I do the night before to feel that way?
And I'm big on creating the environment for sleep to happen.
So in my bedroom, it's like strictly for sleep and it's always been that way.
My phone is charging and my kitchen.
I don't have any electronics in there.
You know, I have my diffuser with lavender oil, no TV, no screens, red light.
Like I have that environment.
You have that built it.
Yeah.
Because I recognize if I don't sleep, I'm not a nice person.
So yeah, it's taking a while for me to like hone in on what works best for me, but I would
say creating structure and a routine around your sleep is so important.
And we just relaunched the sleep program on the headspace app and I learned a lot about
sleep there.
And one of the things that the doctor, researcher, had shared, Dr. Eric Prather, I believe
his last name is, but one of the most helpful things we can do, which isn't a big lift,
is waking up and sleeping at the same time every night.
Yes.
And that can really help.
Which I had no idea that was a thing.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
I also want to point out that creating, again, that environment of like letting your
body know like, hey, we are about to wind down.
Like what can you do?
Maybe an hour or two before bed where you're preparing your mind and body to rest.
So sleepcast are a really great way to rest.
If you do need an audiobook to listen to like a nice adult bedtime story, but I think
finding like two or three things that are practical to do and starting there, getting
better sleep is a lifestyle change.
It's not just a, you know, one thing and then it's going to work out.
It's like you have to change your entire life.
Like there's things I miss out on on the weekend because I'm like, I'd rather sleep.
Yeah.
Like I don't want to be out till 4 a.m. like I'm going to sleep.
Right.
And you know, some people may not have an understanding of that.
There may not be as much compassion, but again, it's like I'm making certain lifestyle choices
in order to protect my sleep because I know how valuable it is for me as an individual.
So well, and my end is sort of calling himself out there.
He knows what he's doing isn't the best thing for him.
And it doesn't mean you have to give up your comedy shorts that maybe help you unwind
and stuff, but it does mean maybe there's a limit that you say I don't do past this
amount of time or, you know, like I talked about this on a previous episode, like when
you have a baby, they tell you to start giving them cues in the house to bring the lights
down to do all these different things so that they start to understand it's time to go
to sleep.
I'm pretty sure my parent in the 70s did not do that for me.
So I had to teach myself that.
But you can bring the lights down if you have all overhead lights.
Maybe you turn off the overhead lights and you just have a side lamp on.
And like those kinds of things that just your body starts to know, like, oh, it's the
end of this one thing and now moving into this.
Yeah.
And I love what you said about the awareness piece.
Like, yes, there was a lot of awareness in that question.
And I think it's also important to know that similar when you force yourself to meditate,
you can't force or shame yourself to sleep.
That's just going to add more tension, right?
More tension and like more rumination or spiraling than is going to cause more ease and
peace before you go to bed.
So self-compassion, right?
If you are embarking on this journey of wanting to get a better night's rest, like,
give yourself grace because again, it's a really big shift.
Even sleeping an hour earlier is like a really big difference.
So I would say noticing as my end did about, you know, I'm watching a lot of shows before
bed and I'm binge watching movies and in those moments that you notice that, how are you
meeting yourself there because that is, it could be an invitation for compassion or it
could be an invitation for shame.
Yeah.
So seeing if you can really treat yourself as a friend and I love that, I love the like
vision of like, baby in yourself before bed, like setting up your home, maybe getting
some hot tea instead of hot milk, like whatever you need to do to create that environment.
Yeah.
Even looking at your day, because I think that also contributes to your sleep, like, do
you drink caffeine at 5 p.m.?
Do you exercise?
Exercise has been linked to getting a better night's rest.
Like, what does your day look like?
Are you eating right before bed?
I know that's also a really big thing.
I have an orering.
I've had it for the past five years and it tracks your sleep cycle.
Yeah.
And I got it because I was really, I dream a lot and very vividly and intensely.
And so I wanted to know like, how much REM sleep am I getting?
And I noticed that when I was eating right before bed, my REM sleep would decrease like
significant.
Really?
So interesting.
And then when I wasn't eating right before bed, my REM sleep was like so, so, so, so,
so high.
So, yeah, noticing the things that you do throughout the day that also interrupt your
sleep, because that it's all interconnected.
Yeah.
Even just like the quality of the things that you're watching, like what, what happens when
you watch like a calming nature video versus like, I don't know, Mad Max, like an action-packed
video and see if that has any impact on the way that you're sleeping as well.
Little small things like I'm, I'm not going to say like stop watching TV and meditate before
a bed.
Like do things that are feasible for you in this moment and work your way towards those
things.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thank you for your question and sleep well, Mayan.
Yeah.
Sweet dreams.
All right.
Let's take our next question from Edie.
Hi.
This is Edie calling from New Hampshire.
I love head space.
I've been meditating now for over two months to help with sleep.
It's been very beneficial.
My issue is I live in a rural area.
There are people that target practice shoot guns.
It's annoying because it's usually on a Sunday afternoon or on the weekends and it's
on a beautiful day.
It's kind of disconcerting because it's echoing.
But yesterday, new neighbors that moved in, I can't see their house.
I was working in the garden and suddenly I heard rapid firing and I wasn't able to sleep.
I woke up with it this morning.
Thank you.
I hope you can help.
Oh, thank you for that question, Edie.
I mean, there's a lot in there.
There really is.
We're talking about sleep, but we're also talking about communication with neighbors.
There's just, I think for me, that's probably where I would start is on the communication
piece.
I live in an apartment, but I do think it's similar.
It can be dicey, but can there be kind of like, hey, our houses are, I know they're not
on top of each other, but it's the sound echoes.
That's a loud sound and it can be disruptive.
Yeah.
Now I'm actually struggling with my neighbor that lives underneath me.
But first he was mad at me because I make so much noise, but I don't, I know myself,
I'm not making noise at all.
I can't imagine you touching your feet, touching the ground.
I, well, they are, but I'm not heavy-footed and he would come up to my apartment and tell
me to be quiet.
Like, during the day, and I was like, this is like apartment living.
Even if you could hear me, you're not, we're all in this together type of thing.
And there's quiet hours.
Yeah, and it took me a few months to even tell my landlord, like, hey, you know, I live
by myself.
There's this guy that comes up and tells me to be quiet.
And I don't want this to make things awkward because it potentially will, but I just wanted
to let you know for like a thing of safety, you know?
And so she called him and she told him, like, hey, it's apartment living.
She can hear you as well and just be mindful of that.
And this guy, his bedroom is right underneath mine.
So he bangs on the wall, he'll be like crying or like laughing hysterically.
I go to bed at like 9 p.m. every night and like from 8 to like 10 p.m.
I can hear him.
And it's been a really big practice for me of compassion.
Like I've never had to practice so much of my life.
Until now where I'm like sending him loving kindness, I'm like, try and remember this
is a human being, just like me, you know?
Like all these different things that we do as teachers and that we train in.
And still I'm just like this.
I'm like, this is wild.
Yeah.
I mean, sometimes like I live on a very, very busy road in Brooklyn.
And you know, in the summer if the windows are open, it's so loud or they'll be, you
know, there's a museum nearby that has like a free night that's very loud or horns
or you know, it's just, and I've had to, I've had to make exceptions or adjustments to
what I have to do.
You know, I like that you're first starting with loving kindness as a practice.
But I've had to add in things like I, I mean, if I don't even know what I look like when
I go to bed door, like I got like, I got like, I got like wax ear plugs.
I have like one of those like sleep masks with the headphones in the side.
Like I just, it's not cute.
Like let me just say that.
So it's like sometimes there's the world that you can control, like calling the police
and being like, should someone be firing an AK 47 in the woods at 10 o'clock at night?
No.
But then sometimes there's like, okay, I can't control that.
But what can I change and do so that I don't, I will go down the rabbit hole of the
injustice of it all.
And that's, I'm not sleeping then.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, not at all.
And yeah, I think that's really important to remember like, what can you control?
And Eve actually sent me an Amazon link to those like round ear plugs to you.
But I like to know what's going on in my environment.
So I actually don't like sleeping with ear plugs.
But yeah, setting up your room or setting up your home in a way where you can control
your environment, you know.
Yeah, a white noise machine or white noise on your phone.
Like those are, those kinds of things are helpful.
It's just, but there's something about that like staccato like, man, but that, you know,
that you're going to be hearing in the middle that I think like disrupts you.
And that can get your heart racing and stuff.
So what, what are you as a meditation teacher and as a former nurse?
Like what are your thoughts on what can you do when you, you are thrown out of bed?
You're woken up and you need to calm yourself down because I've tried like breathing in
those moments.
And I don't find it to help me.
I don't know.
Yeah.
This was last year.
Like, what is time?
But last year I took a neuroscience of sound program and I was learning how to like,
therapeutically play like singing bowls and swinging times.
And I learned a lot about sound in the nervous system and how sound has such a great impact
on our nervous systems.
And from an evolutionary standpoint, one of the ways that we are able to detect, detect
if we are safe or in danger is through sound.
And so when we hear things like alarms or baby crying or gunshots, right, that sends
us into fight or flight.
And that system of the body is activated.
And so I learned how to play the singing bowls, but finding things to then soothe your
nervous system in those moments is really, really helpful.
So I like soothing touch where I'll just like give myself a hug and rub my arms.
If I do wake up in the middle of the night and my neighbor is banging on the walls, you
know, loving kindness, compassion practices, humming is a really great way to soothe your
nervous system.
So taking a deep breath and on the exhale, making a hum sound and that activates the vagus
nerve, which is in charge of that rest and digest part of the body.
Who would love that?
Yeah.
And so my favorite thing to do is just to hum.
And even from like an ancestral point of view, like humming has been such a beautiful
way to make people feel safe.
So yeah, tending to your nervous system.
So and I like what you had said with the first question about, I know it may be hard, but
like getting out of bed and trying to find something to do, whether it's, you know, drinking
a cup of tea or whatever your jam is to feel safe and to feel at home in your body, I think
would be really helpful as well.
One of the underlying things in this question for me that comes up, my initial instinct is
to be like, but I'm not the one who's doing it.
You are the one.
And I had this very good friend of mine once we are at this restaurant and I was sitting
in this guy just kept like hitting me with his chair.
And I kept, I was like giving him the three quarter turn.
I kept looking and I kept, I was more aggressively looking.
And then my friend just reached over and grabbed my hand and said, honey, move the chair.
Move your chair.
And I didn't want to move the chair because I was not doing anything wrong.
But then who's living with it?
That guy probably for Margarita's in doesn't even understand what he's doing.
And I'm the one who's carrying this whole burden.
So it's like, I know that some of the things we're suggesting are putting some of the
own spec on you, Edie, like, shoot, I shouldn't have to like rearrange my house.
He should stop shooting an AK 47.
Yeah.
Probably true, but we should also not have people starving or like we live in a world
where there are things that are happening that we have to sometimes work around.
So maybe that is helpful to approach it from just where you started, Dora, the loving
kindness place.
Like that's such a, like such a wonderful thought.
Yeah.
I mean, in the reframe of that is like, I find that so empowering to know that I actually
have a choice in all of this.
Like it's not the end all be all because I have decided to move my room from where it is
into my second bedroom, because I'm fortunate enough to have them.
But again, I'm like, I'm not, there's things.
There's possibilities that exist in this moment that I can do and I can make a choice
to wear the earplugs or to send loving kindness or, but when we are in those moments of high
stress, it's hard to see, you know, it's really easy to get stuck there.
And I love that you said, like someone had to remind you because when you're really in
it, you're not able to see those possibilities.
Like there was the possibility and it was so far away that I was not ever seeing it in
this lifetime.
That's not mad at us.
I had wound myself up so high.
Yeah.
And imagine there's so many other things that we approach in that same way, you know?
Like there's so many other things in our lives that are like, there's that thing that's
rubbing up against us.
And it's like, we actually have choice here.
And we're being invited to choose to respond differently, but also choose to get free
in that moment.
I think that's so liberating.
Like, oh, I'll have to do is move my chair or I'll have to do is move my bedroom or put
ear plugs in or listen to white noise.
Like, I'm not held captive to this one scenario, one situation.
I can actually do something about it.
Yeah, that's so powerful.
That is so powerful.
And Edie, we hope this helps you sleep and we hope you get a good night's sleep the whole
night.
Yeah.
Yeah, sweet dreams.
Everybody's sweet dream.
Yes.
I'm like, oh, it's hard.
All right.
We'll be right back.
Okay, let's listen to our last question from Anya.
Hello.
It's Anya from Germany.
I have problems with meditating because of my restless legs.
The most disturbing condition for a first-class success.
I just before sleep, I during sleep, so sometimes I can wake up at night and feel my restless
legs and very difficult to fall asleep and in this situation, an invitation can't help
me to fall asleep again because of restless legs.
I don't know how to handle it.
Could you please maybe give some suggestions for that, Alex?
Well, thank you so much for this question on yet.
I'm going to tell you, Dora and anyone who's listening, I to suffer a little from the
restless legs syndrome.
I do feel like it's one of those syndromes that people are like, is that real?
And it really kind of is.
It's like, I call it twitchy feet.
It gets it especially before sleep.
And that can be the worst because it's just like, it'll get worse if I lean in in any
way.
If I start to panic about, oh, my God, here it comes.
It just gets worse.
And then I could definitely really struggle like being able to sleep.
And then on your soul, also talking about it, sitting, which that'll come up for me sometimes
on airplanes.
It's like a claustrophobic feeling and I start to feel the twitch come on.
So it's, I do also think it's connected to hormones because there's like, I could track
it through my cycle and pregnancy.
And when I started Manipause, it got significantly worse.
So I don't know if that's something to maybe start with is to look some points like because
there's the cause of it.
And then there's what you do with it or about it.
Yeah.
I think it's when I was working in the hospital, I was working in addiction.
So people that were obviously in withdrawal would have it, but it's also tied to the high
anxiety and stress.
It could even be linked to deficiencies in the body.
But I like what you said about, I don't like that you experienced this, but you've mentioned
the panicking that happens when you notice it.
And I think this is a point where we can turn this into a practice, right?
So what if instead we were able to look at our relationship to that and even make the
restless leg a part of our practice by just noticing those sensations instead of being
like, I don't want this thing to happen or get it away or trying to avoid it.
First of all, the story.
Yeah.
If we just brought our full attention and awareness and like just rode the wave of that
sensation in the body of it happening, what would happen then?
Okay.
So this is Robin who's not a great meditator who's coming at you with this.
Okay.
When I put my attention on it, I find that that's when it gets worse.
That's when it's like a full blown thing comes on.
But then I'm definitely clenching and panicking my way through it.
So you're saying let go.
Let go of that.
And when you notice it, I don't want to assume, but you're probably looking at it based
on a point of judgment, right?
But instead, definitely.
Yeah.
I'm like, I need this.
I'm not going to sleep.
How can we just be curious and compassionate knowing that this is going to happen?
This is something that you've tracked on your phone.
You know it may show up when you're sitting, when you're meditating.
So you know it's going to happen, right?
How can we then meet it with a sense of curiosity and compassion rather than why is this thing
here?
I hate when this happens.
Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada, all the different stories that we add to it that probably
makes it worse.
But just noticing it as if you were, I don't know, noticing a friend or appreciating something
in nature and cultivating that same sense of presence to it as well.
I'm going to probably need you to say about seven hours more around that because I just
like, it's so clear what you're saying, but I also have this feeling of like, but how?
That's a practice, right?
You can read all the books and all the work.
I can't you hear right now.
Let's not make me drink all that work.
That's the thing.
It's work.
It's a practice.
There's nothing better than lived experience.
So yeah, I'm going to invite you and you as well, Arnia, just to see if you can be with
that sensation in a way that's non-judgmental.
It's the judgmental piece that really starts to make things worse and adds more attention
and stress in the body.
Yeah.
Well, I have a completely non-mindfulness, possible like, sometime solution.
And it's what I can't believe I'm going to say this out loud.
Say loud to the crowd.
So not only am I sleeping with the ear plugs and the purple, you know, eye shades with
the headphones, I have these turquoise blue socks that separate, they separate my toes.
I love those kind of socks.
I hope you have the shoes, the vibrance shoes and they spread your toes.
Robby.
What?
They're the greatest things ever.
They're me sleeping like this with the purple headband and the turquoise and then like
my wife being like to think I thought someone would steal you away.
The toes spreading socks.
There's something about that.
And I will say this though that like I've started putting them on like before the twitching
comes and then just being with it.
And then so I am being with it a little and then seeing what happens.
So I am being with it a little doora.
And the other thing I'll say, especially if this is showing up in your meditation practice
and I find this a teacher Wednesday night meditation class.
And it's so interesting when we're done meditating, do you like exhale of people, it's like
they weren't holding their breath while we were meditating.
I always remind people you can move if you're meditating.
People just think it's about absolute stillness and I'm like, if you can't feel your hip
and that's distracting you from the meditation practice, move.
Lie down, stretch your legs out, move your arms and you can still do that with a sense
of awareness and mindfulness of what you're doing in the moment.
And it still counts as meditation.
But I find people are just like holding it all together and can't even like move their
eyebrow or I'm just like move the body.
It's okay.
And I wonder if like to that end, if like when on your meditating or even struggling just
before to go to sleep, like could you get up and do a little walking meditation, whether
it be around your apartment or like in the morning instead of like a seated meditation
so that there's movement because I do know that movement of the feet helps like like
it's almost like when you have a muscle spasm.
So like maybe something in the movement as well as bringing tying that into the mindfulness
as well.
Yeah, change positions, do yoga, stretch the body before you sit.
I really love the progressive muscle release technique.
Oh yes.
Use a part of your body for a few seconds and then exhale and let it go.
So trying that, I believe we have exercises in the app as well.
But yeah, moving the body, movement is so good and so necessary and even with yoga, yoga
traditionally was created to help people sit in stillness.
So all those movements that people do, it was to invite people into the sitting practice
of meditation.
So yeah, some light stretching, downward dogs, child's pose, whatever it is that you need
to do.
But yeah, I think the not being able to move in meditation that needs to be, I don't
know, debunked or yeah, yeah, that's true.
Like I love that you're talking about like movement, you're talking about, you know,
not judging it.
But also I think that there's an education piece underneath of maybe trying to understand
why it's happening because because you're right.
Like if I like some of it is hormonal for me, but like I'm certain that when I'm on a plane,
it's anxiety, not because I'm afraid of flying, but because I'm just like, I just want
to, I want this to be over and I want the flight to be there.
I can't, there's nowhere for me to go.
And then I can't sleep on planes.
So then I start winding up and that's just all 100% anxiety.
Yeah.
So sometimes I'll walk the aisles or I'll go stretch in the back of the plane just to do
stuff like that.
But the understanding like helps me like there's a physical component to it.
There's an anxiety component to it.
There may be this is coming on because of hormones and me knowing that trifecta of reasons,
I can then troubleshoot what it is that's happening.
Yeah.
It's also see a doctor.
If you need to get tested and get your levels checked, like I do see doctor, you may find
out.
You may find out that there's other things going on in your body.
So you know, I meditation can only help us so far.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm not going to tell you to meditate for everything.
Sometimes seeking medical medical advice is really important as well.
Yeah, that's true.
That's very true.
We do sort of, I think sometimes I look at it like, well, can't meditation fix that?
And it can always help, but that can't fix everything.
Yeah, I can.
It's a nice complimentary practice.
But especially when it comes to like physical illnesses in the body, it's like do both at
the same time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Anja, just like we've said to the other sleep well, I wish you, I wish you a wide
and separated and comfortable toes.
Yeah.
Wishing you wide and separated toes as well.
And I think for all of the listeners today, one of the beautiful things about meditation
is this highlighting or understanding of our relationship to thoughts, emotions, sensations,
our bodies, the world.
And when it comes to sleep, understanding our relationship to it, I think will be really,
really beneficial.
Like all of the questions today were like looking at our relationship to TV watching
or to sound in our environment or to our legs.
But taking time to really understand that relationship can be really empowering and ultimately
help us find a solution.
Yeah.
And it's just like sleep habits, I think we think should be intuitive.
And I don't know that they always are.
Like sometimes it's like we have to look into ourselves and be like, how do we, this
is just an extension of self-care.
Yeah.
For sure.
Yeah.
I think, yeah, we said that for the first question of like you may have to rearrange your
entire life.
And that's the hard part about it.
Well, I'm going to start practicing all of the stuff that we talked about.
My good sleep hygiene starts now.
Well, all right.
Well, later tonight.
So, all right.
Thank you for all of your wisdom, Dora.
And thanks to our callers, Mayan and Edie and Anya.
And if you have a question about sleep or literally anything else, go ahead and reach
out to us.
We would love to hear your questions.
And all you have to do is head over to say hi.chat slash to your headspace to record your
question.
It is so easy, I promise you.
And that link is in the show notes.
And if we use your question in the show, you're going to get three months of headspace for
free, which is, in my opinion, a pretty great deal.
It is a great deal if I do say so much.
I do say so much so.
So, also.
But yes, as always, please reach out with your questions.
I love this podcast so much because I love answering questions, but also it just reminds
me that there's just so many things going on in life and so many things going on in the
world.
And just an awe of people's courage and vulnerability to ask these questions.
So, appreciate you all.
And now we have the soothing sounds of a laundry mat just to help you to relax, to integrate
and process everything that we have shared on the show today.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy these ambient sounds.
Until next time, stay happy, stay healthy, get a good night's sleep, and be kind to yourself
and each other.
Bye.
