So you’re interested to find out more about the Insomnia Workout. Nice! I’ll walk you through the entire workout in only a couple of minutes. That way you will have a good idea of what you can do right away after you finish reading this article.

Your Insomnia Workout Plan

What we will do is to run through a couple of basic checkpoints and build a personal workout for you.  This will help you work on your specific sleep pressure points. Before we dig into this  I want to ask you to be mentally prepared to take action. There is no workout that is done after reading an article BUT the sleeptrust way is to do stuff in a way that is aligned with your personal needs. So keep motivated moving on and superb sleep will be your reward.

#1 – Build Your Sleeptrust

A fundamental thing that might sound strange to you is to work on your sleeptrust. See – the name of sleeptrust is not a coincidence. Not something that simply happened. This is the result of years of studies and wisdom from people that I will never get close to reach when it comes to their intellectual capacities. They will all tell you the same:

“It doesn’t matter if you believe that you can do it or not – You will always be right”.

Read the sentence again. And then come to the conclusion that you can believe in anything you want to. People believe that aliens are dominating this planet. So why shouldn’t we be able to change our belief in a way that we truly believe that we will sleep superb again. Of course, we can! But we have to train this – it’s hard. Honestly – if we believe in things that do not match today’s representation of reality we struggle.

Start small. Take little steps. Here is your first exercise:
Write down what you will be a superb sleeper again and add a specific date to it. Read this daily and start building your sleeptrust doing so.  Also, don’t do things that work against building trust in your ability to have a superb sleep. For instance, you don’t want to have a look at your alarm clock in the case that you wake up at night. You know that it will go off when it is time to do so. Simply take the decision to stay in bed or to get up based on how you feel in this moment.

Trust that things will be OK and eventually they will turn positive!

#2- Sleep Hygiene

After asking google about sleep disorders or sleep you probably already crossed the topic of sleep hygiene. One of the most overrated topics when it comes to sleep. Sleep hygiene can honestly drive you mad.

• reduce blue light
• don’t use your TV at bedtime
• get into a regular sleep schedule
• relax before bedtime
• don’t drink caffeine before you go to bed
• watch your inner clock / circadian rhythm
• and so the list goes on…

I believe that sleep hygiene is important. But only generally speaking as you can easily go over the top here. Here is your exercise:
Take your time to evaluate where you are standing right now in regards to your sleep hygiene. Asking google about sleep hygiene is a good starting point. From there on you should pick a couple of things that relate to you and your sleep narrowing your research down to 1-3 things that you would call a “bad habit” in your life. What we are looking to do is to replace these through a better and enjoyable “good habit”.

That’s all. I personally don’t believe that you will have your sleep breakthrough starting to wear these crazy looking glasses that can filter blue light. This is also true if you try to avoid everything that COULD POTENTIALLY  harm SOMEBODIES sleep.  The approach that we are taking here is to get a feeling of what could be relevant for YOU and to focus on changing less but doing so for the relevant things and with commitment.

#3 – Mindfulness Meditation

There are so many emotions that can keep us from falling asleep. Worries – Anger – Anxiety to name some of the most famous ones. Mindfulness can be such a simple to learn and easy tool to get us into a STATE that PROMOTES SLEEP.

And this is why the next exercise waiting for you is a simple meditation:

It’s a simple breathing technique. Sounds easy, right? All you have to do is to breathe. The method is called the 4-7-8 breathing technique and here is how it works:

• breathe in 4 seconds
• keep your breath for 7 seconds
• breathe out for 8 seconds
• repeat for 2 – 20 minutes

Start doing this breathing exercise in the morning and at nighttime before you go to bed to get the best results. You can literally do this lying in your bed as it does a great job transforming your state right into sleep.

#4 – Sleep Nutrition

I will not get too sophisticated about nutrition and diets here BUT there are a couple of very simple things that are very beneficial to improve your sleep quality. Furthermore you can use them to  easily position yourself good without harming your eating actual eating habits to much.

Here is your nutrition workout – checklist:

• no caffeine 3-4 hours before bedtime
• avoid  sugar drinks (lemonade etc.) 3-4 hours before bedtime
• eat fresh vegetables and fruits at daytime
• no fatty heavy meals for dinner
• don’t go to bed hungry (try to snack healthy if you eat before bedtime – e.g. bananas, a joghurt, cheese, vegetables)
• avoid alcohol

Don’t try to become a monk as you should aim to enjoy living your life daily and your meals are an essential part of this.  I always take care that I have got healthy and delicious stuff in my fridge that I can grab if I get hungry before bedtime. For me, this is cheese, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, olives and more. Similarly, you want to pick stuff that you find to be delicious and healthy at the same time and reduce the stuff that you would eat today.

We need so many things for a good sleep: iron, magnesium, calcium, vitamins, tryptophan, and so much more.  Creating opportunities to eat healthy will increase the intake of above vitamins & co.  and support your body with what it needs to perform not only sleep well. Give your body a couple of weeks to re-calibrate.

#5 – Bedroom Design

My first approach to this headline was “the bedroom workout”, but I thought this might be misleading. To be very clear on the topic I renamed it to bedroom design. The approach here is to actively design what we have and do in our bedrooms taking two different perspectives:

Things we don’t want in our bedroom

• work
• distraction through electronic devices
• uncomfortable environment (bed, mattress, a room in general)
• bad air
• entertainment &amp
• communication central

Things we want in our bedroom

• use the bedroom only to rest
• a cozy environment
• fresh air
• room temperature a bit cooler than your other rooms
• smartphone in flight mode and notifications turned off
• bed /mattress/blanket is comfortable
• the bedroom feels like a safe place

Pick a couple of the points from the list above and adjust them. After that expect a positive effect to take place.

Your Insomnia Workout Plan

Well done for walking through all #5 sessions with me. The next step is completely up to you. Now that you know the training plan I would recommend you simply print this article and create your personal workout from it. To do so you only need to mark the sessions and bullets that relate most to you to create a plan on how to integrate them into your present life.

In addition, you should watch to not pick too many things to change as can easily make you feel overwhelmed and subsequently lead you to quit your workout.  Above all give yourself – let’s say 4-8 weeks – to implement them into your daily routines and keep patient with yourself at this time. Missing out on a session or a complete day can happen and simply means that you correct the next day.  At some point, you will feel the magic happening! I believe in you and I’m sure you will improve your sleep dramatically following your personal insomnia workout plan.