At the end of a stressful day at work, it can be difficult to unplug from responsibilities, or emails, or phones and wind down for sleep. Meditating before bed can help you relax your body and your mind for a restful night of sleep. They can be especially helpful for people who suffer from insomnia or anxiety that makes it difficult to sleep at night. Here are some of the best guided meditations for sleep. Show
Note: these meditations are meant to guide you to sleep and you may fall asleep while doing them. Instead of listening and meditating in a seated position, you will want to get ready for bed and lay down before you start. Sweet dreams! Guided Sleep Meditation Countdown
If you prefer to listen to the guided meditation on MP3, it is available to purchase from Amazon here. Meditation for Insomnia and Sleepless Nights
Floating Amongst the Stars – Guided Meditation for Sleep
If you prefer to listen on a CD or MP3, this guided meditation is available to buy from Amazon. Gentle Rain Guided Sleep Meditation
Bedtime Zen – Sleep Meditation
Want more guided meditations? Check out our other
recommendations: If you find stress and anxiety makes it hard to sleep, try these self-care techniques to relieve stress before bed to help you transition to sleep. Squash cravings with these healthy late night snacks. If you’re looking for a way to track your stress and use guided meditations and breathing exercises to calm down, check out meditation and stress trackers to help increase your mindfulness. Save on Pinterest The best guided sleep meditation audio will help relax your mind and body and facilitate a faster onset and duration of sleep. Sounds good, no? Worries and fears always seem to creep into our minds in a major way right as we settle into bed. But if you’re tired of waking up with anxiety or sweating in your sleep, there is something you can do to combat that. “Any meditation that is focused on sleep will generally be helpful,” says Abhinav Singh, M.D., and the medical director of the Indiana Sleep Center. Although, the doctor adds, “not trying too hard is the key.” It's cause and effect, simply put. According to Dr. Singh, most guided sleep meditation promotes relaxation, which in turn helps anchor a busy mind: “Anytime you can achieve this, you will be in a better position for allowing sleep to come to you.” There are a lot of different sleep apps out there, but guided meditation for anxiety is a unique—and incredibly low-lift—way to try and get a better night's rest. So how do you choose the best guided sleep meditation for you without, as Singh says, trying too hard? Here are 10 of the most recommended, highly rated, and accessible ones. Relaxation meditation apps can be helpful for a variety of things, but the ones below will be especially useful around bedtime. Sweet dreams. (And if you're still feeling to awake, try sleep music?) Mindful The recommendation for mindful.org comes from Tamara Teragawa, registered yoga teacher and lead yoga teacher for Xponential+. Before bed, she’s a fan of self-guided mindfulness meditation and short body-scan meditation (a practice that brings attention to your whole body as a way to focus the mind). She finds both on the site, but here is a free example of a night meditation created for sleep specifically. “Good sleep is just as important as eating healthy and exercising regularly to achieve optimal health,” Teragawa explains. “When your body tells you it needs rest, slow down and make a solid sleep routine priority, and notice how much better you feel and perform in other areas of your life.” In addition to the bedtime meditation, she recommends also exercising, getting into a bedtime routine, and avoiding your phone and television before you hit the hay. Headspace Teragawa also recommends Headspace for deep sleep guided meditation. There’s a 12-minute one you can sample here. “These types of meditations can be a short, three- to five-minute routine or stretch out to 45 minutes or longer, depending on what you are looking for,” she says. “They allow you to slow down, connect to your breath and body, and recognize what you need to truly help relax.” A free trial for Headspace lasts two weeks if you select the annual membership for $69.99. A monthly membership, which comes with a seven-day trial, costs $12.99 each month. Calm Calm is a free-to-download app that offers a free weeklong trial membership and then costs $69.99 a year or $14.99 a month. (There are also lifetime memberships available for a onetime fee of $399.99.) The app proudly boasts more than 100 million downloads and more than 1.5 million five-star reviews. It features a variety of meditations with some geared especially toward enhancing sleep—although meditation of any kind can be beneficial for overall relaxation. “Focusing your attention on something in the moment [can be helpful],” says Dr. Guy Meadows, who cofounded Sleep School and its corresponding app, which uses acceptance and commitment therapy to help users sleep. “Aim to notice the rise and fall of each breath moment by moment. Each time your mind wanders onto worry, practice gently returning to focusing on the breath and the present moment. Remember, the intention is not to have an empty mind but rather to train your skills at noticing and letting go of difficult thoughts. Scientific research shows that daily practice 10 minutes per day for eight weeks can quieten down the mind.” The Honest Guys There are a number of guided sleep meditations available for free on YouTube. Though using a video platform for your bedtime routine runs counter to Teragawa’s no-screens advice, there is a benefit to using free options, especially for beginners just getting the hang of the practice. The Honest Guys' guided sleep meditations come with relaxing stills that rotate periodically, and they even have livestreams available. While paying a fee can keep you accountable—why pay for something you don’t use?—the trick to keeping on track with free meditations is to develop a routine. In fact, that’s a tip many experts recommend for better sleep overall, with or without guided meditation. Sleepio’s Dr. Vicki Creanor tells Glamour that if she has to pick one word to describe what makes for good sleep, it would be consistency. In addition to using the guided meditation of your choice, consider structuring your entire day so sleep comes easier. “Consistency in terms of when you go to bed and when you wake up,” Dr. Creanor says. “Consistency in terms of having the same routine at the same time every night to help your mind learn it’s time to wind down. Consistency in terms of keeping caffeine to the early part of the day and in getting enough exercise. The brain loves routine; it is necessary for it to get into a pattern, and when the mind and body is in a pattern that is predictable, it’s much easier to sleep.” Dr. Tara Brach In addition to the aforementioned Calm and Headspace, Janet Kennedy, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and the founder of NYC Sleep Doctor, recommends Dr. Tara Brach’s online programs for those wondering how to calm anxiety. Brach offers free meditations and asks only for donations to keep her content, produced for the Radical Compassion Institute, operational. Kennedy also warns not to be too hard on yourself if you don’t get the hang of guided meditation for anxiety and sleep: “Meditation is a great way to calm the mind and body. It's a great way to separate from the intensity of the day before going to bed. I recommend meditating before bed, but not necessarily in bed as a sleep aid. Meditating with the goal of falling asleep can backfire if it doesn't ‘work,’ leading to more anxiety. The ideal routine would be to meditate and then read fiction as a strategy to engage the mind elsewhere while the body prepares and takes over with sleepiness.” Aura Aura is an app designed to “transform your well-being, sleep, and life.” It aims to do that with breathwork, psychology, poems, gratitude journaling, life coaching, stories, music, and, of course, meditation. It has a 4.7-star review, based on 27,000 ratings, on Apple’s App Store and more than 5 million users, and personalizes the user’s experience with a custom quiz on sign-up. You can even pick the accent you prefer to hear your sleep meditation in. Aura provides a free seven-day trial, then costs $59.99 per year. Jason Stephenson Another popular producer of guided sleep meditations on Spotify is Jason Stephenson, who also creates healing music and audio affirmations. The South Australian creator has more than 90,000 listeners every month and has put out a heavy volume of work over the years. His work is also available on YouTube. Gabby Bernstein Gabby Bernstein creates shorter meditations that are more upbeat than some. When you sign up for her email list, you get access to free ones, but her full-length albums cost around $10. Meditations to Calm an Anxious Mind, for instance, costs $11.11. Her meditations are also great for exercising, because they’re so upbeat. Teragawa and Creanor both recommend regular exercise to improve sleep. As Creanor says, “It helps with our deep sleep, which is important for learning and for healing the body.” Why not meditate while you sweat to double the benefits? Get Sleepy Get Sleepy is another podcast available on Spotify and iTunes that offers not only guided sleep meditation, but stories as well. The episodes come out regularly, just a few days apart, and the Slumber Studios production does bonus episodes around special occasions, like the new year too. Lauren Ostrowski Fenton Lauren Ostrowski Fenton’s guided sleep meditations are available on YouTube, and they get straight to the point. One is called, “Fall Asleep So Fast: A Guided Meditation to Help You Fall Asleep Fast.” Another, “Simply Straight to Sleep Now.” Her videos on the platform have amassed nearly 38 million views since she joined YouTube in 2009, and she has 169,000 subscribers. Instead of charging them, she asks for donations. Her website lists some meditations for sale, too. Those include “Fall Asleep Quickly Deeply Now” and “Melting to Sleep.” Lindsey Ellefson is a New York City–based writer and reporter. How do you meditate in bed for anxiety?Here are the basic steps of meditation:. Find a quiet area. Sit or lie down, depending on what feels most comfortable. Lying down is preferable at bedtime.. Close your eyes and breathe slowly. Inhale and exhale deeply. Focus on your breathing.. If a thought pops up, let it go and refocus on your breathing.. Who is Stephenson guided meditation?September 27, 2021. If anybody is not familiar with Jason Stephenson, with over 2 million subscribers on YouTube, he is one of the most followed meditation teachers in the world. Not only does he put out regular content, but he also has an entire library of YouTube-hosted meditations of all different types.
Does sleep meditation help anxiety?Meditation has many potential benefits for sleep, as it has been shown to reduce anxiety, depression, and pain5. Overall, reducing stress6 may help you get better sleep. Sleep meditation usually incorporates soothing, calming sounds or music, which can contribute to a relaxing environment.
Do you suffer from sleep anxiety?Sleep and psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety, often go hand in hand. If you have an anxiety disorder, you may find it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep. Similarly, if you have a sleep disorder, you might feel anxious or fearful before bed because you're afraid you won't get the rest you need.
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Free guided meditation for sleep and anxiety jason stephenson
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