Ms. Love stretches and does deep breathing for 15 – 20 minutes.
Engage the five senses
A warm drink can help — if it’s sugar-, caffeine- and alcohol-free. Ms. Love — who prepares organic foods without excitotoxins (substances that trigger the neurotransmitters) and preservatives for dinner, around 6 p.m. — drinks mushroom lattes, which are “warm and cozy and help me wind down.” Before bed, Ms. Panton drinks something warm in winter and iced in summer, “with antioxidants,” and likes turmeric chai tea. Ms. Dahl drinks lemon balm tea.
As part of her multistep skin care routine before bed, Ms. Panton does facial cupping, for better circulation, and ends with the facial-massage technique gua sha, pushing a hard, curved tool around the contours of her face for lymphatic drainage.
Latham Thomas, who is a Brooklyn-based doula and the founder of Mama Glow, a maternity lifestyle label, uses diffusers for essential oils; Ms. Panton prepares her bedroom for sleep with her company’s essential oils, a blend of lavender, eucalyptus and frankincense, which she created during a trip to Joshua Tree National Park.
The signature sound of the bedtime routine might be a selection from the Calm meditation app’s “Sleep Stories,” or the white noise of an air purifier, which Ms. Love has in her bedroom, or something more ethereal. Ms. Thomas recommends humming for people who feel they can’t meditate. “It’s like an instant drop-in,” she said, and also “allows you to extend your breath even longer than regular meditation breath.”
Turn off the light
The blue light emitted by digital screens could be the most essential part of our tech-poisoned daytime lives to address in a bedtime routine. Dr. Winter said, “The blue-green light is interacting with your pineal gland to block melatonin,” which is why “a cellphone in your face at night is preventing you from making melatonin to help you sleep.”
Ms. Love uses blue-blocking glasses, like those familiar from the 1980s (and then, inevitably, the mid- to late 2000s), and sets her MacBook and iPhone to switch to Night Shift mode in the evening; before bed, she puts her phone in Airplane mode, and unplugs the Wi-Fi to limit exposure to electric and magnetic fields.
Source : Nytimes
