How Cultivating Mindfulness Will Help You Sleep

Proper sleep is elusive, too often our heads hit the pillow but remain inundated with work related thoughts. With our jobs occupying an ever larger portion of our time, and productivity becoming the name of the game, it’s detrimental effect on our sleeping habits is getting worse.

Productivity isn’t the only thing growing in popularity, meditation is making its way into more lives. Perhaps in a response to our overwhelmed minds, more people are turning to old Buddhist traditions to help clear the mind and more. Many benefits have already been shown for mindfulness — improves focus, reduces stress and anxiety, can make you happier. We can also use it to get to sleep.

Mindfulness is the act of focusing on the present moment, it can be a general way of being in which the present moment takes presidency over future planning or daydreaming, but it is also a form o meditation, whereas some focus on their breath, other use sounds, but again the idea is in keeping the attention on the present moment. Huffington post explain it’s origins:

The origins of mindfulness trace back thousands of years within Eastern philosophy and religious practice. Mindfulness meditation is a?core element?of Buddhism. Over the past several decades, we’ve seen widespread acceptance and enthusiasm for many ideas and practices of Eastern traditions into Western culture. Yoga is one such practice. Mindfulness is another.

Because much of the stress around work rests in our minds continually running through what needs to be done in the future and looking back at regrets or mistakes, using mindfulness to combat this at important times — such as when our heads hit the pillow — can help us to stop fussing over other times and simply live in the present. The rest of the article helps illustrate how mindfulness can help specifically with sleep, although it can do plenty more than that.