Pampering yourself is essential for your mental and physical health. It clears your mind of stress and helps you relax. Moreover, taking time to pamper yourself before you go to bed is an excellent way to help you prepare for a good night’s sleep.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a perfect life, a great job, and a beautiful home. It’s great if you’re working hard to achieve what you want. But if you wish to endure for the long haul, you need to take care of yourself too. You may not have the time to pamper yourself during the day, but there’s no excuse not to do so before you go to bed.
With a full-time job, it can be hard to find the time to focus on self-care. Good quality sleep is an important factor when it comes to taking care of both your body and your mind, but there are other ways to relax and pamper yourself before turning off the lights for the night. While a spa day might be ideal you don’t necessarily have to spend a lot or even leave the comfort of your own home to treat yourself. These are ten easy ways to treat yourself right so you can start the next day on your best foot.
Relax With An Aromatic Bath
The warm water will help soothe tired or aching muscles. Time in a hot tub can provide other benefits like lower blood sugar and pressure, reduced anxiety and headaches, as well as improved sleep. Try mixing Epsom salt into the tub for an added therapeutic effect. Additionally, essential oils are well known for their mentally and physically therapeutic properties. Adding 10-15 drops of essential oils like lavender, almond, ylang-ylang or sandalwood can increase the benefits of your bath time by targeting skin issues, internal and external inflammation, insomnia, and stress.
Just Add Candles
For centuries, candles have been used in ceremonies and meditation to bring a peaceful, calming ambiance into a certain space. The blue light emitted from electronics right before bed can disrupt your sleep and provide long-term negative health effects. Shutting off or dimming the lights for a few hours of calm in a candle-lit atmosphere to help reset your natural sleep rhythms.
Drink Something Warm and Soothing
Whether its hot tea, cocoa, cider or warm milk with honey a warm beverage can put you right to sleep. Experts commonly recommend chamomile as an aid for those who suffer from insomnia. There are even perfect blends of different types of teas to help you go right to sleep. If you’re not up for flavored beverages before bed time, you can drink warm water instead. It’s also a great feeling to flush out all the food and flavored drinks you’ve taken the entire day.
Download an App
The app store offers many free and paid apps for calming meditations, white noise generators, body scans, hypnosis, and sleep stories. You might be surprised how well you respond to instructions and regulated breathing techniques. Working an app into your nightly routine can help shorten the time it takes you to fall asleep and may even help with relaxation techniques throughout the day.
Just make sure that you won’t get disrupted by email and text messages when you’re using your app. You may want to use a separate mobile device for your personal apps to avoid combining them with your work smartphone. In this way, your stress from work or a recent breakup won’t be triggered before bed time to promote a better good night’s sleep.
Unwind With Entertainment
Now that your body is relaxed, it’s time to kick back and relax your mind as well. Choose something that allows you to unwind and escape. Draw your thoughts away from your worries at work or otherwise. Listen to your favorite music or jump back into your favorite book. If you prefer a new tv show or a classic movie that can be equally as rewarding, but keep in mind that exposure to a lot of blue light from screens all day and right before bed can make sleep more difficult.
Meditate
Meditation is the practice of intentionally quieting the body and focusing the mind. It has proven physiological changes similar to what happens during sleep. Your pulse slows, stress hormones decrease and your blood pressure drops. There are several types such as guided, concentration and mindfulness. You can easily practice for shorter amounts of time before building to 15-30 min sessions.
Gourmet meal
Treat yourself to a warm healthy meal a few hours before sleeping. Don’t go to sleep hungry, instead put that ‘food coma’ feeling to use. A good gourmet meal can hit just the right spot. Seafood, almonds, carrots and certain other carbohydrates are all good especially good sleep aids.
Eating the right food a few hours before bed time can also benefit your sleep. Of course, you need to make sure that the food is healthy to strengthen your immunity. According to a trusted source, the kinds of food that can help promote sleep include kiwis, malted milk, tart cherries, nuts, fatty fish, and rice.
Take care of your body
Feeling good on the outside can lead to feeling even better on the inside. Use your favorite lotion or try a new exfoliating scrub with a delicious or relaxing scent. Choose products with natural, essential oils instead of synthetic fragrances, especially at night. This is one of the best ways to pamper your body and go to bed washed free of the day’s stress and grime. You can even try a face mask while you read a book or relax in the tub.
You can also take care of your health by taking supplements. For instance, food supplements with magnesium can help you sleep better because this micronutrient is easily absorbed in the body and helps calm the senses, reducing stress, anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Other food supplements recommended for better sleep include iron, Vitamins D and E, melatonin, and chamomile supplements.
Pillow Spray
The Body Shop offers a relaxing dreamy pillow mist. Something you may not have heard of before but it essentially another method of aromatherapy. It dries quickly on your pillows, sheets or body but releases bursts of chamomile and jujube date fragrances to keep you in a sweet slumber through the night. It claims to help promote a truly tranquil sleep experience and some have even reported better dreams.
Snuggle Up In A Perfect Bed
Finally, make sure that your bed is as welcoming as possible. You want the right mattress to support your back and maybe even regulate your temperature at night. Keep a few sets of spare bedding and wash your sheets once every week or two to ensure they are clean and fresh when you come home after a long day.
Taking the time to your body needs to relax and recuperate from the demands of a long work week is invaluable and will undoubtedly be beneficial to your productivity, mental and physical well being. Find the right combination of techniques above to design your ideal pampering routine that you can look forward to on the way home every night.
