Everyone has told you that the human body needs a minimum of 8 hours of sleep. I’m sure that many of you have noticed that 8 hours is insufficient sometimes. Our sleep is divided into REM and NREM sleep. We dream during the REM period. If these dreams are disturbing, then even 12 hours of sleep wouldn’t suffice. So our goal is to feel peaceful and serene enough to have a pleasant REM phase. There are several ways to achieve that.

1. We all love to nap, but anything more than 20 minutes would disrupt our sleep cycle at night. Avoid naps after 3pm. They make us feel dull and out of sync.
2. Keep all the exercising reserved at least 4 hours prior to your sleep time. Any form of exercise leaves us feeling awake and alert for a long time.
3. Prefer lighter meals during dinner. Heavier meals might lead to cramps or indigestion which would leave us having a disturbed sleep.
4. Try having a hot beverage 1 hour before sleeping. Chamomile tea, Green tea with lemon and honey are very soothing. If not, you can also boil some water with carom seeds in it and add some honey to it. This also helps in relaxation as well as weight reduction.
5. 2 hours before you fall asleep, keep all the gadgets away. The light from them gives the brain an illusion of it being day time which prevents it from falling asleep.
6. Darken your room before trying to sleep. This lets the brain know that it’s time to sleep.
7. If you feel too restless, try a few relaxation videos online that help you breathe and visualize. They help a lot in falling asleep and sleeping easy.
8. A warm bath before sleeping helps too. It relaxes the body and thus sleep comes easier.
9. Avoid caffeine after 12 noon as even traces of it could keep you from falling asleep later.
10. Calm, soothing music and audio with binaural and delta beats or white noise help the body wire down and fall asleep.

These are a few ways that you can improve the quality of sleep. It will help you focus better on schoolwork, play better and just feel refreshed during the day. Once we get a better quality of sleep, even 6-7 hours of peaceful sleep will keep us going the whole day. During exams, we often fail to get 8 hours of sleep. But even 5 hours of quality sleep will help you ace your exams without feeling too washed out or disoriented. Something as basic as sleep is a powerful tool that helps us achieve success. And by using tools at your disposal to achieve optimum quality of sleep, you’re doing just that; aiming for success.

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