Do you get enough sleep?
Part of living a healthy lifestyle should not just be about what you put into your mouth but also making sure you get a good 7 to 8 hours sleep per night.
I know I go to bed too late. This week I have given myself a bed time of 10pm (I have only 15 minutes until bedtime as I type this post now), however I just love this precious, still time in the evening. I savour it. The thought of going to bed early feels like a waste of this special time I seem to enjoy so much.
I had to ask myself why I did relish this time so much? After all I do work most evenings and recently have found myself working past midnight and nearing 1am on weekends with the silly season approaching.
After some thought I knew my answer. My evenings became a time where I was alone to work at a pace that was my own. No phones ringing, a stagnant inbox, zero children’s demands and nowhere to get to. They allowed a catch up and that feeling of ‘being on top’.
I had gotten into the habit of staying up and working late. To change a habit we must form a set of new routines in order to develop and essentially replace an old habit with a new one.
This led me to think of my bedtime routine. What could I do to further my state of relaxation? Currently I burn one of my lavender soy candles in my room while I read. I listen to a mindfulness meditation before falling asleep. However there must be other ‘things’ I could add to my bedtime routine to ensure that my late night working doesn’t effect my ability to form a deep sleep.
This was the start of the development of the new LT Lavender Pillow Mist, which finally launched on Laura Thomas Linens last week. Made with pure essential lavender oil, a couple of sprays around pillows and bed sheets before getting into bed increases your quality of sleep.
Lavender is a flowering plant in the mint family. It’s strong aroma has been shown in human studies to;
“to slow down heart rate, slow blood pressure and put you in a parasympathetic state, which is a relaxed state,”
Scientist Tiffany Field, Uni of Miami School of Medicine.
Lavender is gaining some respect in scientific circles. When brain waves
were monitored in a lab in a 31-person sleep study in 2005 at Wesleyan
University in Middletown, Connecticut, whiffs of lavender in vials (cylindrcal glass containers) changed the
quality of sleep compared with distilled water smelled as a control by
the same subjects on another night. The lavender increased their amount of deep sleep.
