Practical strategies for helping your nervous system ease you into sleep

Sleep is something that is so foundational for all of us, yet for many, it can be quite elusive. In part one of this blog, I explored an important fundamental shift in the way we think about sleep. While many articles on sleep focus on environmental and behavioral strategies for improving sleep (such as avoiding screens and blue light, not eating too late at night, etc.), I offered a look through the lens of the autonomic nervous system.

Foundational to sleep is helping our nervous system shift out of protection mode (e.g., fight-or-flight) and into rest-and-digest mode (controlled by the ventral vagus branch of our parasympathetic nervous system). Instead of trying to fall asleep, as if we have to achieve something (which can create more tension and striving), we can focus on creating the conditions for our nervous system to feel safe. From here, sleep can happen naturally.

Part two of this blog explores some practical strategies to do this.

Strategies for helping the nervous system feel safe enough to fall asleep

Here are some of my favorite strategies:

1. Take opportunities during the day to reset. Rather than waiting for bedtime, take a few minutes throughout the day to hit the reset button and remind your nervous system that you are safe in this moment. Spend a few minutes in nature or looking out the window at greenery; try the Quick Coherence technique (focusing on a positive or renewing emotion like appreciation or care while imagining breathing in and out through your heart area); write down some moments of gratitude or try some of the strategies below, building them into the course of your day.

These mini shifts to downregulate your nervous system can help counter the accumulation of stress. Even taking just a few minutes out of your day can shift physiologically what is happening in your body. Small moments matter.

2. Send cues of safety from the body up to the brain. This can be helpful at any time, and certainly while lying in bed. Try taking regular (gentle) inhalations through the nose and long, slow exhalations through the mouth, through pursed lips as if blowing through a straw (up to twice as long as your inhalation). This breathing pattern can calm the sympathetic nervous system and activate ventral vagal pathways of your parasympathetic nervous system.

Try a progressive muscle relaxation, gently squeezing and then relaxing muscle groups, starting at the feet, then lower legs, upper legs, and working all the way up to the facial muscles.

Do a body scan: Slowly scan through the body from head to toe. As you notice any areas of tightness or tension, you might gently suggest to yourself “soften and ease” as you let your body sink into the comfort of your bed.

EFT tapping can be a powerful way to dial down the stress response and help improve sleep. (It involves tapping with your fingertips on different acupressure points on the face and upper body while verbally acknowledging difficult emotions, thoughts, and sensations present and offering positive, supportive statements).

3. Send cues of safety from the brain to the body.

Reframe your goal. Focus on “deep rest” (not forcing sleep). Let yourself know that taking time to help your body rest and restore is doing good things for your body (whether you sleep or not).

Guided imagery for relaxation: Use the mind’s powerful imagination to think about a safe, calm place that you can visit in your mind. Make it as vivid as you can, engaging all your senses. (I find listening to a guided practice via an app can be helpful.)

Self-compassion for anxious parts. See if you might meet and greet any anxious parts of yourself with kindness and compassion. Rather than trying to get rid of unpleasant feelings, treat them like a small child who needs comfort and care. Talk to these “parts” of yourself as if you would talk to a good friend or distressed child (e.g., “I see you, anxiety. It’s OK; I’m here with you.”).

Use a mantra: Choose words or a phrase that you can repeat to yourself that, when you say these words, they bring a sense of calm, safety, or soothing in your body. I find the words “trust and surrender” helpful. Experiment and see what your body responds to.

The container: Imagine putting all your to-dos and problems to be solved into a container. Imagine putting a lid on the container and setting it aside for the morning. Remind yourself that you can open it back up in the morning, but you don’t need to look at the contents now.

Bonus: Before you go to bed, write out the things you want to put into your container and any action steps you might take the following day to help problem-solve if you’re worried about something. For example, if you’re worried about an argument you had with a coworker, you might write out what you’d like to say to them tomorrow to help repair things.

If worries continue to wake you up, schedule a 10-minute “worry and problem-solving time” for yourself daily, well before bed, where you can write out your worries and any small action steps you might take that give yourself a sense of agency.

4. Access spirituality. There is some budding evidence to suggest that spirituality may help support sleep. While for some, spirituality might involve religious beliefs or a connection with spiritual figures, for others it might focus on connecting with something greater than oneself, such as feeling interconnection and being held in the natural world or a universal consciousness.

This kind of connection with something greater than oneself can provide a sense of safety and comfort for some people, which may be a helpful resource to assist the nervous system in finding more ease. You might imagine yourself surrounded by a circle of support (whether being held by the beauty of nature, spiritual figures, or people in your circle of connections who you feel supported by).

Sleep is not something that can be forced, but there is much we can do to create the conditions to support it. Focusing on helping your nervous system feel safe enough to shift into a parasympathetic state of rest can offer a helpful way to support you in all those hours you spend in bed, whether or not you fall asleep. And over time, you may just find that some shuteye begins to happen more naturally.

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Originally published on Psychology Today.

Shift your focus from falling asleep to supporting your nervous system.

This post is Part 1 of a series.

Ah—the treasured sleep. We know it’s good for us. In a 2026 study, sleep was found to be the number one factor to buffer against the health costs of work stress. In reviewing 10 years of data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey, researchers found that sleep quality was the biggest buffer to protect health in the context of prolonged work stress, above nutrition, alcohol consumption, smoking, and exercise.

The importance of sleep is something that has been studied extensively, and the effects of lack of sleep on our physical and mental health have been well documented.

While we know sleep is important, what do we do about it when we struggle to get good sleep? (I’ve been there myself, as so many of us have from time to time.)

Some of the common suggestions for improving sleep include having a consistent bedtime and wake-up time, keeping the temperature of the room cool, avoiding screens and blue light before bed, and having a three-hour window between eating and bedtime.

While all of these can be helpful, I believe there is something more fundamental that is less talked about that can change the way we think about getting a good night’s sleep.

Changing the way we think about sleep

Physiologically, it starts with helping our nervous system feel safe enough to shift out of “threat/stress” mode and find its way to a state of rest and recovery. And psychologically, rather than focusing on trying to fall asleep (which for some of us can feel like pressure and one more thing we need to accomplish—and can increase stress and hypervigilance), we focus instead on offering our nervous system “cues of safety.” When we shift from a sympathetic (hyperaroused) to parasympathetic (more relaxed) state, we create the conditions for sleep to emerge naturally.

In a comprehensive article exploring the mechanisms by which contemplative practices (such as meditation, yoga, and visualization) enhance our well-being and promote “deep rest,” the authors discuss how the majority of adults in the United States live in a state of moderate threat arousal much of the time. Our sympathetic nervous systems are in a high state of arousal, dealing with all the modern-day challenges we face daily. No wonder it is hard to shut things off at night.

The authors go on to describe that to get into a state of “deep rest” (different from sleep, as they were not exploring sleep), our autonomic nervous system needs to pick up signals of safety from our environment. (As I might translate through the voice of my nervous system: “Ah, no lions chasing me? OK, I don’t need to allocate resources to fight or flee; instead, it’s safe to rest and digest.”) In a reciprocal fashion, contemplative practices such as meditation and visualization can help quiet the mind of stress-inducing thoughts, allowing for a shift into rest, restoration, and recovery on a cellular level.

I find it helpful to think about Mathew Walker’s description of falling asleep likened to a plane coming in for a long landing. It is not so much an on/off switch but a much slower, gradual descent. In our modern lives, we often are going, going, going and then hop into bed and expect to shut it all down. Yet without anything else to focus on, our minds are masters at ruminating, thinking, planning, and worrying, keeping our threat response going and our bodies mobilized. From this state, sleep is difficult.

So, if our sympathetic nervous systems are on high alert much of the day, and if sleep is aided by a slow, gradual descent, it stands to reason that anything we can do to help shift our nervous systems into a more parasympathetic (restful) state can help us come in for that smoother landing.

When our nervous system feels enough safety and regulation, we can let go into sleep. We don’t need to focus so much on making sleep happen (as that is something that can’t be forced), but we can focus on helping our mind-body system feel safe enough to get into a deep, restorative state. From there, we set up the conditions for sleep to happen on its own.

And if for some reason it doesn’t, at least we’re still doing something good for our bodies! Getting into a state of “deep rest” has been shown to have restorative functions at a cellular level, including altering gene expression at the level of the mitochondria (the powerhouses of our cells, which play an important role in our energy production).

So here are a few steps to set up the conditions for sleep:

1. Shift your mindset. Instead of focusing on trying to fall asleep, focus on doing things to soothe your nervous system (stay tuned in for my next blog post with specific strategies).
2. Consider how you might create a more gradual descent into sleep by practicing ways of resetting your nervous system and stress levels in short moments, many times throughout the day (so stress doesn’t accumulate). Consider wind-down routines in the evening that bring your body into a more parasympathetic state well before you climb into bed.
3. Experiment with contemplative practices that help your body find its way to “deep rest.” There is no one size fits all, so see what is most supportive for you. This might include yoga, breath work, visualization, mindful practices, or something else. Create a toolkit for yourself so that when it comes time to wind down, your nervous system has a familiar road map.

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Originally published on Psychology Today.