I’m not a terrible sleeper, but like most of us lockdown/work from home/general anxiety around coronavirus has done a number on me. While it hasn’t led to full-blown insomnia, I was definitely finding it hard to get to sleep, and stay asleep through the night.
So when The Goodnight Co. reached out to see if I wanted to try a sleep routine, I was like um, hell yes. They connected me on Zoom with co-founder Shea Morrison, who asked me a bunch of questions about my current sleep routine (“oh you know, just playing video games and then trying to will my brain to switch off”) and stress levels (“just worried about the entire world going to hell in a handbasket”).
Once we ran through my sleeping issues and Shea determined it was more stress and bad habits causing them, she gave me a routine.
1. No Blue Light Before Bed
You might be familiar with blue light – it’s the light emitted by screens, and it’s really bad for our sleeping pattern. The short version is that blue light stimulates our brain and makes us think it’s wakey wakey time, so if you’re, say, on your phone right before bed (um, me) or watching TV, then you just whack your head on the pillow and try to sleep – you will likely struggle to wind down.
Shea challenged me to two weeks of no phone before bed for at least an hour. I’d love to say I obeyed, but I… struggled. I did start to actively avoid my phone at least 30 minutes before bed, and would instead pick up the book I was reading. Even this helped – Shea got me to buy a small reading light, and the combination of a dark room with a very small, amber light over my book definitely saw me feeling drowsier right before sleep than my previous routine did.
2. Sleep Drops
Okay, so one of the highlights of my The Goodnight Co. sleep routine was getting onto these RIDICULOUSLY GOOD Sleep Drops they make. I was sent the Sleep Drops and Morning Drops – I like both but I see the most intense results from the Sleep Drops.
All you do is put around six drops under your tongue before bed. It tastes a bit like diluted alcohol (lol) so not very strong at all, and I’d rest the stuff under my tongue for a bit and then swallow it with water.
Honest to god, I feel like every time I use them they speed my brain into the sleep process. For a while I thought maybe they were having a placebo effect, but I’ve used them after burning through several hours of Assassin’s Creed on Playstation (read: incredibly over-stimulated, not Shea’s instructions at all) and they’ve still calmed my brain into sleepy mode.
I will 10000% be buying these when I run out.
3. A Great Environment
Prior to chatting with Shea, I would just hop into bed, lights on, maybe fuck around on my phone, maybe watch TV. I wouldn’t be thinking about stuff like how long it had been since I washed my sheets, how messy my space was, any of that.
But it turns out everything in your room can contribute to good – or bad – sleep. For example, these days I just tidy things up – put clothes in piles, declutter, that kind of thing, before bed. I already changed my sheets regularly but I’m changing my pillowcases even more regularly.
Something that’s really helped me has been using a diffuser to scent the room with essential oils. The Goodnight Co gave me theirs, and I’m currently using their Goodnight Blend. But I’ve also mixed it up with just straight lavender essential oil, and other sleep-encouraging blends. I just find it relaxes me and makes my bedroom a place of rest, as wanky as that sounds.
So, has it all worked? Yes and no. I definitely find I fall asleep quickly and stay asleep relatively well now I’ve made these changes. But the thing with changes is, you have to commit to them. I definitely have nights where I don’t prep my room or take the Sleep Drops or get off my phone, and I do notice a difference.
I’d also really love to get myself out of the habit of needing my phone at ALL before bed. I know I’d improve my sleeping pattern even more if I could just quit it.
I think the best part of the sleep routine though was that it wasn’t about spending hundreds of bucks on anything. The Deep Sleep Drops cost $25 a pop, which isn’t crazy, and most of us already have a diffuser and some sleep essential oils at home.
Cheap AND effective, absolutely my shit.
By the way – you can cop 10% off the entire range on The Goodnight Co’s site with the code: PEDESTRIAN10.
