In more than four decades of training and treating others on sleep disorders, anxiety, and stress, I have never once met a client whose sleep improved because they tried harder to fall asleep. Sleep is not a light switch you flip at ten o'clock — it is a gradual descent, a series of well-being processes, and the body needs a consistent pattern to embrace that final stage of sleep hygiene: sleeping.
Too many of my clients treat bedtime as a single event: brush teeth, turn off the light, expect unconsciousness within minutes (the average time to fall asleep is 24 minutes). When sleep doesn't happen, frustration builds, and frustration is the single most reliable way I know to keep a nervous system awake. What actually works, in my experience and in the sleep research I follow, is treating the hours before bed as a sequence of intentional well-being behaviours to first relax and then rest before one starts to sleep.
Lack of sleep is only bad if you must drive, think, talk, move, be creative or get things done properly.
I call this sequence the three stages of sleep hygiene: Relaxing, Resting, and Sleeping. Each stage has its own timing, its own behaviours, and its own job to do inside your nervous system for a better chance of sleep, detox and restoration. Relaxing begins the disconnection from the demands of the workday. Resting builds the sensory bridge between your environment and true sleepiness. Sleeping is the final stage — where stimulation from our busy lives must stop entirely for sleep to actually arrive. Skipping straight from a work email to a dark, quiet bedroom is like slamming on the brakes at highway speed. The three-stage approach simply gives your brain-mind-body the deceleration lane it was built to use.
This article is not intended to discuss in great detail the merits and issues of sleep aids such as melatonin, sleep apps, medication, sleep disorders, or the new technologies one can wear to enhance sleep. The following model is not exhaustive nor conclusive, as we are constantly improving our knowledge of sleep hygiene. For those who have had chronic issues with sleep, I highly recommend seeing a sleep specialist to better understand your specific challenges.
The Three Stages
What to Do, and Why It Works
Relaxing
Disconnecting from work stimulation · about 1–2 hours before sleep
What to do
- Switch devices from work-based focus to social or home-based relaxation use
- For those with high levels of stimulation, a polyvagal device for 20 minutes is helpful
- Use this period for dinner, connecting with others, gentle catch-up time with home admin
- If exercising, let this be the last window for it — skip high-intensity workouts
- If drinking alcohol, this is the last-call window (2 drink max)
- If taking sleep aids such as melatonin, magnesium, tryptophan or CBD, discuss them with your doctor and use them properly
Wellness Reflection
I describe this stage as signalling closure to the body from the (over)stimulating work world. Work, problem-solving, and intense stimulation activities keep the stress-response system switched on — your nervous system genuinely cannot tell the difference between an urgent email and a mild distraction; both raise cortisol and heart rate. I ask clients to treat the one-to-two-hour mark before bed as a hard line: work devices go into a drawer, not just a different app.
This is also the window for dinner, for real conversations with a partner or family member, for light catch-up tasks that don't require heavy decision-making. If you exercise, avoid vigorous movement — it raises core body temperature and adrenaline, both of which work against resting and sleeping. The same goes for alcohol: it may feel sedating in the moment, but it fragments sleep stages later in the night. And if you use melatonin, tryptophan, or CBD, I highly recommend a conversation with a healthcare professional, not an Instagram post.
Resting
Connecting to the sleep stage · about 30–60 minutes before sleep
What to do
- Turn off devices and choose a low-stimulation activity such as reading or listening to soft music
- A light evening snack — yogurt with blueberries and a little honey — may feel soothing and elevate melatonin performance
- Keep physical activity gentle and playful rather than (over)stimulating
- Turn lights and sound down — signal the brain-mind-body that the moon is rising
- Good time for journaling: two things you're thankful for, or two happy memories, or two things you achieved today
- Prepare the bedroom: colder, darker, quieter, no devices in sight
- If you have a demanding work environment, make a calming affirmation such as "Tomorrow, no matter what is going on at work, I will show up as the best version of myself"
- For those with poor sleep hygiene or elevated anxiety, a polyvagal device for 10–20 minutes is helpful
Wellness Reflection
This is the stage where I ask clients to become, quite literally, the architect of their own sensory environment. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine, constantly reading cues from our spaces to decide if it's safe to power down. Dim light, quiet sounds, and a repetitive low-stimulation routine — the same book, the same tea, the same ten minutes — begin to function as a conditioned pathway into sleepiness, the same way a certain smell can instantly return you to a favourite cafe.
A light snack can help too; yogurt with a few blueberries and a little manuka honey provides a gentle, steady release of the amino acids and glucose the brain uses to produce serotonin and, eventually, melatonin. I ask clients to keep movement in this stage playful and gentle — stretching, not sprinting — and to spend a few minutes preparing the room itself: colder, darker, quieter.
The resting phase is where most of my clients breeze through too quickly, or skip entirely — they come home, relax a bit, scroll, eat, drink, and jump right into bed. You may arrive at the bedroom exhausted, but not relaxed and rested, which can cause a wide array of poor sleep issues. Childcare, an urgent call from the boss, a last-minute deadline — none of this lets us live in a perfectly calm world. Mastering the Resting Stage may not remove all of it, but practiced regularly, the stimulation in our brain-mind-body will reduce.
Disconnect to reconnect.
Sleeping
Activating detox, regeneration & rejuvenation · at lights out and during sleep
What to do
- Keep devices out of the bedroom whenever possible — they shouldn't double as alarm clocks
- Watching TV in the bedroom is not recommended
- Practice a brief vagus nerve or calming breathing exercise for about 5 minutes in bed
- Remember that falling asleep can take time; around 20–24 minutes is normal
- A cooler room often supports better sleep onset and body-brain comfort
- Make the bedroom as dark as possible — for the next level, walk into a dark bedroom without turning on the lights, moving safely to your bed
- Before sleep, visualize two things that made you smile or laugh recently, and let those be your final waking thoughts
- For those who want to maximize this stage, a polyvagal therapy device for 10–20 minutes helps many of my clients
Wellness Reflection
This final stage is about surrender and acceptance that the day is over, and it's the one my clients most often get backwards. Trying hard to fall asleep is one of the most reliable ways I know to stay awake — the effort itself is a form of arousal, and arousal is biologically incompatible with the onset of sleep. I ask clients to remove devices from the bedroom entirely if they can, because even a dark phone screen is a temptation the brain doesn't need at eleven at night or one in the morning.
A brief calming breath practice — something that engages the vagus nerve, five minutes is plenty — helps make the physiological case for rest to sleep. I also remind clients that twenty to twenty-four minutes to fall asleep is well within a normal range; expecting instant unconsciousness only manufactures frustration where none needs to exist. A cooler room supports the natural overnight drop in core body temperature that enhances healthy sleep onset. And I love ending the day on something genuinely warm: picture two moments that made you smile or laugh, and let those be the last images your mind holds before it lets go.
A topic that clearly deserves more discussion is waking up in the middle of the night — a pee attack, a snack attack, a bad dream, a sound that startles us. This has usually more than one factor, which I carefully explore with clients. At the end of the night, some gentle vagus nerve tapping for 5 to 10 minutes while you wait for sleep to take over again can reduce anxiousness and activate self-soothing.
Four Things I See Happen
Across four decades of teaching, research, clinical practice and coaching, I've watched the same four benefits show up again and again when clients commit to these three stages of sleep hygiene.
Before You Begin
- Consistency matters more than perfection. A simple routine repeated often is more effective than an ideal routine used rarely. A new routine can take 45–60 days to settle — be patient, but be consistent.
- If racing thoughts, anxiety, pain, or persistent insomnia interfere with sleep, extra clinical support from a qualified sleep hygiene specialist may be helpful.
- Sleep aids can be used carefully, ideally in discussion with a healthcare professional — especially if combined with other medications or alcohol. Always check with your physician if you have doubts about sleep aids and your health status.
- The goal is not to force sleep, but to create conditions that make sleep more likely.
The goal is not to force sleep, but to create the conditions that make sleepiness — and then sleep — more likely.
If there's one thing I would like you to take from these three stages, it's permission — permission to stop treating sleep as a task you either succeed or fail at each night, and start treating it as a runway you build, hour by hour, choice by choice, intentional behaviour by intentional behaviour, to land better in bed. You don't need a perfect bedroom or a flawless routine. You need a repeatable, consistent one.
Pick one small change from Stage 1 this week. Add Stage 2 next week. Let Stage 3 be the quiet landing you've already prepared for. Sleep was never meant to be forced; it was meant to be embraced and appreciated.