Mindfulness for Sleep

Many of us have had trouble sleeping since the pandemic, with increased pressures both in University life and at home, increased screen time, and the fuzzy work/home boundaries caused by working from home. 

Kitty runs regular Mindfulness for Sleep workshops on Zoom during term-time. These explore some of the common cognitive patterning around sleeplessness, and some simple mindfulness techniques to help at 3am, or when you are tired the next day.

Workshop dates are announced here.

Mindfulness for Sleep: An Introduction

In this presentation, Dr Kitty Wheater introduces the 'driven doing' mode of mind that is often implicated in sleeping difficulties, and explores how mindfulness can be helpful. 

Mindfulness Practices to Promote Sleep

Mindfulness practices aid good sleep, and quietening of the cognitive reactivity that accompanies difficulty sleeping, by quietening the mind’s ‘driven-doing’ mode of mind, which activates the fight/flight and drive systems.

Here are some guided practices, recorded from the Mindfulness Drop-ins, to stream or download. These are best done a few times a week, to help train your mind to gather and settle.

Grounding and Settling (25 min)

Grounding, Breath, and Movement (26 min)

Grounding for Emotion (26 min)

Mindfulness for Sleep (14 min)

Embodied Self-Compassion (29 min)

For live sessions during the week to steady and ground the mind, join the twice-weekly lunchtime Mindfulness Drop-in Sessions on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Self-Inquiry

We often have strong emotional and cognitive reactions to sleeplessness, and habits of mind associated with it, lurking just out of sight.

Use the Trouble Sleeping First Response Plan below, alongside the practices above, to gain some familiarity with your own patterns around sleeplessness, and create a go-to list of simple ways to respond.

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