Your first line of defence against Stress is sleeping well. If you’re able to sleep well at night then it’s pretty hard that you feel stressed during the day and as a matter of facts when you’re stressed the first thing which suffer is sleep, together with digestion usually. But if you can sleep well it can help for Stress relief. So the better you sleep the lesser you’re stressed, and the higher you’re stressed the worse is your sleep. Am I wrong?

Now sleeping well and resting enough doesn’t mean that you must stay in bed at least 8 hours or no less than 6 hours and such. It means that you should go to bed when you’re feeling tired and stay there as long as you need to rest completely. It’s up to you if you need 5, 6, 8 or 10 hours of sleep to feel good and refreshed but to reduce the level of stress you should definitely follow your own specific needs. Sleeping less because productivity gurus say that to remain competitive in the rat race you must be as active as possible is a completely nonsense; at least from the stress relief perspective. Unless you like the rat race way of living which would be strange as rats themselves don’t.

Sleeping well allows you to live better and fuller when you’re awake as during the night your body relaxes, recharges its energy, regenerates and repairs itself. A Bodybuilding saying states that you grow during the night and not while you train. Your mind rests and your brain defrags itself processing old thoughts and what happened during the day. One of the uses of dreams is just this. And a good rest increases your creativity, as many successful people discovered, so that you can better handle your life and take the right decisions.

Consequently if you don’t sleep well your body doesn’t recharges and regenerates itself, your mind doesn’t relax, rest and reprocess what happened during the day and believe me that with a tired body and a tired mind the quality of your life can only decrease, your level of stress increases and you have less resources to cope with your daily life. And without rest there is no stress relief. That’s why sleep deprivation is one of the most used techniques to torture people around the world, it really drives you crazy.

So sleeping well is the first thing to deal with for a good life and successful stress management. But how can you get it?

There are many techniques around to increase the quality of your sleep: from meditation to herbal teas, from chemical drugs to subliminal tapes and Self Hypnosis mp3 and so on. I just want to give you some tips to use it for stress relief.

1 Benjamin Franklin said that “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” and a common idea is that every hour slept before midnight counts twice than those slept after. I think this concept is pretty true, at least it works for me but if you are one of those who like to sleep in the morning and remain awake at night go with it and follow your natural rhythm. This is a general idea but what matters most is that you go to bed preferably always at the same hour and sleep until you wake up naturally. If you get a good rest sleeping in the morning it would be pretty unwise to force yourself to sleep during the night right?

2 Avoid tv in your room and pick up a good book instead and try to go to bed only when you’re feeling tired. Try to have a tiring physical activity during the day so that you increase the chances of a good night sleep.

3 If you find difficult to sleep there is no better time, provided you both have the same sleeping habit, to be intimate with your partner as everyone says there is no better way to guarantee a good night long sleep. More on this in a following article.

4 Whatever your sleeping habits what is important is that you follow your own as much as possible. The goal is to sleep well and wake up refreshed and ready for another day. Everything else comes after. Unless your partner gets mad when waken up at five in the morning.

I know, nothing new under the Sun but that’s how it goes, human beings even after the advent of smartphones haven’t changed much in the last 20 centuries so what worked in the past has many chances to work even now. Life has changed but human beings haven’t. To add another timeless advice don’t forget the power of Napping as it’s amazing what it can do for stress relief.

A good nap can greatly reduce the damages of a bad night sleep and naps should be mandatory for every human being who wants to remain in good health. Even if you sleep well at night a 30 minutes sleep in the afternoon can only do good. There is a reason if our body asks for it after lunch. Because you still have a lunch right? Or you eat a small sandwich in the front of your pc screen? In this case good for your boss but bad for your health, and your life in general. These days it’s pretty difficult to have a decent life but try to rest as much as you need because without the appropriate rest sooner or later even the best machine breaks and sometimes forever.

So, have a great sleep and don’t forget your daily nap. It’s not only to to reduce stress but for your health in general. Because you surely know that stress affects badly your health and sleeping well is of utmost importance to remain healthy. If you’re tired even your Immune System is tired and if it works badly illnesses jump in.

Now it’s your turn so if you have the time leave a comment about sleeping for stress relief and then proceed to read The 3 S of Stress: Smile.