Sensitive sleep
Sensitive sleep
Beat insomnia with bestselling author Charlie Morley's science-based approach.
Welcome to my weekly newsletter building a supportive community for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs). This is the second in an occasional series of guest interviews with researchers, authors and coaches.
So many Highly Sensitive People struggle to get a good night’s sleep that I decided to call on Charlie Morley, a bestselling author and friend of The HSP Revolution, for help.
I first experienced Charlie’s unique blend of wisdom, humour and open-heartedness some years back when I attended one of his workshops on lucid dreaming in London. Charlie’s worldview grows from a truly eclectic mix of influences: He formally became a Buddhist at the age of 19, lived at the Kagyu Samye Dzong Buddhist Centre in London for seven years, and completed a three month meditation retreat in South Africa. But he’s somehow managed to braid his lifelong commitment to self-inquiry with more worldly pursuits: He’s also worked as an actor and scriptwriter, and ran a hip hop collective that toured Europe.
In more recent years, Charlie has delved deep into neuroscience to pioneer new techniques to help people sleep — particularly those of us who are struggling with stress or trauma. His results proved so successful in an independent study of his work with military veterans that Charlie is now holding workshops all around the world teaching the practices found in his new book Wake up To Sleep: 5 powerful practices to transform stress & trauma for peaceful sleep & mindful dreams.
Charlie’s work goes way beyond anything you might have read about finding the right ear plugs or comfortable sheets. His focus is on the nervous system — and how we can regulate ourselves into a relaxed state using breathing, mindfulness, and guided meditations. The results speak for themselves: Workshop participants often get their first proper night’s sleep in years. (And there’s great material, videos and resources on Charlie’s website).
The HSP Revolution spoke to Charlie a few weeks ago to find out more about his approach. As he put it:
“I’ve worked with people who haven’t slept properly for 20 years or more, and by the second day of a sleep retreat, they’re sleeping seven hours. Change can happen quick. Remove the stressors and sleep will happen as naturally as anything. And stresses can be removed on day one, if you find the right approach for your nervous system.”
Below is an edited transcript of our interview. As always, I love to hear about your experiences in the comments.
I’m an HSP and I’m struggling to sleep. What can I do?
Whether you’re a Highly Sensitive Person, or somebody who may have trauma- or stress-affected sleep, the same things go for both: Sleep is fundamentally a natural process that will occur in the absence of stressors that prevent it from occurring.
The most important thing we need to do is to regulate the dysregulated nervous system. So my approach is all about body and breath. You can do all the sleep hygiene tips you like, but until you regulate your nervous system you’re going to be staring at the ceiling until morning.
However, once you do learn to regulate the nervous system, it really is a ground-breaking approach. And you see people change their sleep within days – not weeks or months.
So how do we regulate our nervous system?
The quickest way to change your neurological state is through the breath. Over millions of years of evolution, the brain has come to prioritise messages from the lungs above all others — because if the lungs stop functioning, we’re going to die really, really quickly.
Most of us are breathing at about 15-20 breaths a minute – that’s actually incredibly fast. The average American breath rate in 1939 was 4.5 breaths a minute — that’s 75% slower than we breathe today. Even as recently as the 1980s, it was still 7.5 breaths a minute.
So what happened in the last 40 years to more than double the average breath rate? We’ve also seen double the amount of anxiety and depression and obesity, and certain forms of strokes. Perhaps it’s all linked? Absolutely.
Any time we’re breathing at more than 10 breaths a minute we’re in a mild state of what’s called “sympathetic dominance” — which means the accelerator pedal on the car of our internal engine is being pressed. But at the same time, we’ve got the hand-brake on because we’re just sitting at our laptop.
Think what that would do to a car: It would wear out the battery, wear down the brake pads. It would be really bad for the body — and it turns out, it is. Simply because of the way we breathe, many of us are in a chronic state of low-level anxiety or fight-or-flight. That can get worse when you bring high sensitivity, or high levels of stress and trauma, into the mix.
The easiest way to regulate the autonomic nervous system before you go to bed is to do 20 minutes of slow, deep breathing, where you’re taking five breaths a minute —which is very slow compared to the usual 15-20 breaths a minute.
How do we slow the breath down to that speed? We can use a time tracker — on my website there are loads of free downloads of these breath tracks.
If you do 20 minutes of that before bed, the effect on the nervous system will last about 2-3 hours. You’re now in perfect autonomic balance; you’ve moved out of sympathetic dominance; you’re now in the relaxation state where you won’t need to do all the sleep hygiene tips, and sleep can happen naturally.
Is there anything we can do during the day to make it easier to fall asleep?
Yes. We can work with the nervous system through any form of deep relaxation. The science on this is a thing called the “parasympathetic drive,” which is basically like a battery that stores up all our moments of relaxation during the day, and then allows us to access that battery of relaxation when we fall asleep at night. That’s why people tend to sleep better on holiday than during their working lives, because on holiday you tend to be doing more relaxing things.
Any time you do anything relaxing, like sitting on the sofa, taking a bath— whatever relaxes you — you’re storing up a charge in that parasympathetic drive battery that sits in the nervous system, regulated by the brain.
The best thing is to try to spend 30 minutes during the day in a state of deep relaxation — similar to what’s called the “hypnagogic state,” which is actually the first stage of sleep. We wouldn’t call it sleep proper, because you can still hear the sounds in room, still feel your body in the bed. It’s that drowsy state: Your eyes are closed, you’re just moving towards sleep but you’re not quite there — that deeply relaxed state. It turns out that there’s a whole series of meditation practices we can do in there called yoga nidra — which comes from the ancient Indian yogic school. But the scientific term for it is called “hypnagogic mindfulness” — the practice of mindful awareness within the hypnagogic state.
So imagine mindfulness practice combined with a semi-sleep state. It’s usually done lying down on the floor, or on a bed, or on a sofa, eyes closed, in a deeply relaxed state, listening to a guided audio mediation. The aim is not that deep concentration of mindfulness, but deep relaxation. When all those things come together, yoga nidra forms a very powerful alternative to sitting mindfulness practice. And it’s much more trauma-sensitive than standard mindfulness practice. Because asking somebody to sit alone in silence for 20 minutes if they’re experiencing trauma is not the best advice sometimes. You’re really opening yourself up to retraumatisation or re-triggering, in some cases.
The main point I’m saying here is that good sleep begins not just 20 minutes before bed: Good sleep begins during the day. It’s about spending more time moving yourself into a state of deep relaxation and autonomic balance, so that by the time you get to sleep you won’t need the meditation track.
I feel relaxed just thinking about it. What else should we bear in mind?
Sleep is highly subjective, it’s highly personal — even generalisations like “you need 7-9 hours of sleep per night” are incorrect: You need 7-9 hours per 24 hour period. Sleep doesn’t have to all come in one chunk. Just that slight change sets people free, because they realise: “Well okay, maybe I can only get 5-6 hours of sleep a night, but maybe I can get a cheeky nap the next day, and then I’m much closer to that quota.”
We’re also learning more about napping. Ten years ago, the jury was really out on naps. But the revolution in sleep science over the last five years is now conclusive: As long as your nap finishes six hours before your intended bedtime, and as long as your nap is not longer than 90 minutes in length, napping has no contraindications. Napping is really good for you — and it’s a brilliant way to recharge the brain. Your brain is 30% better after a one-hour nap in the middle of the day.
A fascinating study with Nasa astronauts found that if you gave people eight hours of sleep, and then gave them a cognitive ability test, they scored pretty well. If you gave them four hours of sleep, they scored pretty badly. But later that day, the people who had had only four hours sleep were given a one-hour nap, then took the test again. Their scores were almost identical to those who had eight hours sleep.
That’s such an optimistic piece of research. Let’s say somebody is ruminating all night — perhaps because their high sensitivity is leading them to over-analyse and worry excessively. One of the worst parts is this feeling that “tomorrow’s ruined.” Actually, if you can find a way to have a cheeky one-hour nap the next day, you can boost your neurological level to the same as if you have had eight hours sleep.
Deep rest and relaxation has so many similar benefits to sleep. Just lie on the sofa for half an hour: That’s enough to boost your neurological level, increase happiness hormones in the body, and decrease cortisol and adrenaline. Sleep can be flexible in the same way as eating: We don’t only eat once a day; we might choose to eat three times a day. So if you have a seemingly abnormal sleep pattern — which a lot of highly sensitive people may have — rather than pathologizing that sleep pattern, know there is a way to work with it.
Remember, the monophasic sleep (sleep in one chunk) that western Europe introduced is only about 200 years old. We’re still in the experimental stage with that. It may well be that in a hundred year’s time, they go: “Hey, you remember that weird 200-year period between the industrial revolution and the digital revolution when they all tried to sleep eight hours in one go? Wasn’t that funny because now the science has moved on and we realise that biphasic sleep — having a period of sleep, and a period of wakefulness — might be the best way to do it.” Polyphasic sleep (sleeping in more than two sessions in a 24 hour period) works for some people, too. Know that there are other ways to sleep, and however you choose to sleep is good for you.
Noise is obviously a bane for many HSPs. If there’s noise and you’re struggling to sleep, presumably all of the above still applies?
It’s good to know what kind of sleep noise affects. If you’re in a deep sleep, noise is probably not going to affect you — and is often incorporated into your dreams. But we spend over 50% of the night in what is called “Stage Two,” or light sleep, and unfortunately that’s the stage of sleep that’s most readily affected by noise.
Even if noise might not wake us up during this stage, it can still disrupt the production of certain sleep hormones. So what do we do if we’re affected by noise?
There’s the obvious external remedies: We can use things like ear plugs, or white noise simulators. But the other approach is to learn practices which have a base of mindfulness. If we define mindfulness as “knowing what’s happening as it’s happening, without judgement or preference to the content of what is happening,” then mindfulness-based exercises can create a habit of mind that means noise won’t disturb us so much.
And that can be a real revolution: We’ve got a lot of science that shows that slow deep breathing; breathwork; mindfulness meditation, and deep relaxation can all help to regulate that part of the nervous system that’s so deeply affected by noise. That means we can begin to decondition our nervous system.
Imagine if every time that a train goes past, I can see the train as “the train to sleep.” It’s pulling me in. Remember that the mind in the hypnagogic state — which is close to a hypnosis state — is very suggestible. So I can readily adopt ideas that might seem almost childlike, like: “Every time I hear the train, that’s the train to sleep.” We can actually be quite susceptible to that sort of hypnotic conditioning when we’re in a hypnagogic state, so we can use it to benefit us.
So we can start to change our attitude to help us sleep?
Absolutely. I’ve been really struck by the research into stress resilience, which shows that people who’ve been exposed to a small but consistent level of stress — sometimes in their upbringing, sometimes in their adult life — can actually create something called “stress resilience.” That means that rather than stress creating a negative effect on the nervous system, it allows us to develop a certain level of resilience.
Could that be applied to sleep? I think it can. Sometimes we strive so hard to create the perfect sleeping conditions — completely dark, completely quiet, completely comfortable — that we get into a position that anything that disrupts that becomes a stressor that prevents our sleep. So I think there’s probably some wisdom in taking our attention away from creating the perfect external conditions for sleep, and paying much more attention to learning that if I can regulate my nervous system, I can sleep anywhere.
We’ve got to learn to sleep intentionally. Just like breathing, we think that sleep just happens. But look at the massive changes we can make when we learn to intentionally affect the breath: The Wim Hof method; breathing five breaths a minute, all this amazing stuff. It’s the same with sleep. Rather than worrying about whether your bedroom is perfect, focus on using your energy to learn how you can sleep better from an internal level. And that’s very empowering too: Because rather than being at the whim of external conditions, you’re bringing the power back inside yourself, saying: “This is my body, this is my breath — and the freedom to sleep lies within me — not in the way the bedroom is arranged.”
What about caffeine? Do we all need to give up coffee?
Caffeine has a half-life of about five hours, so a 9am coffee should be out of our system by 7pm. But a 2pm coffee would only have been fully metabolised by midnight. So be aware that even a coffee you drink as early as 2pm is not going to be out of your system fully until midnight. Some people can fall asleep totally fine with unmetabolized caffeine in their system. Other people are highly sensitive to caffeine, and it has to be fully metabolized out of their system before it will allow them to fall asleep. Just know your body.
Also, there’s a lot of placebo effect. For some people, just the thought that they’ve had a big coffee in the afternoon might be enough to worry them that they won’t fall asleep. There are quick ways to switch on the fight-or-flight system: caffeine or stimulants, and also worry. We’ve been hard-wired to worry about stuff — back in the day it aided our survival. So we can worry about caffeine too much.
And for a lot of the veterans I work with, and people with highly levels of trauma, or complex PTSD, a coffee in the morning brings some solace after a night of hardly any sleep. If you need a coffee in the morning because you’ve had a really bad night’s sleep, then give yourself a coffee. Just be aware that in the afternoon, if you’ve got the time and resources to have a nap, then that’s way preferable to a coffee.
Many HSPs struggle with sleep. Can you offer a final word of encouragement?
How about a quote from Buddha: “It doesn’t matter how long you have forgotten, only how soon you remember.” You can go through decades of bad sleep; decades of perceived illness; decades of perceived trauma, it doesn’t really matter how long that has been occurring when you find that healing path. I really think it’s the same with sleep.
I’ve worked with people who haven’t slept properly for 20 years or more, and by the second day of a sleep retreat, they’re sleeping seven hours. Change can happen quick.
Remove the stressors and sleep will happen as naturally as anything. And stresses can be removed on day one, if you find the right approach for your nervous system.
I do hope Charlie’s comments were helpful — and I thoroughly recommend his new book. I’d love to hear any ideas for other speakers you’d like to see featured.
Thank you for being part of The HSP Revolution.
See you next week!
Such encouraging words.