ways to fall back asleep after waking in the night

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It could be nature’s call, the pitter-patter of little feet (No, honey, it’s not daytime yet, go back to bed) or a squirrel scampering loudly across the roof over your bedroom — and suddenly you are awake. Very awake.

Then before you know it, your mind is flooded with things you forgot to do, worries over finances or reliving an unpleasant experience you planned to forget. Sleep is a lost cause — or is it?Here are eight tips from sleep and anxiety experts on how to shut down that whirling dervish of a brain and coax your body back into much-needed sleep.

1. Use deep breathing

Deep breathing is a well-known method of stress reduction and relaxation, if done correctly.Start by putting your hand on your stomach. Close your eyes and take a slow, deep breath through your nose, making sure that you can feel your abdomen rise. Try to breathe in for a slow count of six. Now release that breath very slowly — to the same count of six — through your mouth.

“Taking slow deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth using our main respiratory muscle, the diaphragm can help relax the body and mind,” said sleep specialist Dr. Raj Dasgupta, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

2. Try guided sleep meditations and muscle relaxation

Meditation, of course, is a great way to calm the mind. But if you’re not a practiced meditator, the act of trying to keep your mind focused might become a source of stress.

You could try a guided sleep app, “some of which actually embed delta sleep waves,” said stress management expert Dr. Cynthia Ackrill, an editor for Contentment magazine, produced by the American Institute of Stress.

“Put it on loop so you don’t wake up,” Ackrill said. “Lie there and listen and slow your breathing down. Keep focused on their guidance or if you are just listening to a music/white noise, focus on your breath.

Your mind will interrupt — don’t judge it, but keep coming back to your breath.”If your body is still tense, try adding progressive muscle relaxation to your breathing. Starting with your toes, breath in and tense the muscles in that area, holding the tension for up to 10 seconds. Release the tension quickly, all at once, and imagine breathing through that part of the body as you exhale. Move from your toes to your feet, calves, upper thighs and the rest of the muscle groups in the body.

3. Stop the blame game

There is a whole channel in your brain dedicated to judging your inability to sleep, and it loves to play the “blame and shame” game, said Ackrill, a former family physician who is also trained in neuroscience, wellness and leadership coaching.”If you have had the issue for any length of time, you have probably researched or discovered that not sleeping is not good for you.

So besides your brain turning on about whatever worries are front and center, you also start repeatedly worrying about the effects of lack of sleep. And as with most worries, you probably judge yourself for it,” Ackrill said.

“Throw yourself a little compassion,” she advised. “It’s not a reflection of your worth.”

Then, to prevent the mind from revving up at night, give your brain a break a few times during the workday: “If your brain has been in high gear all day, it has a harder time shutting down. Bring it back to neutral at least a couple of times a day with 5-minute breaks of breath work,” said Ackrill.

4. Avoid clock watching

Want to feel even more anxious and guilty about not sleeping? That’s what clock watching will do. So don’t keep checking the time — really.

“It’s important not to get worked up about one bad night’s sleep because anxiety itself makes it difficult to fall back asleep,” said USC’s Dasgupta.It can also be overstimulating, said Dr. Bhanu Kolla, an addiction psychiatrist and sleep medicine expert at the Mayo Clinic.”You usually end up trying to determine how much time you have left to sleep and worrying about whether you will fall back to sleep in a reasonable amount of time,” Kolla said. “This can in fact make the process of returning to sleep more difficult.”Don’t grab a sneak peak when you go back to bed, either. Seeing the time may only rev you up again.

5. Don’t drink alcohol before bed

Don’t drink before bed, said Kolla, who studies the interaction between sleep disturbances and addictive disorders.”As alcohol is metabolized it forms acetaldehydewhich is stimulating,” he told CNN. “Therefore if you drink too much alcohol right before going to bed, in about four hours it is converted to aldehyde which can disrupt sleep and wake you up.”In addition to awakenings during the night, alcohol can cause “frequent trips to the bathroom because it inhibits a hormone called anti-diuretic hormone (ADH), resulting in increased urination,” Dasgupta added.