Self Care to Thrive Through Daylight Savings
Anybody else dread springing ahead?
This Sunday, March 8th, 2020 at 2am everyone in the US (except for the Hawaiians and Arizonans) will be turning their clocks forward or, should I say, letting their smartphones automatically adjust and getting pleasantly surprised when they walk into the kitchen or get into the car because they think they found out how to turn back time. Or is that just me?
It’s not so much the lost hour that gets me as much as the way it jars my internal clock, so this year I’ve got a plan to make this weekend’s transition a smooth one for my body and mind. It’s simple and I’m excited to share it with you.
Read on for the deets…
First off, for the next few days leading up to the transition night on Saturday into Sunday I’ll be adjusting my bedtime and wake time by 15 minutes each day.
So tonight instead of going to bed at 10pm I’ll be in bed at 9:45pm and instead of waking at 5:30am I’ll be setting my alarm to 5:15am. Backing up your sleep and wake cycle by 15 minutes each day makes it so that by the time the day comes to turn the clocks forward the time you’ll be going to bed will be right around the time you were going to bed before the change i.e. 10pm and 5:30am for me. That was confusing to write so if it was confusing to read just drop me a line and we’ll sort it out together.
The other thing I’m going to do is eat light dinners for the next few days and finish eating by 7pm.
Big meals at the end of the day require lots of energy from our digestive systems and if our bodies are taking care of digesting the night’s meal while we sleep (either because we ate too much or ate too late) they don’t have adequate resources to offer to the detox & repairitive function that sleep’s famous for ;). Eating lighter meals, earlier in the night is good for the body regardless of daylight savings and eating light at night always offers me more energy in the morning.
Lastly, I’ll be doing some classical conditioning. Pavlov’s dogs, anyone?
Did you know that you can use the stimulus of smell to program a behavior? It’s true! I’ll be applying dōTERRA Lavender essential oil to my feet and inhaling it off my palms when I get into bed at night and doing the same thing with dōTERRA Peppermint oil in the morning. This will make the 15 min adjustments to my sleep/wake cycle even easier for my body to catch on to because the aroma of dōTERRA Lavender equals sleep time (plus its calming to the nervous system and naturally supports restful sleep) and dōTERRA Peppermint’s perky aroma equals ‘HELLO AND GOOD MORNING, I’M READY FOR YOU, NEW DAY!’ I’m not kidding.
Is sprining ahead something you plan for or does it usually sneak up on you?
If you decide to try any of these tips, let us know how they work for you!