The Benefits of Waking Up Naturally and How To Make It Happen

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Are you one of those people who presses snooze for an hour every morning before you’re able to stumble out of bed? Maybe you set your alarm for 7 a.m. and don’t end up actually dragging yourself to the kitchen for your first cup of coffee until 8 a.m.

Even if you’re not hitting snooze, you might also be one of those people who goes to bed at a reasonable hour every night and gets a solid eight hours of sleep, yet you still don’t feel ready to get out of the bed in the morning. Instead of feeling refreshed, you might feel like you’re barely able to put your feet on the floor, despite the fact that you logically know you got plenty of sleep.

One reason you might not be getting the best sleep you can, or you have difficulty waking up in the morning? It could be because you’re using an alarm clock.

You’re probably wondering if not using an alarm clock is even an option, after all, how would you ever get up without it?

For many people, they’ve discovered it’s better for them to learn to wake up naturally, based on their bodies rhythms, rather than struggling and repeatedly hitting snooze.

To begin, the following are some health and lifestyle advantages to being someone who wakes up naturally.

  • You can get into a more restful, deep sleep when you’re not always staring at the alarm clock or feeling anxiety as to when it’s going to start going off.
  • Your body is designed to wake up in a particular state of sleep, and that’s not during REM, which is the fifth stage. Instead, your body is programmed to perform optimally when you wake up during the light sleep stages, which are usually stages one and two. An alarm clock doesn’t differentiate between light and deep sleep, so you might be waking up when it’s harder for your body to start functioning, which can be why you’re so groggy even if you had eight solid hours of sleep the night before.
  • If you are awoken during deep sleep, rather than naturally, it can impact everything from short-term memory to cognitive ability according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

So what are the steps you should take to get a better night’s sleep and over time train yourself to wake up in a more gentle, healthy and natural way?

Know How Much Sleep You Need

One of the first things to do before you ever start trying to wake up with an alarm clock is to get an understanding of how much sleep your body needs. Most people require between seven and nine hours, but this can vary.

Most people are only getting around six hours of sleep a night, and that’s a big part of many of the health problems we face.

To find out what you need, try to give yourself some time on vacation or during a weekend to sleep as much as your body wants. Wake up completely naturally and count about how long you slept. That will give you a good baseline, and you can then start adjusting your bedtime accordingly.

Create a Bedtime Routine

Waking up naturally is all about retraining your body to work the way it’s supposed to, and that includes having a bedtime routine.

Once you know the optimal time for you to go to bed, create a plan for how you’ll fall asleep more quickly and comfortably at that time each night. Maybe it’s a little stretching or certain music you listen to. Whatever it is, it needs to be part of what you do each and every night.

Use a Programmable Thermostat

Is there anything smart home technology can’t do, including making it easier for you to wake up naturally?

If you have a programmable thermostat, consider setting it to start gradually warming up in your house around the time you need to wake up. The reason our bodies like to fall asleep when it’s cooler is because that indicates it’s evening and time to sleep.

Then, as it starts to warm, our bodies begin to sense the daytime is starting, therefore making it more natural for us to get out of bed.

Make Use of Light

If you’re someone who sleeps in a room with heavy curtains, you might consider leaving them cracked so you can see the natural morning light as the sun starts to rise.

Another choice, if leaving your curtains cracked would like street or car lights in during the night, is to use a wake-up light.

Wake up lights can be placed beside your bed, and they’re designed to help your body follow its natural circadian rhythm, which can be off balance from stress and other triggers common in our daily lives. When you’re exposed to light in the morning that’s similar to natural light, it tells your body to start waking up, and it can also support your hormones and balance your melatonin.

Once you’ve got all the above in place, it will take time to get your routine where you need it to be, so be patient. When you’re first working on developing more natural sleep patterns, you can set a backup alarm, but if you stick with your routine you should not only be able to ditch the alarm, but also feel better about waking up.

Cindy Anthony