Insomnia and I are old friends. Get more sleep with these essential oils, they help me!
As a former restaurant employee I knew insomnia well. Friends and family often didn’t understand the trials and tribulations of that life but insomnia was possibly the worst. Most people wake up and go to work, then have a number of hours after work to relax and wind down before going to sleep. With restaurant life it’s the opposite. You’re going in when everyone else is going home, and so when you get out of work it’s usually around midnight.
It creates an endless cycle of sleep all day and stay up all night, at least that was my experience (and very many other people’s). But I found that using certain essential oils would help me relax and (eventually) get to sleep.
What is it about essential oils?
A little of the science side of things is basically that your brain registers smells because your animal side of your brain used to use it to register danger like fire. Years ago you used to need your nose to register all kinds of scents, we didn’t have expiration dates on things and you couldn’t always be sure what was edible and what wasn’t.
So your nose adapted to have tons of receptors that report directly your fight or flight brain. When considering why different smells elicit different responses it’s because thousands of years of conditioning made connections in your brain that bring different responses. Certain essential oils can help you sleep better and end your insomnia because of evolution. Maybe because those plants flowered at night or for other reasons but it’s been proven our brains respond to smells perhaps better than any of the other senses.
Which essential oils are good for sleep?
You can use the essential oils in a diffuser, as a spray, or you can get the plant itself. All are good ways to incorporate the smells to help your insomnia and let you get to sleep easier. Here are a list of some of my favorite ones.
- Lavender
- Chamomile
- Ylang Ylang
- Jasmine
- Valerian
Those are some of my favorites but having them as essential oils is good, plants are better. Plants can help with your insomnia especially if you combine them with the plants that help you sleep.
Other ways to help insomnia.
Essential oils are a great way to help you sleep better but plants are even better. Plants have microbes in the soil that promote happy brain chemicals from being released in your brain plus your brain recognizes plants better than four walls and a television. They are also a great hobby to have and will promote relaxation in taking care of them.
Other things that will help are meditating, exercising, having a relaxing hobby like reading. Practice daily habits like gratitude, affirmations, and different methods on how to live a peaceful life. Those can all help ease your mind into relaxing. Certain affirmations help me better at night too so use those if you need to.
I hope that these helped you! In my experience the best is a combination of the above.
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