Here’s my six suggestions for sensational sleep!

1. Make the bed - it sometimes seems like a lot of effort to make a bed you’re about to sleep in, but it’s amazing the difference a well made bed can make in helping you to relax into sleep. If you should change the sheets but don’t have the energy, just change your pillowcase (don’t do this for too long though - eventually those sheets will need to be changed - I continue to wait in hope for the self-sheet-changing bed but am willing to discard that dream in exchange for a flying car)

2. Don’t watch TV or use the computer for about an hour before you go to bed (and definitely don’t watch it in bed - bed is for sleeping). You can read but don’t read anything too exciting- you’re meant to be relaxing. (I’ve been known to say I’ll just read one chapter of a book and then I stay up until 2am reading the whole book - this does not help with getting a good night’s sleep - I now only read short stories before I go to sleep).

3. Relax your mind. There’s heaps of ways to do this. Counting sheep (I’ve never really understood how to do that but I’m sure it helps some people). For a while I did these relaxation exercises - it basically involves starting with your toes - clenching them for the count of three then relaxing them for the count of three. You then clench your calf muscles (you might need to point your toes to do this) then relax your calf muscles and so on. This can be a good way to understand what your muscles feel like when they are tense and when they’re relaxed. This technique worked for me for a while, but then I got bored and my mind started wandering and I started thinking about other stuff that was stressing me like how was I going to save the world when I didn’t have any super powers - and then I couldn’t go to sleep. So then I started doing brain teasers. This worked for a while too but then I found I got distracted doing that. Then I started counting backwards from 100 by 7’s (if you’re like me and never learnt your seven times tables this can be quite a challenge. I tended to get stuck around about 86). My current technique is based around a game known as “Scategories”. So I come up with a category e.g. girls’ names then starting at A I work my way through the alphabet coming up with names that start with that letter e.g. Alison, Bronwynne, Catherine, Debbie etc. I have however become very good at some of these categories (I’ve been using this technique for a couple of years now) and so now I have some more difficult categories e.g. Surnames of people I went to Highschool with, People I’ve worked with, things to do with the beach and even categories I can use for “Scategories”. My point is - do what works for you. The main purpose is however, to not be thinking about things that cause you stress or even activate your brain too much, rather it’s to be able to get your brain into a state of relaxation so you can drift off into sleep

4. Routine. So being married to a musician and having no fixed address doesn’t really lend to a life of routine however there are some things I can control in my environment to help my body know that it’s time to get ready to sleep. Things like getting into my pyjama’s, taking my tablets, moisturising (OK so I don’t do that all the time but hey I like to pretend). I know some people who have a half hour routine they use before they go to bed. Some people find putting lavender oil (make sure it’s the essential oil not the synthetic on a tissue (kleenex for the americans) and put it under your pillow. Speaking of pillows, I also make sure wherever I am in the world I have a quality pillow. I never have room in my luggage to take my own pillow as the concept “travel light” is quite foreign to me - so i normally end up buying a pillow when I arrive in the country. This gives me a level of control over my sleep environment.

5. Try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day - again this is fairly difficult depending on your lifestyle but it’s a good aim to have.

6. If you can’t sleep, get up out of bed, go to another room, read a trashy magazine or a boring textbook for a few minutes (my brother used to listen to tapes of my sister’s statistics lectures) then go back to bed and try again. Tossing and turning only makes it worse - the more you stress about not being able to sleep the harder it will be to sleep.

Sleep well.