What an absurd thing to say, how can one possibly wake up 'wrong'? Well, it's one of those situations where the body and mind fight eachother. If you can't wake up to an alarm, can not wake up in the morning or just have a difficulty waking up, we need to work on the process of waking up by looking at what the body and mind both need before you gain consciousness.
Everyone is familiar with this scenario, you wake up, but you hardly feel like you're firing on all cylinders. You urgently need to get out of bed, but your body and mind just don't feel quite ready.
The body will let you know when it's not ready to be woken up by plaguing you with the dreaded early morning grogs, a snappy short temper and a freshly glazed-over look on your face.
What if I told you that you can wake up without an alarm and you can wake up without feeling tired?
Imagine that tomorrow morning, you wake up...and you feel as if it is the right time to become conscious. You may have had this feeling before, but it happened by chance and not by design.
The issue is not that you can't wake up to an alarm, it's that you are using the wrong type of alarm. I'll explain what I mean below, but I hope you haven't heard of these techniques before, I'd be chuffed to give you this specific sleep hack eureka moment!
Whether you've landed on this post in the middle of the night or at the break of day, take note of the following and take action on them, these tricks may just change your mornings, forever.
I Wake up Feeling Tired?
Waking up tired is incredibly common, the number of people who settle for this way of waking for their entire life is astonishing.
They search for advice on how to wake up when tired rather than how to wake up NOT tired. Our purpose here is to go into the route cause of why we wake up not so fresh.
The issue isn't that you are sleeping too deeply, or that you're getting too much sleep.
The issue is the method by which you wake up, we all rely on the sudden or abrupt method of gaining consciousness.
The way this manifests is by being whacked with a pillow from your significant other, the shoulder shaking from a roommate or the 'BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP' of an alarm clock.
We have accepted these methods as legitimate ways to wake up for decades, but they are wrong, so incredibly wrong and I'm going to tell you why.
The solution requires a change of thinking, we need to start thinking about how we can wake up gradually...rather than abruptly, or suddenly.
When we go to sleep, it's not a process that is quick or immediate (though we wish it was) it's one that gradually happens over time.
The language we use to talk about going to sleep even supports this, we say 'falling' asleep. falling is the act of yielding to sleep rather than attacking it and getting it done as quick as possible (because that doesn't work). We set up routines and allow the body to feel ready to go to bed, minutes to hours even before we get to bed.
The body begins the routine for going to bed before we even know it. We might not even be thinking about bedtime yet but our body has already started it's routine for winding down.
It does this in a few different ways, abiding by it's self programmed sleep cycle, responding to the sunset or reacting to a drop in the evening temperature.
This way of thinking needs to be copied, but reversed when waking up. We need to 'wake' the body before we wake the mind and become conscious, so how do we do this?
How to Wake up Early in the Morning
The body needs to be woken up gradually, as I've said. It will reject any notion of being woken suddenly without warning.
Your body is fascinating and although from the outside we just look like a plank taking a nap, the body is hard at work running through processes that improve us and repair us.
Interrupting these processes are very destructive, both for your plans in the next day and for your health in general.
Have you ever had one of those days where you wake before your alarm, you just managed to gain consciousness and you don't really know why? Not only that, but you couldn't get back to sleep because you felt kind of 'ready' to be get up.
Why did that happen? Well, it comes down to two things! The first thing is that you woke up at the correct time relative to the sleep cycles of the body (I'm sure you have heard of this before)
One sleep cycle happens every 90 minutes-ish. So the ideal time to wake is right at the end of that cycle and not during it.
But that doesn't mean that you have to wake exactly at the end of the sleep cycle. You can instead, signal to your body that you are going to wake in the near future and it will begin to prepare itself to be woken.
How does one wake up fresh? The answer is a gradual stimulation that the body can respond to while you are unconscious.
Even though you aren't awake, the sensors in your body will still respond to smell, sound, light touch and temperature, and we need to stimulate them at the right time to wake in a refreshing way!
How to Wake up Refreshed and Not Tired
There are a few methods for this, I'll go over the ones that I use and like most, plus a few others.
Waking up to Sunlight or Wake up Lamp
Why does light wake you up? Well, it comes back to the sensors I mentioned above. Even though you are unconscious, your eyes can detect light through your eyelids.
For this reason, they are able respond to such stimulation, even when we're flat out asleep. This is my favourite method of taking up in the morning.
The only catch is, and I suppose it's not a catch if you want to wake up early in the morning, but your wake up process will start whenever the sun rises.
This can be less reliable depending on where you are and what reason it is, also whether you can go to sleep with a your curtains partly opened. If any of these issues effect you, check out the tip on the sunlamp below!
Let's say the sun rises at 6am, if light gets into your bedroom and bounces off the walls and the into your face and on your skin (thats another sensors of the body for light, the skin!) then your body will subconsciously respond to it.
You don't need the light to be directly in your face, you just need those photons hitting you from some angle.
At 6:40 AM, this is when you will possibly begin to awake, the natural waking up process can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depends on how gradual the sunrise is and where your body is in its sleep cycle.
Just encase, you could also set an alarm for AFTER this time, just as a safety net. Baring in mind, that even though you may not wake at 6:40, you will be in a better position to be woken by your alarm and thus shouldn't feel as bad as you normally would.
So the technique here is to find out the time of the sun rise relative to where you live, add on 40 minutes or so (which is where you may wake naturally, then set an alarm for say 60 minutes after the sun rise, this is my ultimate...most effective...most sincere of techniques to wake up fresh and ready for the day!
Using a Sunlamp
Now, the tip above is fantastic, but the sun doesn't always rise at the same time. If you want to get up early at a consistent time, this is a problem. However, technology has introduced a handle and elegant solution to help us
The Sunlamp is...pretty descriptive of what it is, it's a lamp that mimics the rise of the sun (to function as an alarm)
The Sunlamp has a gradual light function but also a sound function, this satisfies the technique above by bundling the best way to wake up (gradual light) with the back up way to wake up (gradual sound)
Waking up to sunlight is the best way to do this, but this is a great alternative should you need to use it.
With this tech, you can obviously 'move' the time of the artificial sunrise, so you have a bit more flexibility here.
Ultimately, these devices can be a bit on the pricey side for an alarm but if you are investing in your sleep...it's one of the best ways to spend your money, the value of the product in terms of improving your life is brilliant.
Waking up to Temperature Change
When we go to sleep, or start the process of going to sleep, the body likes the temperature to drop. Your heart rate will fall and the body temperature will fall with it.
Equally in the mornings, we wake up and our heart rate and temperature increases. Now this is going to be different with everyone, but some people responds to waking up with the cold crisp air on their skin. I personally like this too, it helps with the whole refreshing vibe.
For some, they keep a window open, for others, they have the joy of using aircon. For myself, in the UK we're not too au-fay with aircons (unfortunately) and so we have to rely on the window method, or an automated fan maybe.
Waking up to Sound
This has to be a gradual sound, so it could be used with the sunlamp mentioned above or it could be another lamp with just a sound function, but it's one that is gradual.
The annoying thing about gradual sound is that it can't be so gradual, it will likely be over the course of 2-5 minutes or so
Additionally, the type of sound is important. It could be a repeating bleep or some kind of music. I feel it would be hard to find what's best for this so I don't rely on this technique at all
Another interesting way, is to use the sounds of things that aren't alarms, but can be used as methods to wake you up. For example, in some houses, people program their internal heating to come on at a certain time in the mornings ready for their shower.
The sound of the heating coming on and the filling of the pipes may be enough to slowly stimulate you into waking, it's very subtle, but it may be something that can help. The point is, think of things like this that may be able to wake you.
A more obvious one, especially if you leave your window open, is the singing of the birds in the morning. These guys often have pretty solid wake up routines, maybe they can help you out. But again, some chirps are subtle and sweet while others are loud and piercing, so choose your 'bird' alarm carefully.
My Recipe for Waking up Fresh
Granted this doesn't work every time, but it does work more often than not when I'm in a good holding pattern.
Get into bed, leave the curtain slightly opened. But in a way where it isn't keeping me awake
Set my Sun Lamp alarm for the time of the sun rise + 30 minutes. Sunrise at 5:30am, so my alarm is at 6am. You'll notice this is shorter than I describe above because I'm using the sunlamp. This will provide a light stimulus as well as the sun so I need enough time for it to come into effect.
Fall asleep, morning comes round, sun comes in, bounces off the wall and into my lovely face.
I hopefully wake between 6 and 6:30. My sunlamp alarm goes off at 6:40, by which time I've had stimulus from the sun and my Sun Lamp
I wake up, my eyes adjust, and I feel pretty ready to get out of bed. Sometimes i leave the window open to get that cold air in too
I get up, shower, come out, then put my earphones on and listen to music for a bit. This helps me to just get a bit more energy and drive for the day
And that's it! Mostly it works, it's a pattern I found in university and it helped me get up nice and early to study. Which again, studying early is a massive benefit, i talk about that more on the blog too if you'd like to hunt for those posts.
Overall, if you cant wake up to your alarm or if you just have general trouble in waking up, I would totally advise you try the above.
Sleeping is something precious, and of course I've only described half of the picture here. How you go to sleep is also very important - I'll cover this in an accompanying post that I will do in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that!
How you start the day is crucial, try your best not to make it a struggle to wake up. Invest in the solution and profit from it like any other good self improvement hack.
Did you know that the body is designed to be woken gradually?
New to me!
Already knew
I hope this helps, best of luck with it. Report back in the comments if anything worked and hit the <3 button if you learned any new tricks!
Thanks for reading
PutSimply
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