Sleep is important and unfortunately for many different reasons, at times, we aren’t getting enough. Maybe you just got your first baby and have sleepless nights, or it’s a broken relationship that keeps you awake. Or you’re a busy entrepreneur who’s working hard to get things up and running. Either way, sleep or rather the lack of it impacts our health negatively. One of the things that can be done to reduce exhaustion, besides more sleep, is a regular mindfulness practice.
Before you get excited, there’s nothing that can replace sleep. That said, a little more than an hour a week, so around 10 minutes a day, of mindfulness practice may have similar benefits as an additional 44 minutes of sleep a night, according to a new study.
The Study
In this study 105 entrepreneurs have been interviewed about their exhaustion levels and if they had a mindfulness practice established. If they had one, they asked for the duration of the practice and their hours of sleep.
The participants worked on average 50 hours and more each week and slept less than 6 hours a night. The people who either slept more or practiced mindfulness felt less exhausted compared to the rest.
In another study by the same researchers the results got confirmed, this time with 329 participants.
An interesting finding is that mindfulness was less helpful when adequate participants reported to get adequate amounts of sleep and still feeling exhausted. The combination of feeling stressed and not sleeping combined with mindfulness seems to alleviate the lack of sleep. But not being low on sleep and still feeling stressed doesn’t seem to improve exhaustion.
Mindfulness Take-Away
This means, in my opinion, while you have enough physical recovery, external stress can still tire you a lot more than you might think. You might need to find a more sustainable way to handle stress and your overall workload. A breathing routine is a wonderful way to establish mindfulness, here’s an easy technique that will lower your stress within moments.
Obviously this isn’t always possible, especially if you’re starting something new. In this case you need to get through this, but it’s a temporary problem and shouldn’t become a chronic issue.
Practicing mindfulness and/or establishing a meditation routine can help you cope with this situation. Besides that research has shown that a daily practice of mindfulness, meditation or gratitude can increase your overall happiness.
This article is part of the Short Tao series. These are posts, articles, reviews and similar content, provided to you in a short and easy to digest format. This means, I cut to the chase quickly and aim to make it as short and informative as possible. The content, especially when it comes to science, is up to date when I publish it, but times change. So, if anything you read here has been seen changes, make sure to let me know. Ultimately, this is for your entertainment and education. Comment below to share your thoughts and make sure to let your friends know of this