When experiencing nervous system dysregulation, most people try to solve the problem 'from within.' But thereās something a lot of us forget: The stimuli in our surroundings also have a tremendous influence in our nervous system. In fact, it is accurate to say that we are constantly āco-regulatingā with our environment, taking external cues from all the sounds, the visuals, even the smells ā and then tuning our internal state accordingly. The issue? Most of us donāt put enough thought into intentionally designing our environments. Obviously, this isnāt your fault ā nobody teaches you this growing up! But without intentional Environment Design, our surroundings can have the opposite effect we were initially intending. So today, Iād like to share with you a few tips and ideas to intentionally design the most important room of your entire home: Your bedroom. The Role Of Sleep In Our Nervous System HealthSleep is critical to your Nervous System Health. As anyone who isnāt sleeping well will tell you, it impacts everything:
Now, sleep is a deep rabbit hole. Many great books and research papers have been written on the topic. But instead of giving you a giant reading list, Iām going to attempt to share with you the 20% of the changes and recommendations that, in my experience, will give you 80% of the impact in terms of deeper and better sleep. Iāve compiled them all in what I call my Sleep Sanctuary Cheat Sheet. Todayās Protocol: The Sleep Sanctuary Cheat SheetBelow, you can find 8 potential passive or environmental changes that you can make to your bedroom to improve your sleep quality over time. The beauty of all these suggestions is that theyāre one-time changes. So once you make them, they can have a positive impact on your sleep forever. Now, a quick word of caution: You may choose to experiment with more than of these suggestions ā but please know that itās usually more long-term efficient to pick one or two at most in the beginning and commit for 21 days before adding more. That said, hereās the list: āļø š± Use house plants to improve air quality in the bedroom and create an aesthetically calming environment. āļø ā³ Use an auto timer to turn off wifi power and/or lights 90 minutes before sleep. āļø š” Keep the ambient bedroom cool at an optimal temperature ā between 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 to 19.4 degrees Celsius). āļø š Purchase breathable sheets or consider investing in a temperature-regulating mattress or mattress cover (eg. the EightSleep, which allows for different temperatures on each side of the bed). āļø šÆļø Buy candles or Hue lights to replace overhead LEDs. āļø šØ Use relaxing natural incense to burn or an essential oil diffuser (e.g., lavender) in the evenings. āļø ā° Buy an analog alarm clock or Hatch to wake-up more naturally with your sleep cycle. āļø š¢ Track your sleep quality and consistency over time using an Oura ring. āļø šļø If you experience anxiety, try sleeping underneath a weighted gravity blanket. Ready to improve your sleepāand your Nervous System Health?I hope this email got your wheels turningāand you found at least one or two tweaks you can make to your bedroom over the next few days. Now if youād like to dive deeper into Environment Design (and leverage it as a tool to overcome the nervous system regulation challenges youāve been experiencing), Iād love to have you in our next Nervous System Mastery live cohort. Inside this training, you will not only find more actionable frameworks and resources but also:
āClick here to learn more & join the waitlist.ā PSā¦ In case youāre curious to hear from others, hereās what Caryn, an alumni from last year, said about her experience: |
Curious Humans & Nervous System Mastery
Championing adventures in radical inquiry & self-experimentation.
Hello Curious Humans ā greetings from a snowy Boulder! āļø Today, I'm excited to visit a neurofeedback lab in town to run some experiments with vagus nerve stimulation devices and explore how practicing non-sleep-deep-rest might shift my brainwaves... I'll report back what I discover in a few weeks time! š§ ~~ 1/ āļø A Self-Assessment to Track Your Nervous System Regulation For the past few months, I've been working on creating a robust and practical self-assessment that strives to give insight...
Thereās a pervasive mythāparticularly in the tech industryāthat listening to our rational, logic-oriented left brain is superior to acting in response to fluctuating emotions. Life might be simpler if this were the case. Emotions are messy, and in some circumstances they can cloud our judgment. Even the neuroscientists studying them have struggled to understand how they work. Which is why, to this day, there is still no scientific consensus on a precise definition of what an emotion actually...
Hey! Jonny here with some more practical thoughts on how to become an active operator of your nervous system. Today Iād like to share with you a very powerful, zero-cost protocol for self-regulating your inner state during stressful or intense situations. But first, Iād like to give you a little bit of context to make sure you understand why self-regulation is such an important skill to master (so you can overcome the nervous system regulation challenges youāve been experiencing). Why...