Sleep & Anxiety: A Simple Technique to Calm Your Mind (Mini)

Sleep anxiety can feel like a relentless cycle—you wake in darkness, heart pounding, mind spinning with worries that feel insurmountable at 3 AM. But what if a simple body-focused practice could help break this pattern?

Mary Rothwell shares a powerful technique for those frustrating middle-of-the-night wake-ups when anxiety takes hold. Rather than fighting against racing thoughts directly (which often makes them stronger), she introduces a mindful approach focusing first on physical sensations. By feeling the supportive surface beneath you and imagining warmth slowly traveling up from your feet, you create an anchor that interrupts rumination. This practice works because your brain can't effectively focus on two things simultaneously—when you direct attention to bodily sensations, anxious thoughts begin to recede.

The episode explains how nighttime anxiety connects to our bodies' natural rhythms and hormone fluctuations, particularly melatonin and cortisol. Mary offers practical guidance for releasing tension in common problem areas like the jaw and face, while emphasizing self-compassion through gentle reminders that you're safe and supported. She acknowledges the irrational nature of late-night worries that often seem trivial by daylight, validating this common experience while providing tools to navigate it better. Whether you're dealing with occasional insomnia or chronic sleep struggles, this short but impactful episode delivers a technique you can implement tonight for more peaceful rest. For those wanting deeper sleep support, Mary mentions her comprehensive online program specifically designed for midlife women, available through her website.

Have you tried body-focused techniques to manage sleep anxiety? Leave a review or send Mary a message through the link in the show notes—she'd love to hear which strategies work for you or what sleep topics you'd like covered in future episodes.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to No Shrinking Violets
• 1:02 Sleep and Middle-of-Night Anxiety
• 3:16 The Warm Sand Relaxation Technique
• 5:48 Rewiring Your Body for Better Sleep
• 6:40 Episode Closing and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:16

I'm Mary Rothwell and I've seen how often women are told, subtly or directly, to stay in their lane, to be agreeable, accommodating and to stay small. But here's the truth you were never meant to live inside those guardrails and I believe we know who we are and what we want somewhere inside of us. It just got covered up by other people's expectations. So in these short episodes, I'll offer bite-sized reflections on the themes we explore in longer episodes Sleep boundaries, nourishment, relationships, mental health and, yes, even what we can learn from nature. So, whether you're walking the dog, sipping your morning tea or taking a quiet moment in your car, this is your time to grow your mind and take up your space. So today I'm going to talk about sleep. Now I could talk to you about sleep for hours. I actually have an entire online program for women in midlife about getting better sleep. That includes group coaching. So if you're interested in that, go to my website and it's maryrothwellnet backslash restored and check that out. But this is just a general sleep tip. Now this is going to be something that might take a little practice, but I usually talk about all the things around sleep, how to prepare for sleep and all of those which I'll talk about in the future. But the one thing that's been on my mind, because I've struggled with it in the last week, and this comes and goes, and I think it comes and goes for a lot of people is that situation where you wake up in the middle of the night and you start ruminating, you start thinking, you start worrying about things that happened, you start worrying about things that are going to happen. It's classic middle of the night anxiety. Now, there are a lot of things that contribute to this and, like I said, I talk about those things a lot and I'm sure there will be many, many episodes where I talk about some snippets of that stuff, because it has to do with how to actually regulate our body and our cortisol, because we're not meant to have heart-pounding thoughts racing in the middle of the night, because our melatonin should be doing its job night, because our melatonin should be doing its job. So the melatonin is what starts to rise, that hormone, as we prepare to go to sleep. So, anywhere, you know, between 7 and 10 pm, depending on your body, depending on the light, but when you have times where you are feeling like you wake up and you can't stop this worrying, there are several things you can do, but the one thing I'll focus on today is trying to calm your actual body. So I would try and I've done because I do yoga. This might be a little bit easier for me. It does take time.

Speaker 1: 3:26

But you want to lay on your back in a surrender position, so in yoga that's called corpse pose or shavasana, and I want you to feel the bed supporting you, because you can't think about two things at once. So if you concentrate on the feel of the bed underneath you and that it's supporting you, that's a starting point. You want to try to calm what's happening in your body. So, feeling that support of the bed, thinking about warmth, starting at your feet. So if you think about sort of warm sand, burying your feet or your toes in warm sand, warm sand and as you let that feeling wash slowly up your body, you want to think about the warmth of it. It's relaxing, so releasing the tension, and you're going to do that the whole way up your body, from your feet to your legs, stomach, your arms, and again, focus on that bed supporting you and let that come the whole way up.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Relax your jaw and your face and if you're like me. I hold a lot of tension at night in my jaw and in my face. In fact I have a night guard for my teeth because I grind my teeth so badly. So, trying to calm your body, now you're going to get distracted, you're going to keep, you know, probably going back to those ruminations. But in that moment, being able to tell yourself you're safe and supported If your bed is not a place of safety, that's a whole other topic. But if your bed is a place of safety, your bedroom is dark and cool at night that's important. But trying to calm your body and again having those thoughts of focusing on the warmth, letting yourself relax on the warmth, letting yourself relax, letting it go and just feeling supported and feeling safe, and repeating to yourself that in that moment you're okay, you'll deal with it in the morning, you'll sort it out in the morning. Because, again, if you're like me, when I wake up and I get my day started, it's like why did I worry so much about those things? It is an irrational thought process. We can't change the past any more than we can prevent what might happen in the future. But when you are in bed at night, those are cortisol spikes that happen and way more complex than just saying it's cortisol spikes, and I will talk about those types of things more in the future, but part of it is rewiring your body. So you can start with that, with just trying to allow yourself to let go of the thoughts, focus on your body and just connect to that supportive safety of your bed. So hopefully that little tip helped.

Speaker 1: 6:40

Thank you for joining me on my mini episode today. If there's anything that you ever want me to talk about, I would love for you to text me or comment. The text link is in the show notes or you can comment on the show If you'd like this. Leave a review for me, you know, and you can even just click the stars. You don't have to write anything If you want a quick way to just show how you feel about no shrinking violets. And again, thanks for joining me today and go out into the world and be the amazing, vibrant violet that you are.