4. Ritualize and make associations
It’s amazing what the power of ritual can do to help sleep. It may be down to the fact that if you carry out a series of actions every night (say, setting the alarm clock, filling the hot water bottle, reading a few pages of a favourite book) you are sending signals to the brain that bedtime is near. It’s almost as if the subconscious starts to prepare your body for the sleep ahead. Some people use a ‘sleep aroma’ that they associate with sleep – and you can even buy dispensers that give off a calming lavender type smell. These won’t (of course) have any medical effect making you drowsy, but they really can make the bedroom smell very pleasant, and nothing wrong in that when you close your eyes at night.
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