What makes for a good night's sleep?

I keep insisting to my partner that my body was not made for cold climates He finds it amusing that I sleep with two pairs of socks I tell him its one degree outside This doesnt suffice as an explanation It is a jokeI mean I really do look and feel somewhat ridiculous with my two pairs of socks the outer layer a pair knitted by Tibetan refugee women The one day I dared to wear just one pair I woke up in the middle of the night with my feet caught in spasms I needed reinforcementIve always taken a long time to fall asleep My brain takes time to unwind and its often in the dark of night that my mind unleashes the anxieties it managed to repress through the day If my feet are cold then the process of finally falling asleep gets unnecessarily lengthened I cannot focus on anything because of the consciousness I have of feeling not secure not warmWhen its cold I need to be cocooned in my comforter Part of it needs to be swaddled under my feet the rest tucked around the edges of my bodys form so I look like a creature in a state of metamorphosis Winter was always a struggle more so back in Delhi where most flats are built for the heat of summer Id often put a hot water bag in my bed especially near where my feet would rest to warm the cold surface and make it easier to acclimatise The main obstacle was to fall asleep it was usually smooth sailing after thatIn the last few months the quality of my sleep has been dramatically enhanced Ive begun to suspect its because Im less anxious when I get into bedI began reading childrens books in German to improve my grasp over the language I found that if I get into bed sooner I am less anxious I stopped spending time on my phone before bed for years I would play a game of Scrabble or Candy Crush Saga at night in order to fall asleepNow I try instead to read in bed or before moving to the bedroom I do a round of crochet This has helped me disentangle my thoughts giving them room to wander and simply be Where before I would use these final moments of conscious thinking to run over todo lists for the future thus reinforcing the anxiety that was keeping me awake now I use the time to think of more comforting things It has demanded a resteering of my stream of consciousness Recently I read about how we program ourselves to fixate on negativity but dont train ourselves to follow a positive feeling something that might possibly energise us This resonated with meBecause I was brought up to be humble I never allowed myself to dwell inside a compliment In fact I internalised an inherent suspicion towards compliments I led myself to believe that if someone was saying something nice to me it was because they wanted something from me or they were secretly teasing meBecause I have worked hard at holding my self more forgivingly I am better equipped to simply even just accept a compliment not disregard it not invalidate it but think of it as someone seeing me in a certain wayThis small alteration in how I allow myself to slip into sleep seems to have transformed the nature of my sleep Many other lifestyle changes have invariably contributed For instance I have dinner between 7 pm and 730 pm I am usually in bed by 1030 pm I am up between 645 am and 7 amWhen I wake up I have this certainty of having been in deep sleep This is a new feeling My dreams are very intricately linked to whatever it was I was doing through the day When for instance we were harvesting apples I would see myself between the leaves I could hear the plucking I could envision the rednessThe last few days Ive been seeing pages of art catalogues because Id been scanning book covers as part of the library work I was temporarily doing Sometimes between these mundane things I have visions of things connected to the intellectual thoughts Im wrestling withLast night I dreamed I encountered something like the burning bush except it was an ancient rubber tree It was not part of a plantation It was a singular tree and it was oozing sap and it was glowing white I imagine it must be connected to an essay I read two months ago by Kristina Lyons called Emergent Forms of Death Warning Highly Toxic Experiments that examines how extractive capitalist economies ruin indigenous knowledge systems Im not sureThe point is that Im finally beginning to understand the restorative reparative powers of sleep and how for years I had been in denial not acknowledging the link between my anxiety and my inability to sleep It made me question whether this should be our biggest red flag as far as mental health is concerned being more keenly attuned to our sleep patterns and transforming our lives with simply this goal in mind how to sleep betterDeliberating on the life and times of Everywoman Rosalyn DMello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover She tweets RosaParxSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperKeep scrolling to read more 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