Building a Rock Solid Evening Routine by Lisa Grace Byrne
I want you to think about your evenings as a sacred bookend to your day.
Establishing an evening routine to prepare your body and mind for restorative sleep is a simple but powerful tool for helping your body shift into healing mode for the night hours.
Let’s think of our evening routine as a bridge that takes us from one state of being to another. You are literally preparing yourself for the transition from wakefulness to sleep, and your evening routine will be the intentional practice that helps you make that transition.
Many of us have gotten into the habit of treating sleep like a light switch. We try to squeeze the juice out of every wakeful moment and then try to “switch off” into sleep on a dime.
Our bodies were not made for that.
On a biochemical level, giving yourself a sacred book at the end of an evening routine resets your circadian rhythm by allowing your melatonin production to rise into the evening hours and heralds sleep. Melatonin is a critical hormone that is important not only for getting sleep but also for your ability to stay asleep throughout the night. Sometimes, we don’t think we have problems sleeping because we hit the bed and fall immediately to sleep, but we wake in the middle of the night and have a hard time returning to sleep, or we wake after a night’s sleep and feel unrefreshed and tired every morning. How you prepare yourself for sleep makes a huge difference in these cases.
So, let’s work through a simple template to begin constructing an evening routine that works for you.
If your evening routine is like a bridge that takes you from where you are ending your day to a place where your body and mind can fall into a deeper level of rest, then we need to think through all the places of “activity” we could still be plugged into as we try to go to sleep.
I’ve delineated these “layers” of activity in the following ways.
Work > Body > Mind > Spirit
WORK
After being engaged in the world all day, the goal of your evening routine is to slowly disengage you from it and bring you back inward to yourself, preparing you for deep, restorative sleep.
So we’ll begin there. The first part of the evening routine is designed to help you disengage from the outer world… that is, from your work and the care of your home.
For each level we travel inward, I think of it as completing the circle and allowing the day to end, fully closing the day in order to enter the night fully.
So, if you are like me (and most other women I know), part of your evening routine will involve tending to work-related details—either business or home-related.
It could be anything, such as computer work, phone calls, household chores, or projects. Give yourself as much time as possible to focus on those things as early in the evening as possible.
You’ll want to work backward from your ideal sleep time and set a time when you’ll allow yourself to tend to and bring closure to the tasks of the “world.”
For example, if you want to get to sleep by 10 pm, you may choose to give yourself from 8 pm to 9 pm to close the circle of your work for the day.
Create clear boundaries around your work or home time so there’s a start and stop time. At 9 p.m., you shift into your next layer of evening routine. What’s done is done…, and what’s not gets released.
This also makes your evening work time more efficient. When you have a clear time limit, you’re more likely to focus and get the most important things done.
BODY
Once your work time is done, move one step inward and do something to calm your physical body.
This can be very simple. Even washing up, changing into pajamas, and moisturizing your face is a way to prepare your body for sleep.
Things that soothe your central nervous system—for example, a long warm bath, a hot towel scrub, or a foot massage—are simple ways to calm your body. I love to do a simple self-massage or light stretching at night.
Another strategy is to turn off or dim the lights around the house during this time, giving your physical eyes an indication you are shifting into rest.
Artificial light disrupts the production of melatonin, so softening the light around you is an excellent part of your evening routine. In fact, this has been extremely helpful as I prepare my kids for bed. About an hour before I want them in bed, I’ll turn off all the screens and dim the lights in the house. As we transition into our bedtime routines, we begin to do calmer activities like reading or coloring.
MIND
Next, in your evening routine, go one layer further inward and consider ways to calm and relax your mind.
I love limbic calming exercises. Actions like inspirational reading, meditation, or journaling can also help calm and prepare the mind for deep rest.
Using essential oils is particularly powerful in calming and relaxing your mind. This is an especially important element to include if you find your mind races as soon as you hit the pillow. Allowing space to get your thoughts out of your head and into a journal gives them a place to go and creates more calm and peace in your mind.
SPIRIT
Finally, end with nurturing your spirit and aligning your heart with positive, life-giving affirmations.
I love including something right before bed that aligns with my spirit and symbolizes what I want to bring more of into my life. Prayer and gratitude journaling is fantastic at the end of the day.
Sometimes, I’ll do some light inspirational reading before bed. Poetry is my favorite, as it engages your brain differently than a more cerebral, thought-provoking book.
***
Here’s what the above evening routine might look like:
8:00 pm: Respond to work emails.
8:30 pm: Put in a load of laundry and clean up the kitchen.
9:00 pm: Dim the lights around the house. Put on your pajamas, wash your face, and brush your teeth. Perhaps do a five-minute foot rub with warm coconut oil and a few simple stretches.
9:15 pm: I will get out my journal and spend some time writing. I will also sketch out a quick schedule for the next day so that anything I need to remember is captured on paper and I can release it from my mind. Breathe in Lavender, Ylang-Ylang, or Geranium essential oils.
9:30 pm: In bed, I read some poetry, write in my gratitude journal, pray with hand over heart, and allow myself to deeply relax.
9:45 pm: I turn off the lights and slip off to sleep. If I have trouble sleeping, I’ll also do some deep breathing exercises.
This is just a simple template to work through as you consider how to craft a meaningful bedtime routine that results in deeper, more restorative rest.
This doesn’t have to take a long time. I can do a couple of these things in twenty-thirty minutes. While I prefer to give myself a full hour, it isn’t necessary.
It’s the consistency, the predictability, and the new habit of prioritizing the care of yourself at the closing of your day. The symbol of saying your days are important and the closing of a day is something to be marked intentionally with loving care.
ACTIVITIES & QUESTIONS
1. Do you have an evening routine in place that helps you transition from wakefulness to rest?
2. Make a list of activities for each area of the evening routine that Lisa outlined above. How can you finish your work for the day? How can you prepare your body, mind and spirit for bed?
3. Commit to following your evening routine for at least a week and note any differences in the quality of your sleep and your wakefulness once that routine is in place.