Thus restful sleep is a vital ingredient in optimal mind and body health, and it needs to be on everyone’s self-care list.

Below, I offer a few sleeping tips that have helped me, my family and my clients.

First, this is a quick mind-body tip to fall asleep or go back to sleep upon awakening:

1. Practice slow, even breathing. Establish a comfortable rhythm.

2. Then, with each slow, deep breath (complete exhalation and inhalation) count backwards, silently, from 100: breathe in and out—100; breathe in and out—99; breathe in and out—98, and so on.

It is important not to rush the process. If your mind wanders or you lose track, just go back to 100 and start again without judgment.

The effective process of this technique is three-fold: your body relaxes from your deep, even breathing; the counting serves as “thought replacement”—inserting a benign “thought” and keeping out intrusive thinking; and each time you practice this technique and are successful, your body-mind is conditioned to fall asleep in response to it (like a hypnotic suggestion). Your mind-body learns, “When I slow my breath and count in this manner, I go to sleep.”

Most people achieve near-immediate results with this technique. The trick is persistence. Don’t give up! Your health is worth this effort!

Next, take a broader look at your habits and sleep environment. Here are a few basic sleep hygiene practices:

1. No caffeine after noon (I know, I know). Drink plenty of water instead of more caffeinated tea or coffee.

2. Make your bedroom a quiet, dark, relaxing haven free of stressful clutter, work items and distractions. The bed is for sleep and (consenting, adult) intimacy only. When you enter the bedroom, you want your body-mind to connect to that space of joyous restful sleep. It is a myth that television, electronic “devicing” and the like help you sleep. It may “zone you out,” but the brain is still being stimulated.

Think you have to have the radio or TV on to sleep? Every time a laugh track sounds or there is a commercial, at some level your sleep is interrupted even though you may not be conscious of it. These disruptions interfere with sound, restful sleep. You may have trained yourself to go to sleep to those things, but you can retrain yourself and get better sleep quality because of it.

3. If you must get up in the middle of the night and read or engage in another activity, do it in another room so you don’t reinforce that it is okay not to sleep in the middle of the night in bed. Prior to leaving the bed, give the breathing technique a good concerted effort; hopefully you won’t have to leave because you’ll fall asleep.

4. No vigorous exercise after 6 p.m. (or four hours before bedtime) to give your body time to readjust to an optimally relaxed state.

5. Keep a paper and pen by your bed. Many mid-night awakenings are because we remember something that we need to attend to the following day or in the future. If you put it on paper, you can let it go, knowing you have the details recorded. Otherwise, you might find that your brain continually wakes up so that you remember when you fully awaken.

6. Use white noise or silicone earplugs. The earplugs will not prevent you from hearing your child call, but they will prevent you hearing when the hamster passes gas or a window creaks with the wind—symptoms of what I call “parent’s ear.” And they conveniently block the sound of snoring.