Three Tips on How to Wake Up Gently
Are you tired of being jolted out of bed by your alarm each morning? Do you hate the feeling of your heart pounding as you sit bolt upright to turn off your alarm clock? Does just the thought of setting your alarm before you go to bed fill you with a sense of dread? If so, here are three tips that will help you wake up easily and gently.
First, try going to bed earlier. Part of the reason you may be waking up so stressfully is that you’re exhausted. If your body is in deep sleep because you are so tired, it’s going to be harder to wake up. You go through different phases of sleep each night. In some, you are only lightly asleep and in others, you are deeply sleeping. It’s much easier on your body to be awakened from a light sleep. If you go to bed earlier and get more rest, your body will find it easier to get up in the morning.
Second try to wake up gradually. If you have an alarm clock with a CD or mp3 player, try setting it to play a song that starts out quiet and gradually gets louder. You can try setting it a few minutes earlier than normal, so that by the time you would normally have gotten up, the song will be loud enough to wake you. If you’re worried that the song won’t be loud enough to wake you, set your normal alarm as a backup.
Another thing that will help you to wake up gradually is a lamp timer. What you want to do is plug a lamp into the timer and have the timer set to turn the lamp on just before you want to wake up. The light turning on simulates the dawn and your body will respond by waking up gradually. If you get a digital timer, you can set it as precisely as you would your alarm clock. Again, if you’re worried that this won’t be enough to wake you by itself, set your normal alarm as a backup.
The third thing you can do is to use a device that detects the optimum time for you to wake up. We talked earlier about how your body goes through cycles of light and deep sleep and how it is easier to wake up from a light sleep. There are systems that use a motion detector to sense when you are lightly sleeping. The idea is that if you are moving and shifting in bed you are in a lighter phase of sleep. When they detect motion, they send a signal which causes the alarm to go off and at least in theory wake you gently.