My Tips For Better Sleep

Aisling Grimley is a mother to four daughters, and the stunning four legged Pepper, wife to Francis,  co-founder of The Silk Pillowcase and runs the successful MySecondSpring.com website for women in midlife. She’s a champion sleeper and swears by early nights, rest oil, chamomile tea – and a calm demeanour.

I love my sleep and usually sleep very well with lots of dreams. I try to sleep for 8 hours but sometimes it’s closer to 7.

I aim to be in bed around 10 pm because I get up early – usually between 6 and 6.30 am – a new routine that I started at the beginning of this year. I leave my phone downstairs and head to bed with a cup of chamomile tea and a pint of lemon water for the morning. Chamomile tea is soothing to the digestion and helps me to sleep.

 I cleanse with Image Vital C and then apply my Kiehl’s night balm to my face and a couple of rolls of Flora + Fiona Rest Oil to my wrists. I sometimes have an Epsom Salts bath with a few drops of Lavender which feels like a prequel to a guaranteed good night’s sleep. I love these rituals and feel they are sending messages to my brain that it’s time to switch off.

I read for a while, usually until my eyes start to slide on the page (sooner than I’d like) and then it’s off to sleep. Sometimes I pick an angel card to give me a thought for the night and day ahead. Then I place my tired head on my lovely silk pillowcase and luxuriate in its cool silkiness before drifting off. I usually drop off straight away.

I have 2 pillows for reading then I fling one on the floor and sleep on 1! I used to like to sleep with no pillow but now I like the support and alignment that 1 pillow seems to give. With 2 I get a crick in my neck.

We sleep in a pitch-black room with shutters tightly closed. I love that dark restful feeling.

If I wake during the night I count as I breathe: 4 to breathe in, hold for 7, breathe out for 8. This usually gets me back to sleep unless I have a very active mind, for example recently while I’ve been planning and launching The Silk Pillowcase company my thoughts have sometimes been racing during the night. If I wake very early I sometimes get up at 5.30 am to write things down and then have a nap in the afternoon, if possible. I slip on my blackout silk eye mask set an alarm and snooze for 40 minutes – bliss!

I have a dream journal beside my bed and try to scribble down some dreams as soon as I wake up to see what sense I can make of them. It’s very interesting to read back over them a few weeks later and see how relevant they are to our subconscious thoughts and brain processing systems.

The alarm goes off at 6am and we listen to the radio for a few minutes to get the news headlines and some early morning music with Shay Byrne on RTE 1 before getting up around 6.15 to do some meditation, stretches and a plank and the start of a new day.

I love my sleep – feels relaxing even to talk about it.