Sponsor:

This episode is brought to you by Oxa, the first breathing wearable with live biofeedback, and your coach for enhanced sleep and stress relief. Oxa measures in real-time your vitals like your heart and respiratory rates, and creates personalized breathing exercises for you to control stress and get better sleep. Head over to oxalife.com for more details on how Oxa can help you live a healthier life!

Show Notes:

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Sarah Silverman about insomnia, what distinguishes it from sleep deprivation, and what breathing practices can help control insomnia and get better sleep.

Sarah is a Stanford-trained holistic sleep specialist, insomnia expert, and wellness consultant passionate about sleep health and wellness. She uses a personalized, mindfulness-based approach to help improve sleep issues, leveraging notably cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, a first-line, drug-free approach for adults with chronic insomnia.

In this conversation, Sarah explains how diaphragmatic breathing can be used to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, promote relaxation, and improve sleep quality.

She shares how breathing practices like boxed breathing can help reach this relaxation state, the ideal timing throughout the day, and the time it takes before one can see major improvements in sleep quality.

By the end of this episode, you will know simple yet powerful breathing methods you can apply in your daily life to improve your sleep! 

Timeline:

(00:01:40) Insomnia signs, origins, and consequences

(00:11:00) Treating insomnia with cognitive behavioral therapy and diaphragmatic breathing

(00:17:10) Breathing practices to address insomnia and improve sleep quality

(00:22:10) Progressive muscle relaxation and breathwork for better sleep

To learn more about Sarah’s work, take a look at her website where you can also register for the online courses she developed for sleep optimization.

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Thank you for your time and your interest in the science of breathing! 

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