If you’re constantly running on empty, pushing through stress, or telling yourself you’ll “catch up on sleep later”—this episode is for you. This week, Ren Akinci is joined by Ahna de Vena, a Sleep and Performance Specialist who has spent over 20 years helping high-performing leaders and teams rethink their relationship with rest.
We explore how sleep impacts executive decision-making, emotional regulation, and long-term performance. You’ll learn why burnout is often the result of mismanaged recovery, what healthy sleep hygiene actually looks like in today’s always-on world, and how trauma—even subtle or unspoken—can quietly disrupt our ability to rest.
Listen to all episodes on your favorite podcast platform:
Transcript (Download)
Ahna, welcome. Thank you. It’s good to be here. Thank you so much.
You have built a career helping others transform their relationship with sleep. What inspires you to do that?
I had insomnia as a child and a teen and in my early 20s I had a complete breakdown. And at that time I was working in film and theater and my career was pretty haphazard. There’s a lot of stress in that industry. And I just collapsed and I was diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases and told I had to take medication for the rest of my life. And I was pretty young, I was in my 20s and I just thought this is not right. And so I said no to the medication and I studied natural medicine. And in that time, in those years, I recovered my ability to sleep well. And I also recovered that autoimmune disease and didn’t need to take medication. And I really put that down to improving my sleep.
And after that study, which I didn’t do really to become a therapist, I did it to heal myself. I looked back and I thought, why isn’t this taught in schools? Why aren’t we taught how to manage stress and how to sleep well? I mean, we’re meant to spend one third of our lives asleep. You know, for an average person, that’s like 30 years we’re meant to spend sleeping, but we’re never taught how to do it. And so few people know about sleep.
And so I went into schools, I went and knocked on doors, I spoke to principals, I told them my story, and I said, I want to teach the kids. And they let me in. And so I taught stress management and sleep improvement to kids first. And then that rolled on to adults asking me for help. And then I had a private practice for over 20 years now that has spanned three continents: Australia, Europe, and actually Switzerland to be exact, and New Zealand. I worked in all the international organizations in Geneva. And that was at a time where people weren’t really talking about sleep very much. But basically, it’s been an organic process from my own healing.
And I’m still very passionate about working with children. I have a charity that helps children who’ve experienced trauma. But my other passion is helping leaders because the ripple effect from just one person not sleeping is huge. And many people are not sleeping now. It’s an epidemic. And 80% of employees want help with sleep. That’s from a global census, but they don’t know where to find it. And one in three are experiencing sleep poverty. So it’s a huge problem. And it’s also a problem that’s hard to find good help for. Because if sleep hygiene worked, we wouldn’t be in a sleep epidemic, would we?
Yeah, so that’s how I came into it. I love the fact that we spend one third of our time sleeping because I love sleep. Like I find myself smiling on my bed when it’s time to sleep. But I have actually noticed in myself for the past couple of years that I don’t go to bed as early as I used to. There’s much more on my mind when I go to sleep. There’s much more stimulus. I’m always trying to not touch my phone and check my emails and scroll even in bed.
What does true sleep health look like in today’s always on high stress culture with like the world at our hands and that cell phone, especially for leaders?
Well, I like to say that it’snot about the perfect routine. It’s about creating your own recovery capacity. And that’s knowing yourself, being able to check in with yourself each day. So you said especially for leaders, we have different stresses, you know, they change, and our body and our mind is dealing with so many different things every day. And so being able to check in with what do I need tonight? And having that capacity and also there’s a commitment that’s needed for that that comes from valuing rest.
So we think of sleep as something, you know, we’ll do when we’re dead or it’s an optional practice, right? Sleep can be put to the side, but we don’t understand why we need it. And so with one study done, Harvard researchers found that sleep deprived brains have 60% increase in amygdala reactivity. So heightened emotions, poor impulse control, and difficulty regulating, particularly under pressure.
And at night, so that affects us obviously during the day, but by the time we get to the nighttime, we have decision fatigue. So when you said, you know, I try not to look at my phone, I try not to do these things, our brain is very tired. So true sleep health looks like having things that we’re committed to that we know help us unwind and recover. You know, recovery is a strategy. So understanding that and then putting things in place that make that very easy.
And doing just a few simple things to prepare for sleep. You know, we prepare for our day, we get dressed, we do, you know, often we’ll exercise, we’ll do things that wake us up and help us be at our best during the day. We need to flip that also to the night. How do we prepare best for sleep? And committing to that, which is kind of rare. But it’s been proven that just 15 minutes of a quality wind down improves sleep by 20 to 30%. So even just 15 minutes of doing what helps us the most.
And there are a couple of things that we can go into a little bit later that prepare the body very quickly or help that switch from being awake to ready for a quality sleep. You know, you asked about true sleep health. And we talk a lot about how long we sleep for, but we don’t talk enough about the quality of sleep that we get.
And I do programs for companies and I get thousands of people filling out surveys and there are a huge percentage of people that get seven hours, which is a little under what we need, but they get seven hours and still wake up tired, still wake up exhausted. And that is because our quality of sleep is declining. Our length of sleep is definitely declining. In 1942, we slept an average of 7.9 hours a night. And now the average is between six and 6.5.
So every year, the amount of sleep we’re getting is decreasing, but the quality of sleep is also declining. So it’s something that we need to work to swim upstream, you know, because especially in a world where we’re just so on all the time and where accessible so much of the time, that’s another part of the conversation, how much work has bled into our home time.
So we need to be more diligent about protecting that and then making sleep a real priority. I love that. And you speak about sleep as more than just a biological need. You see it as a gateway to deeper aliveness and presence and even joy. Can you share a littlebit about what you mean by that? Yeah. So when we don’t get the rest that we need, then life becomes a struggle. And I talk about the gray zone that people are living in. And that’s a gray zone of being half awake because of lack of rest, but then also half asleep. And we don’t get to experience that replenishment that is given to us. I mean, sleep is a gift. We can prepare ourselves, but as you would know, if you’ve ever tried to get to sleep, it’s very hard when you’re in that zone of trying because sleep is the opposite to trying and effort.
But when we are overflowing with energy and our brain is alive, have brain scans that show how much of our brain goes offline when we don’t sleep, like particularly our prefrontal cortex. And it’s very hard to feel joy when we’re tired and when we’re cranky, when we’re impatient, and all of our relationships and connections are compromised. That’s very hard.
But if you flip that to, you know, imagine or remember a time when you’ve just been so well slept and you feel like leaping out of bed and you say hello to everyone in your life with energy and you feel that you have the capacity instead of being afraid, oh my God, what are they going to ask me to do? What do they need? I don’t have that much energy. Saying no to social engagements because you feel too tired because you feel so exhausted.
So there’s a kind of overflow that happens when we’re well rested and when our brain is functioning well and we have a generosity that can outflow. And for me, there’s a great joy in that. And in my practice, I see people come in and their first session, they often say to me, I don’t know if it’s worth living. I’ve had someone say, but Kumara, I’m a multi, multi-millionaire. I have everything physically, but I feel like I have nothing because I just can’t sleep.
Of course, we need it to function well at work. But even work is about relationships. And when we’re tired, the way we relate just is, it’s not very enjoyable for us and it’s not very enjoyable for others. So that fact that sleep brings joy, it’s very layered. I could talk about it for an hour. I love that. And I love the example you gave about someone who, you know, seemingly had it all but was so desperate to get the sleep that they really needed but couldn’t.
And I assume it’s more than just not being able to shut off from social media or work, that there’s more perhaps some type of trauma or some adversity in their lives that impact their sleep. Can you explain that connection between trauma and sleep disruption and how unhealed stress or adversity can affect sleep in both children and adults?
Yeah. So once we, when we experience a stressful incident or continuous stress, the body goes into a state of fight or flight. So our sympathetic nervous system is on all the time. And so that increases hormones that are stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. Now cortisol is a stress hormone, but it’s also a healthy hormone when we have it at the right levels. We need to have high cortisol in the morning, but when we have it in the night, that’s when it really interferes with sleep. So does adrenaline.
And when we’re just in that heightened on stressed state and we don’t come down, then it interrupts the production of melatonin and other hormones that we need for sleep. But melatonin is what we need for the onset of sleep. And when we have high cortisol and adrenaline, that just doesn’t happen.So you’ll find people who have been through trauma, they will say, I just don’t get sleepy. I just don’t get sleepy and a lot of people say that. then when I ask what they’re doing and what’s happening in their home, it’s obvious why. But for people who’ve experienced a traumatic event, that is very much an internal state. And what they need is to regularly come down out of that. You can learn tools that enable that to happen, that you utilize during the day for one minute, five minutes, so that your stress baseline changes.
Our stress baseline shifts when we go through a traumatic event, it goes up. And this is true for a lot of people with, you know, you could call some KPIs trauma inducing, right? I mean, the pressure that many people are under, we see it coming, oh my God, I’ve got to get there, I’ve got to achieve that. And there’s this underlying anxiety that just never goes away. And that’s a similar state because the stress just doesn’t go down.
So what we need is to be supported. We need the support to process whatever has happened to us and bring our nervous system out of fight or flight into rest and digest. And it’s not like we can just do that once and it’s done. We need to continually do that to help the body realize I’m safe now. Everything is okay right now. I’m here. And then you can even say the date, you look around, I’m safe right now in this moment.
The long out breath is one of the best tools that we can use to bring on the parasympathetic nervous system. It simulates the vagus nerve whenever we do a long out breath. That’s as simple as:
You breathe in for four, breathe out for eight.
Even in for three, out for six.
You do that just a few times and you’re sending a signal to your body that it is safe right now. And you can relax and you can’t come out. Now, of course, often we need to process things as well, but we need to feel that sense of safety. And that’s true for adults and for children. Children need that co-regulation.
What can happen, I have a charity that helps women and children in shelters who have been in domestic violence situations. And so they get to the shelter and they’re just in a high alert state. I help, I train the staff, I make the environment sleep friendly so they’re getting the right signals to their brain. And then I give them sleep kits so that they can slowly start to come into a state that’s conducive to being able to rest and then being able to sleep.
Tell us a little bit about your foundation. What’s the name of it? What inspired it? And what kind of impact have you seen in the communities you’ve served so far?
It’s the Sleep and Dream Foundation. I created it in 2017, although I was doing the work beforehand. In my own healing, I had trauma in my childhood and that was one of the big triggers for my sleep issues. And while I was healing, I had this one day where I kind of went back in time and I was sitting with my seven-year-old self in the hallway of our home where there was a lot of unpleasant and stressful things that happened.
I was sitting with her there and I put my arm around her and I started to speak with her and I started to comfort her. And while I was in this process of helping my younger self heal, I had this vision of the thousands, hundreds of thousands of children who are in the same situation where their systems are so stressed. And then even worse, they’re taken out of their home. So they’re in an unfamiliar environment, whether it’s in a shelter or foster care or whereverthey are. And then they’re told to sleep in an unfamiliar bed in the dark and they don’t have support to do that. And so I created these little sleep kits for them. Well, first I wrote a book called The Sleep and Dream Book for them, and I made a recording as well. And I used to just send this little book, The Sleep and Dream Book, and a speaker, which they could press play, and that my voice would be guiding them to sleep using the principles in the book. So my whole idea was comforting these children who’ve been through so much and they so desperately need sleep. And so I was tithing and just sending these kits and also speaking to different organizations in a very unstructured way.
And then there was so much need that a friend suggested that I create a charity so that companies could donate to it and that that would help support the work and enable me to grow, which is what I did. And that went through in Australia. We have quite a rigorous process, but it went through quite quickly. And I got a call from the government saying, we really want to support what you’re doing. It’s fantastic. And yeah, and then it’s just grown from there.
As you know, recently I started to work with a foundation in Afghanistan and I’ve created a program for orphans. And it’s all based around a story about an owl that gets separated from its parents in a storm and it needs to learn how to sleep on its own. And yeah, I’m loving doing this work. I mean, it’s my heart’s work, honestly. I love my work, but the foundation work is so important.
And it’s what I really, my goal right now is to transform every shelter in Australia, women’s shelters, so it becomes sleep supportive, but then use that data to help embed sleep care into trauma care. Because currently it’s not, it’s not just an intrinsic part of trauma care. And so much repair can happen in the brain and in the nervous system while we’re asleep. It’s remarkable. So when that can be combined and really an intrinsic part of trauma care, people are going to recover much quicker.
I love that. I think what you’re doing for children is so beautiful. And in a sense, when you work with adults, you’re actually helping their inner child also recover because to your point, chronic sleep deprivation is a result of some type of trauma experience in childhood, which was also unfortunately your experience as well.
When you start that work with executives and people in leadership positions who are always the decision maker in the room, the person that’s always calling the shots, what does that process look like? And is there hesitation or misconception in the beginning of your coaching sessions with leadership levels and just corporations in general about sleep and sleep deprivation?
Yes. So people are very surprised with what they learn and how quickly it can help. I feel like we are undereducated about the impact on particularly our brain. McKinsey has done some incredible studies showing that sleep deprived are delirious or deluded about the fact they’re sleep deprived. Their brain is functioning at such a low level. They are unaware of what sleep deprivation is doing to them and even that they are sleep deprived. It’s so interesting.
And so people are shocked when they see, for instance, the prefrontal cortex. It decreases, it goes offline. And that the four types of behavior that are most commonly associated with high quality performance, which is having that strong orientation to results, problem solving effectively, seeking out different perspectives and being able to integrate them, and also supporting others. All four of thoseleadership behaviors rely on the prefrontal cortex. So people do get shocked about how much they’re being affected and then when they start to sleep well, they’re, wow, I didn’t even realize how much I was suffering and how I was just in this loop of being tired and then just coping. People get into a coping cycle, you could say, and high stress feeds poor sleep and poor sleep feeds high stress. The body cannot function well and be in a state where it’s calm and clear. I mean, inflammation is one of the first things that happens. And we’re in that heightened stress state from day one after a bad night’s sleep. We don’t fully acknowledge that. And then that high stress feeds the sleep and it turns into this cycle. So we have to break that cycle and people aren’t, you asked if they’re surprised, what we need is a foundation.
So the first phase of sleep recovery is a sleep education and understanding how sleep impacts us, how lack of sleep impacts us and the basics that our body needs. Stage two is an integrative phase where we’re breaking habits, creating new habits. And that does take commitment. But I say, how do you want to feel today? How do you want to feel as you live your life? You know, we never get today back. Do you want to live today tired and grumpy and struggling to access the wisdom that’s deep in your brain and also in your whole being? I mean, those of us who’ve been on the planet for a while, we have wisdom, but we can’t access it when we’re exhausted and our body’s in high stress.
So I think people are very grateful for the support and for the information and particularly the way that I put it forward. I really bring it to life. I don’t just talk about stats because the way that I teach and everything I teach comes out of my private practice. So it’s very practical. I talk about, you know, we need to cross two bridges to sleep. I used to just say we have to cross a bridge to sleep, but we have one bridge that gets us into bed. And then we have another bridge once we’re in bed because the mind is just usually going crazy because there’s no distraction for the first time since we woke up.
And so we need to learn how to support our body before we get into bed and then learn the internal skills for calming the mind once we’re in bed. And when people have those skills, when they understand what’s needed, those things can happen quickly. Like with my training for companies, that is a session that people come to. They learn their sleep can improve that night. And yes, there’s more information that comes after and support integrating to deepen that. But it’s incredible once people know the knowledge and they have the skills, how quickly it can change.
I also work with leaders on a much deeper level to really optimize their energy, their capacity, and to make the most out of their recovery time. Because you think we have this little window. How do we make the most of it? And when you know how to do that, it’s almost like a hack. I don’t like using the word hacks, but in today’s world where every minute counts, we need to know how to make the most of that time. And that can often cause stress in beds like, oh my God, I’ve got to get up in six hours and I’m not going to sleep. So, you know, and then that can cause stress. But when you understand how to deal with even those thoughts and you are resourced, then, you know, sleep becomes a pleasure.
I really love what you said that you lay down and smile and you enjoy being in your bed. One of the mistakes that a lot of people make is that they don’t enjoy being in their bed and they stress themselves out as soon as they’re getting into bed saying, I have to sleep right now. I have to be asleep right now.And they don’t just enjoy that process of being horizontal, being in the sanctuary of their bed and enjoying that time where they don’t have to do anything, they don’t have to be anywhere. I love that. I mean, I love, you know, we’re recording on a Friday, so I love that I’m going to experience that tonight and not have to worry about waking up tomorrow. So it does bring me much joy.
But for listeners who maybe don’t associate that resting with joy and something pleasant, what are some things, like one or two things they could do in their day without obviously doing the full in-depth work that you help them do that would help them sleep better? Or maybe wake up and hear a lot about circadian rhythms and when to look in the sun? Like there’s some things out there right now, some resources that people are probably hearing or reading about. What do you think is the most important one or two things a person can do to have better sleep outside of, of course, those who are impacted by trauma and can’t sleep because of that?
Understanding how light affects our body and our brain is key. So we have a region in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus that regulates our sleep-wake cycle. And light is what the body is looking for. We have brain cells in our eyes that are connected to that region in the brain. And those brain cells in our eyes are always reading the environment to see how much light is in the environment and then creating hormones that reflect that.
In the morning, we need full spectrum light to send the correct signal to that region to wake up properly. Now, what is full spectrum light? It is not light from a phone. It is light from the sun. So stepping outside and getting five minutes of full spectrum light, which is sunlight on our face into our eyes, that sends that signal to our brain that it’s time to wake up and it begins that wake up process.
We need a cortisol spike in the morning to:
Wake up, be fully alert and alive.
Set the timer for melatonin production at night.
So simply stepping outside and getting sunlight in the morning is one of the most powerful things we can do, not only for our aliveness, but for our sleep. If it is cloudy, then we do need to be outside for a bit longer, 10 to 15 minutes, so walking around the block. But if it’s sunny, you can literally just go out, find the sun, stand there, do a few stretches, drink some water. There are a few things that the body needs to get that cortisol peak, but that really is number one.
And then at night, acknowledging the same, that light is going to stimulate us. Blue light is one of the most stimulating colors in the color spectrum, in the light spectrum. We have circadian rhythm happening now on planes and in hospitals, and they change the color of the light depending on what they want the people to feel and experience. And that is about different colors of light.
When we’re looking at a phone, we’re looking at a screen, most light bulbs, they’ve got green and blue light in them, which is very stimulating. And so at night, we can make our environment one that isn’t as stimulating by:
Putting in amber globes that don’t have the blue light in them.
Wearing blue light blocking glasses when we’re on devices.
Putting those devices away, having a time that we’re committed to put those devices away.
I think that is one of the core practices is to just decide on your electronics sundown time. But obviously, people aren’t going to stop using their devices at night. So how do we minimize the impact of that on our body and on our sleep-wake cycle? We can make the screens red or amber andturn the brightness down, wear the glasses, do the things that we need to help our system, but then have a period of time where we’re in almost darkness, you know, and an amber light is similar to a candle. So you could light a candle. There’s just a period of darkness or low light that sends that signal to our brain. It’s time to switch gears. And it tells the adrenal cortex, stop making cortisol and adrenaline. And then it tells the pineal gland to begin making melatonin. Just that exposure to low light and darkness.
So taking our phones to bed is a sleep killer. Buying yourself an alarm clock and leaving the phone out of the room is probably the number one sleep hack of this world so that you don’t have that excuse: “I need it for my alarm.” And then you leave the phone out of the room. And just doing that and then not being able to press snooze because snoozing kills your brain activity. It causes so many issues and it does also add to sleep loss. I won’t go into that, but just stopping snoozing and going out and getting sunlight in the morning will change your life, just that.
And if you can add to that, that you have time in low light before bed and then learning skills, getting internally resourced to be able to quiet your mind once you get into bed. Just like anything, it’s a skill that we can learn. And we don’t, we acknowledge it, we just lay there and feel helpless, hopeless, and stressed and just keep stressing ourselves out. So there are skills you can learn to manage that busy mind, whether it’s stressed or one of my things I have to manage is excitement. And that’s true for a lot of people who are really passionate about their work. They’re excited about what they’re going to do tomorrow. And so learning to manage that and it’s all a skill set.
And that’s the thing, sleep is a skill that can be learned. And it’s something that we can cultivate a capacity to sleep no matter what’s on our plate, whether we’re traveling, whether we’ve got some big pressures happening, even in emotional turmoil, knowing what we can do to help ourselves recover so we can then deal with everything in a much more balanced and clear way.
So for most people, they get in bed and they’re not able to shut off because so much of our value has been put into how productive we are, what we do for work, et cetera. And you teach this for corporations, which is such an exciting and different benefit for corporations to consider offering to their employees, which is getting better sleep and sleep hygiene.
What are some immediate benefits corporations you have worked with have gained from working with you? And what does the format like logistically look like in working with people on their sleep patterns?
So I do a survey at the end of, I do a survey at the beginning and also at the end of my programs. And what is constantly coming out as an outcome is that people are getting on average an hour more sleep. They’re waking up feeling more energized and clearer, and their capacity to perform has increased. And that’s measured in these surveys. So people are showing up at work with a brain that’s switched on and with energy, you know, and then not also relying on caffeine and sugar anymore. We have that part of the survey. So they find they also learn basics about what supports the body in terms of fuel, but they’re just not scrambling for that sugar and caffeine, which can make you quite scattered. So they’re clearer, they’re calmer, culture improves because relating improves, and people are just meeting their targets better. And they’re just able to work as a team more cohesively as well when that recovery is happening.
And recovery starts becoming part of their strategy. You know, recovery is strategy. But when a company can understand that and support their people, there’s certainthings you can do. For instance, when you have late night calls and work that people are expected to do at home, once they know how to recover from that. But also there’s some adjustments that can be made so that they’re not as stimulated after that. So then they do get the rest that they need to be able to show up the next day fully awake and alive.
So I have two programs:
Sleep to Thrive: This is a basic program where it centers around one event where people come and they experience the learning in a very experiential way. There is one part of that where they actually get put to sleep. They experience the skills that they need. I guide them through. It only takes about 10 minutes to learn how to put yourself into a restful state that is conducive to sleep. There is a follow-up email series that has bonus trainings that apply to many people but not all. I keep that event very focused on things that help everyone.
Bonus trainings include:
How to get back to sleep when you wake in the night (that’s what 60% of people are dealing with).
How to sleep well while traveling (which a lot of people struggle with).
How to sleep well with shift work.
So there are then bonus trainings but also support for integration after because it’s really the integration where the rubber hits the road, right? If we just learn something and it’s like, okay, go do it, it doesn’t often stick. So I come in with these supportive little messages helping them to integrate over the next few weeks.
Late-night Meeting Recovery Initiative: This program is about how the company is running these or expecting employees to work at night. It resources them on how to recover. But also some changes are made within how those meetings are run so they are less destructive for the people who are on them. I shouldn’t say destructive. That’s a strong word. But less sleep-destroying, less recovery-destroying. So there are some adjustments that can be made within those expectations so that people can recover more quickly. And so I teach that.
Then I do my one-on-one work for people who need deeper help, often with leaders and CEOs. This process lasts over two months and really gets them in a place where they feel so empowered. It’s long enough that they’re coached through challenging times and through the time it takes to establish those new patterns and neural pathways, you know, where they’re actually open to having that much energy and being that switched on.
So, yeah, those are my offerings for corporations. I also do retreats, but mainly I’m doing the online sessions where people can tune in from anywhere, often have global companies tuning in with people all over the world. Some companies will run two sessions in a week at very different times so that everyone has a chance to come in and learn that. And then there is that integration support.
Sleep retreat sounds wonderful. You mentioned giving people the tools to be able to sleep while traveling, which for a lot of people who are in senior level roles and traveling is hard. Like even for me, I sleep really well at home, but I sleep terribly when I’m traveling. What are like one or two tips that you could share with us for better sleep during travel? Have you shared with your clients with success?
Yeah, there’s a whole list of things. And I’m just trying to think what would be the one thing. You know, it’s about preparing:
Preparing mentally.
Preparing on a skill level.
Practically having a little sleep kit that you take.
I’ve got a little travel sleep kit list that enables you to make any room sleep supportive because often when we go places, we are very vulnerable becausewe don’t know what’s going to be there. And often the lighting in accommodation is very bright. We’re also under pressure. And that whole process of travel itself is extremely stressful. One of my top sleep travel tips is as soon as you arrive, get horizontal and elevate your legs so that your body can recover. And you do that for 10 minutes and you come out of that high stress state that is, you know, it’s what happens when we travel. Travel is stressful. We have to pack. We have to be somewhere. We’ve got to be in environments where there’s lots of people. Our system gets so hijacked, stressed. And so we arrive and then we are, oh, I shouldn’t rest now because then I’ll sleep better later. No, we need to bring the system down.
So as soon as you arrive in your accommodation, do something. And maybe for you, that’s sitting down and long out breaths or you have some kind of mindfulness practice that you like, anything, but to regulate your system as soon as you get there. And then knowing what to take, taking things that help you create an environment that is supportive for calming down and for sleeping and knowing what that is. And again, skilling up so that when you get into bed, you’re not just thinking about the meeting the next day or the meeting that just happened and how, the hundred thousand things, as you know.
But tell me, what is it when you’re traveling, Ren? What is it that you struggle with the most?
I hate thinking about the fact that I’m sleeping in a bed that so many other people that I’ve never met have slept on. For me, it’s like the cleanliness, having somebody else being sitting on it. I don’t like putting my face in a pillow that’s not mine. So for me, I, you know, my husband always packs my pillow. I pack pillowcases. I put sheets down, which, you know, these were all welcome things during COVID, but now that, you know, all of our like extra cautiousness around COVID has disappeared, I’m like an anomaly when I travel with friends and even family that I have like, I have to be very specific about putting extra sheets down, having my pillow, like even then I can never like sink in the way that I do in my mattress or my pillow at home.
So that is really wonderful awareness and self-care, the actions that you’re taking. So you know where your sleep hazards are. You know, you have this stress or anxiety around being in a bed that so many people have been in and potentially you’re really sensitive to energies. So it is true that places where we sleep, you know, they have residual energy from people who’ve been there, but there are things that we can do to help that. And you’re doing that on a physical level.
And, you know, just being with yourself and being gentle with that fear can be something that is helpful. So for instance, as you’re feeling resistant to get into the bed, because you know many people have been in it, actually taking a moment to be with the feeling in your body with a inclusive quality of attention. So you might feel that as resistant, you might feel that as clenching, you might feel whatever you feel to just spend a minute or two saying everything I’m feeling is okay. Absolutely everything I’m feeling is okay because we layer stress, we layer the initial feeling with judgment. Like I could hear in your voice, you know, it’s like that you’re somehow special or difficult because you want that.
Yeah, and I love the framing and I love how positive you are. And I think this is what was so refreshing when we first connected too. You don’t force people to do things that they’re not comfortable with because in regular talk therapy, like I’ve been told to just sit in the dirty couch and, you know, condition my brain to accept that instead of what you’re recommending, which feels so much more nurturing and so much more aligned with what I like to do, which is acknowledging the feeling and not being ashamed of it. So thanks for validating that.
Yeah, and also like totally you’re a champion doing those things, taking those things thatyou need to have a bit more relaxation. Like instead of feeling ashamed also, you can say, I’m a legend. Like other people would what, you know, ignore that? Oh, that’s silly. I shouldn’t take that. I can’t do that. And then they get there, they don’t sleep and there’s a big domino effect from that. And so that actually acknowledging yourself and appreciating yourself is really important as well as letting yourself feel whatever it is that you feel from that feeling.
So yeah, and I’m with you. I take my own pillow. I take my own pillowcase when I can. I mean, sometimes you can’t, but often you can roll up a pillow. And a lot of people are in that boat. I’ll be honest. A lot of my clients, they love traveling with their pillow and just the pillowcase makes a big difference because it’s a familiar smell for one thing. It’s a familiar texture and the brain likes that. Our body likes familiarity. It feels safe. And sleeping is a vulnerable thing. Let’s just say it for what it is. It is, we are vulnerable and we need to feel safe. And holding ourselves with that gentleness is so important. It is one of the skills that I teach.
And it’s in the book for children about having a gentle voice inside. If we said, okay, so that voice in your head, if you could externalize that voice and turn it into a person, would you want to snuggle up in bed with them? And most people say, no way. No way would I want my internal voice to be in bed with me, but it is. And so cultivating a kind inner voice is part of what I teach.
And yes, I come from this very nurturing place because everything I teach comes from working with people one-on-one. So all of my classes and courses, it comes out of that work, working with people. And people don’t respond well to you’ve got to do this, do that, or you’re silly for doing that. People aren’t going to relax. So yeah, everything that I’m teaching comes from that place. And I think that’s why it’s so powerful.
And there are other people teaching sleep. They do it in lots of different ways, but I would say that that perspective is what makes my work stand out.
And how about, because I’m reading a lot about this, what are your thoughts on couples sleeping separately for the health of their sleeping pattern as well as overall their marriages? Because obviously sleep impacts how you wake up in the day and how you view the world and what your threshold is.
I love this question. And it’s a very important question. And it’s a hot topic. And I’m going to start with many more couples sleep alone or separately than what we know. So people don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to say we sleep separately because there’s a stigma about it. And there’s been a lot of study that has shown that couples sleep better on their own. Even couples who say we sleep better together, when they do the tests, they definitely get better quality sleep alone.
Now, I’m not saying any shoulds in here. I just want to give couples permission to give themselves the possibility of deep rest in a time where we so desperately need it. And sleeping separate or having that possibility. So I talk about obviously making your bed the most conducive it can be to get good sleep together. So that is about how the bed is set up.
One of my top tips for couples is that you have your own covers. And that is for, first of all, for movement. Because when we move and pull the cover, I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous what happens and how much that impacts our sleep. And that can be solved by each having your own covers, which also helps with the issue of us having preferences for our covers. Because often one person is saying yes to covers that make them toohot or too cold so that there can be peace, right? But imagine if we could just have our own covers that suit our body. And then having a topper made of memory foam, non-toxic is much better. A lot of the memory foams are off-gassing. So get something that’s natural. But having a topper that deadens that flow on of movement when someone moves. So we want to mitigate the impact of movement and of having to be hot because the body needs to be cold to be able to, it’s not cold, the body temperature needs to drop to be able to sleep. So if we’re sleeping in covers that suit a partner, but it actually makes us too hot, that interrupts our sleep. There’s a lot to it, but they’re the basics.
And then having another place that one of you can go to if it turns into a night of not sleeping. Because the person awake then starts to get stressed. They’re going to hurt the other person or disturb the other person because they’re awake. And they get fearful, they get stressed. But imagine they go to their own bed and stretch out, cool down or warm up, whatever they need and be able to sleep better.
I was married for 10 years to someone who, oh my God, the sound of his snore was just so loud. And he was also a program developer. So he would sometimes wake up in the night, which is common for creatives to wake up in the night, have amazing ideas, but their brain is firing. There’s a lot of energy in our brains. And so that can actually wake someone up. Brain activity in the person next to you can wake someone up. So understanding that and also deciding, hey, we want to be at our best while we’re awake so that our waking relationship can be the best. And we want to have that level of presence and just like being able to relate in that healthy way and have even a sex drive, which is one of the first things to go when we’re sleep deprived, right?
I love that. I really appreciate your approach, how you meet clients where they are instead of imposing hard set rules. I think it’s very thoughtful and realistic and very approachable. So I really respect that. And thank you for sharing all of that.
I think my biggest takeaway from our conversation is that just like diet or exercise or skincare, sleep deserves intentional planning too. Would you agree with that?
Yes, yes. But what actually makes you take action is valuing it. So understanding that there’s a lot of things happening while you sleep, valuing the fact that there is essential repair taking place. It’s not an empty practice. Sleep is very nurturing and there are so many things happening, like the brain being cleansed, the body being restored. Think of, you know, you wake up in the morning, you look in the mirror. If you had a battery on your forehead showing how full you are, most people wake up with 30%, 40%. You want to wake up with 100%. I only have today once, so valuing it. Asking yourself, how do I want to feel tomorrow? And then committing to the things. Because you can have that list, but if you don’t have a why that’s compelling, you’re not going to do the things. We all need a compelling reason to change habits, to learn new skills, to create something new in our life.
And so if you want to get really scared, read Why We Sleep. It’s Matthew Walker’s book, which is a bestseller. He scares people into action. I don’t necessarily think it’s the best way, but he just points out all the horrendous things that happen when we don’t sleep. I personally don’t like that angle, but some people do need to be shocked. So valuing is number one. And then saying, this is a priority in my life. Recovery is something that gives me so much. And so this is what I’m committed to doing.
And for those who need that extra support and coaching, how can they find you? And most importantly, how can they also support your foundation, even for those who don’t need a sleeping coach, but feel very much in line with the purpose of your foundation and givingthese kids sleeping kits and helping them sleep better despite their trauma? My foundation can be found at sleepanddream.org. and my work with companies and leaders is reviveglobal.co. So that’s sleepanddream and reviveglobal. They’re my online portals where you can read about what I’m doing and also make contact with me.
I love to hear from people who are interested and have conversations to see how best I can support or if you’re interested in supporting the foundation, that would be wonderful. I will be expanding it internationally, but I have started partnering with international organizations as well, which is something I very much love doing.
Thank you so much for your time and for all of your insights, Anna. It’s my pleasure. It’s been really great speaking to you. Thank you for your wonderful questions. Thank you.
