Have you wondered how best to get the sleep you need during the festive holiday break? My recommendations really depend on whether you’re 1) someone who ends up being busy over the festive holidays with family commitments and travel plans, or 2) someone who has plenty of chilled downtime during the break.

For the busy Christmas souls, I advise trying as best you can to carve out time for yourself for good sleep - during hectic times, unfortunately it’s often all the harder to find time for quality sleep. Ironically, quality sleep is the very thing we need most to help mitigate against stress, as sleep makes us more resilient and armours ourselves against common Christmas tensions. Consider creating a ‘Buffer Zone’ of 1 to 1.5 hours before bedtime to wind down and give your brain the opportunity to process the busy day that’s passed. You could begin by having a warm bath or shower and dimming the lights (to stimulate melatonin production i.e. the sleepy hormone), and writing down anything that’s on your mind to get it out of you head and onto paper. Finally, just do whatever you find really enjoyable and relaxing before bed e.g. reading, Netflix, audiobooks or podcasts.

For those who have a more chilled Christmas break ahead, it’s also good to prioritise sleep. However be careful not to alter your sleeping times too radically during the holidays, as this can disrupt processes that regulate our sleep e.g. by sleeping much later in the morning than normal, it may become harder to fall asleep the following night.

More generally, try to seek light outdoors as soon as you can after you wake up. This is especially important during these darker winter months and during Christmas when we naturally tend to spend more time indoors (keeping warm!).

But getting light outside does two important things for us:

1) It shuts off any nighttime melatonin and adenosine still lingering in our system from the night before, thereby help making us feel more awake and alert, and

2) It programmes the correct timing of the release of melatonin approximately 12 hours later i.e. just when we want to be feeling sleepy at nighttime.

My biggest advice of all is to be as kind to yourself as possible during this time, in whatever way that might look like for you e.g. curling up with your favourite book, planning nice things for yourself to look forward to for the year ahead, or wrapping up warm for a good fresh walk outside.

Wishing you all the happiest of holidays and the best of the best for 2023!

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