My husband snores, my cat is needy, and my mother-in-law is 86. Here's how I stopped losing sleep over it.
I remember as a child my mother would exclaim "Hell's Bells" when she was really frustrated. That's exactly how I felt at 3am when my mother-in-law was tapping across the floor like Michael Flatley in Lord of the Dance to get to the toilet, the cat was singing the song of his people while chasing a wireless earphone around underneath my bed, and my husband provided the bass line with his impressively loud snoring.
Then the snoring would stop. The toilet would flush, the cat would settle, and the house would go quiet. But I was still awake, replaying it, resenting them, calculating how many hours I had left if I fell asleep right now. The maths never helps, does it?
I don't think things have changed much around me. The snoring continues. The cat remains committed to chaos. My mother in law is 86 and not going anywhere (nor should she). What has changed is me. The reason I was woken up was them. The reason I stayed awake was me.
Perimenopause made all of this harder. Not just the sleep, but my ability to let things go. Things I used to brush off easily would stick, and 3am is not a kind hour for thoughts that stick. A few things have genuinely helped: HRT has kept my mood steady. Hard exercise, CrossFit and lifting weights, has helped me shake difficult things off and sleep more deeply. Good food, enough protein, friends who actually show up.
But none of those things help at 3am with my headphones in.
That's where Yoga Nidra changed things. I put my headphones in, press play, and let it do its work. More often than not I fall back asleep. On the nights I don't, something else happens, I stop fighting it. I rest even without sleeping, and I stopped dreading those hours.
Going from lying there furious and calculating, to actually resting. That's what shifted everything.
If any of this sounds familiar, I made something for you. A library of Yoga Nidras built specifically for sleep, for when you can't drop off, for when you wake at 3am, for when your mind simply won’t stop.
