Sleepy head: why beditation is an ideal bedtime wind-down

Most of the benighted souls who know the singular experience of sleep deprivation have heard the standard tips like a broken record: avoid alcohol in the evening; eat bananas; reposition your bed. Now the practitioners of “mindfulness” — the very fashionable school of exercises for focusing the mind and becoming “present” — have a new suggestion, called “beditation”.

Tony Blair’s old school, Fettes College in Edinburgh, has started teaching its students the practice, at least partly so they can sleep more easily while people are getting wedgied in the bunk below them. Deborah Spens, who runs the programme, told the Sunday Times: “Concentration levels have gone up and they feel calmer, happier and more fulfilled.”

That could come in useful for working Londoners, whose seemingly increasing problems with sleeping — or at least heightened awareness of them — have created a cottage industry of therapists and coaches, and prompted concern from bosses about productivity.

A survey earlier this year from the National Sleep Foundation found that six in 10 of us are getting too little sleep — the total figure having risen by a fifth. Could beditating be the answer?

“City types often find it difficult to sleep — they have all these pressures and thoughts in their head,” says consultant psychologist Dr Michael Sinclair, clinical director of City Psychology Group and the co-author of Mindfulness for Busy People: Turning from Frantic and Frazzled into Calm and Composed. “So we encourage them to recognise that and bring their attention to the experiences of the bed. It’s not about pushing away any thoughts but bringing the attention away and recognising them as just thoughts.”

A video tutorial on the website of the Mindfulness in Schools Project — a non-profit programme run by two schoolteachers — has some tips on their version of beditation, though they imagine it being done in the daytime on the floor.

After lying down and placing your arms on the floor beside you, take a few long breaths, “feel the full length of your body”, and release all your tension, including in your tongue. It tells you to pay attention to your feet, “almost as if you’re listening to them —being interested in how feet feel, from the inside”. “If your mind wanders off somewhere,” the instructor says, “bring it back with patience, with acceptance, with kindness.”

The NHS website has a video tutorial and describes beditation as an “ideal bedtime wind-down”.

Shamash Alidina, co-author of the Mindfulness Workbook for Dummies, the second edition of which is published in December, says it isn’t about chilling in bed. “It’s not so much about relaxation but about clearing your thoughts and finding focus. Normally we’re on a rollercoaster on autopilot, rushing from one thing to another, so this is about breaking your normal routine.”

Sinclair has senior City execs lying on the floor of his Liverpool Street room regularly as he teaches them the routine. “They are initially quite sceptical,” he says, “but as soon as they notice the benefits of making contact with the present they are usually sold.”