An Evening Routine for Calmer Breathing & Nervous System Support
Simple changes to help you sleep better and wake up feeling more human.
If you don’t sleep particularly well — or you wake feeling tired, wired or anxious — what you do in the few hours before bed can make a real difference.
I track my overnight breathing rate, resting heart rate and HRV (a measure of stress and recovery in the body), and I’ve noticed a very consistent pattern in my own data:
When I go to bed with calmer breathing and a calmer nervous system, I sleep better and wake up feeling calmer and clearer.
There are really two things I’m trying to avoid before bed: anything that pushes nervous system activation up — and anything that makes me breathe more heavily.
Here’s what I do:
About 4 hours before bed — Keep dinner lighter
A big or late meal can make you breathe more heavily as the body works to digest it. You may have noticed this yourself — particularly if you snore or have sleep apnoea. After a really heavy meal, or eating close to bedtime, breathing can become heavier and noisier overnight.
Where possible, I finish eating around 3–4 hours before bed and avoid a really heavy evening meal.
And skip alcohol completely. In my own overnight data, it reliably tanks my HRV and pushes my resting heart rate up.
2 hours before bed — Put the phone away
I know, I know — you’ve heard this before. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
For me, this one is mostly about nervous system activation.
Messages, news, work, social media and endless scrolling all keep the brain engaged when what I really want is the opposite.
I leave my phone outside the bedroom and try to give myself a couple of hours away from it — unless I’m using it to listen to a relaxation.
For me, this makes a measurable difference. I’ve seen differences of up to 25% in my own overnight HRV.
10–20 minutes before sleep — Relax the body
This one gives you a bit of a double benefit.
A good muscle relaxation helps bring nervous system activation down, but it also has an indirect effect on the breathing.
As tension drops around the jaw, shoulders, chest and belly, the breathing often becomes softer, quieter and easier too.
For me, and for many of my clients, this is one of the easiest ways to change the state of the body before sleep.
There’s nothing to do and nothing to get right — just get into bed, press play and rest.
Try my guided muscle relaxation for sleep:
A downloadable version of this relaxation is also available as part of Day 4 of my Breathing Reset course.
When you get into bed — Keep your breathing nasal
Ideally, breathing during sleep should be quiet, gentle and through the nose.
Mouth breathing tends to be larger and noisier, and can make snoring more likely.
If you regularly wake with a dry mouth, or someone notices that you sleep with your mouth open, you may be mouth breathing during the night.
Some people find a gentle product such as MYOTAPE helpful for encouraging nasal breathing.
It can also reduce snoring for some people — which can only be good news for you (and your partner!).
Set up your night — Keep the bedroom cool and fresh
If you’re too hot, you tend to breathe more heavily.
That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid, so I keep the bedroom comfortably cool and, where possible, well ventilated.
And if you tend to sleep on your back, try sleeping on your side instead. Back sleeping can make snoring and airway narrowing more likely.
Start with one or two changes
You don’t need to overhaul your whole evening at once. Pick one or two things, try them for a week or two, and see what changes.
But there’s one bigger piece to this.
How your nervous system and breathing are overnight is strongly influenced by how you spend your days.
Everything above can help — and it can get you a long way. But for the best sleep, it’s worth looking at your breathing, stress levels and overall nervous system activation during the day too.
If you’d like some help with that, I also work one-to-one with people to tailor an approach around their breathing, nervous system and day-to-day life.
