Pod Insights Change Wired Pre-bed anxiety? Wired and tired and can't fall asleep? 3AM wake-ups? - 3 psycho-biological tools from sleep science to put your brain to sleep. Pre-bed anxiety? Wired and tired and can't fall asleep? 3AM wake-ups? - 3 psycho-biological tools from sleep science to put your brain to sleep. Change Wired
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About this episode Your sleep is not “just sleep. When nights get choppy, it is easy to blame stress, age, or bad luck. I see something else again and again: small, fixable habits that keep people stuck in a tired and wired loop, then they wonder why they wake up at 3 a.m. with a brain that will not shut off. I walk you through 3 specific, practical sleep protocols I use personally and with clients to improve sleep quality fast. Yoga Nidra (also called NSDR), a simple brain dump journaling practice, finally, w...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, your master health, stress, sleep, executive self-actualization coach, and just someone who's really passionate about doing our best, showing up for our best, helping each other thrive and feel great while creating more positive impact in the world. Today, guys, we are talking about sleep, one of my favorite subjects to talk about,
0:51 Speaker 00 one of the things that I work with so many clients on. It's such a foundational routine, practice, habit, that if not done well and right and correctly, will really undermine everything else we experience and do in life. And so many people have problems with sleep these days, and not because people changed a lot over the course of past 20 years, as sleep has been worsening, according to statistics, but also I can tell you that, you know, I've been in coaching for 18 years.
1:31 Speaker 00 And these days, when I get to work with a client who doesn't have sleep problems, that is an outlier. Usually, people have either short sleep, or they wake up, or they have hard times falling asleep, or the sleep is, just has a lot of wake-ups and not of a good quality and a suboptimal experience, and people don't wake up fresh and rested.
2:01 Speaker 00 So sleep has been an issue for more and more people. And a lot of it has to do not with genetics or people's inability to fall asleep, but with improper routines and habits that very often people are not aware of. Or do them like good habits, good sleep habits inconsistently. And then people struggle more than necessary. And then, you know, you wake up, you're not fresh, your mood is not there. Research shows that people who don't have good sleep experience on a consistent basis are more reactive,
2:41 Speaker 00 hard time, having hard time focusing, learning, making good decisions, learning, memorizing. It, sleep causes a lot of problems because it's the, it's body's main mechanism to recover, to take care of if proper DNA repair or your hormone hormonal balance. Did you know that also if you train, most of your recovery happens during sleep? If you learn things, most of the learning happens during sleep. When you go through different emotional experiences throughout your day and we all go through them,
3:24 Speaker 00 whether those are some challenging or stressful situations or emotionally charged situations that happen to all of us consistently with some regularity. Your brain also is like your therapy session. Specifically rapid eye movement sleep is known for regulating your emotional, your mental health. So sleep is very important. And if you consistently don't get enough and good quality sleep, everything else is going to be more difficult and everything else is going to suffer. So today I'm not gonna be talking about sleep basics, sleep foundation,
4:05 Speaker 00 like regularity, like creating the right kind of environment that are cool and quiet or like regulating your light, your screens time or not drinking caffeine later in the day or alcohol, which all of that, you know, has effect on sleep. Today I'm gonna talk to you specifically about three protocols that.
4:29 Speaker 00 Will help you to deal with specific, very specific sleep issues that more and more people have. Things like not being able to fall asleep because of anxiety or racing thoughts, or just stuff going on and on and on and on in your mind, like, you know, tired and wired. Or if you have an issue of waking up too early or in the middle of the night, or waking up frequently throughout the night, disturbed by your emotions, thoughts, or just somehow waking up for whichever reason that we will talk about today. Or if you're going through challenging, stressful period or situations a lot in your life and in your work.
5:10 Speaker 00 And then again, it's very hard for you to wind down and and fall asleep. And you feel like your sleep is very light because you're sort of worried still. So we're going to talk about that and what can help you to sleep a lot, a lot better. Once you start putting this simple, very simple protocols in place, be a practice them as habits, you'll improve your sleep dramatically. So we're going to talk about a couple of practices and about your dinner specifically. What has been shown in studies and research to be really good for your sleep? Not just not eating late, but also what needs to be ideally in your meal
5:54 Speaker 00 to give you a lot bigger chance at having good sleep experience. We're going to talk all about all of that and I'm going to share with you my personal experience. I'm going through some challenges more than usual in my life. And I noticed that falling asleep and sleeping through the night became a little bit of a challenge until I did the work and picked up the right habits, which were not necessary before, now became my two-goal thing I do every night. So my sleep improved, I sleep really well and I wake up really happy and ready to bring it on, get after it in my day.
6:36 Speaker 00 Because, you know, if on top of all that you have to deal with life, you also don't. Don't rest and don't wake up fresh and rested and like you have all of your resources available to you. It just become very hard to deal with life, especially taking into account that if your sleep becomes short and becomes erratic and you wake up often, you don't get that therapeutic effect of emotional regulation that good sleep provides. You don't wake up, you know, like peacefully, ready to deal with whatever they brings onto your plate. So without further ado, we're gonna talk about three things, three practices,
7:18 Speaker 00 one of which is having the right kind of dinner that will help you to fall asleep, not be tired and wired or anxious and not being able to fall asleep fast, waking up during the night, waking up too early or sleeping five or six hours and then waking up and not being able to again sleep through the night for seven to nine hours. So we're gonna talk all about that right now. And I'm gonna read you some research. I had a chat with AI, how it works exactly. So I'm more equipped with my vocabulary as well. Again, I'm a certified sleep coach and I work with a lot of clients on their sleep quality.
7:58 Speaker 00 Specifically, we work on habits and rituals and routines that people need to establish and practice consistently to get the kind of quality of sleep that fires up your day and keeps you happy no matter what balls, curveballs life throws your way. So first, we're gonna start with yoga nidra. What is yoga nidra or non-sleep depress protocol? It's a sort of meditation when you usually do length in bed and it's a body scan. Usually
8:38 Speaker 00 you listen to some guided version, meaning there is a woman or a man telling you to pay attention to different parts of your body, relax them. It also usually involves some breathing and.
8:53 Speaker 00 It's again kind of like meditation. I started doing a ten minute protocol, which I downloaded from YouTube based on the recommendation of Andrew Huberman. He is a neuroscientist, has the most popular in the world health and science podcast. So he recommended that and I started using it since then and it's very simple and I love it. I tried other ones, but this seems to work for me the best. So I put in my headphones, I listened to this ten minute recording, which I'm gonna link in the show notes as well. And it guides you through again some breath work, paying attention to different parts of your body,
9:37 Speaker 00 relaxing different parts of your body. And then you do that and then I usually just take my headphones off and I fall asleep in like, I don't know, less than five minutes, I don't even register anymore. I also do another thing just before that, which we're gonna talk about right after yoga nidra. But how does yoga nidra or non-sleep depress protocol, as Andrew Huberman named it as well, how does it work? It works on different things. Shifting your brainwaves guides brain activity from better, which is active thinking, down to alpha and theta and sometimes even delta, which are restful brainwaves
10:18 Speaker 00 that you can shift between and protocols like yoga nidra help you do so on a more, like in a more consistent, regulated, controlled manner. Yoga nidra comes the nervous system. It turns down the sympathetic or fight of light system and turns up the parasympathetic or rest and digest, which you need to be in if you want to fall asleep. It lowers your stress, reduces cortisol levels, which also needs to be low at the point of when you're trying to fall asleep. It stops your racing thoughts, distracts your thinking and shifts your thinking mind into more being mind with gentle body scans and breath awareness.
11:01 Speaker 00 So yoga nidra literally walks you through shifting your attention from your thinking, doing, worrying, deciding, solving problems into your body.
11:12 Speaker 00 Paying attentions to different parts, to your breathing, relaxing different parts of your body. And it also, there are different mechanisms, so not all of which are well studied. But what you'll notice when you do it is you fall asleep fast. And you might also, as it happened to me and a lot of my clients, wake up feeling a lot more refreshed, even when for whichever reason you don't get like full seven to nine hours that you want. So yoga nidra is very, very helpful. And again, the ten minute protocol that I got from Andrew Huberman is in the show notes.
11:55 Speaker 00 It's on YouTube, available for free. It's, I think it's like nine minutes, something. And it's very effective. I've been doing it for, I think for a month now, but I always recommend it to clients and they love it as well. It's very, very simple. So yoga nidra, I do that again, right before falling asleep in my bed when I'm done for the night. And I'm in my pajamas in my bed with lights off and everything. The second protocol, which is research based, very effective. It, they say it works even with insomniacs. It's writing or brain dump, usually done fifteen to thirty minutes before your sleep time.
12:39 Speaker 00 And how do you do it? You take five to ten minutes and you write down everything that's on your mind. Worries, anxieties, everything you think of, your to do list for tomorrow, you write it all down. Not with any agenda to solve anything, to figure things out. You literally do the brain dump. You dump everything that you're thinking of onto paper. How does it work? Well, you write it all down. And then what happens is cognitive offloading, which is your brain stops tracking these active problems because they are safely stored externally on a piece of paper.
13:23 Speaker 00 Emotional processing, writing helps organize chaotic feelings and lower stress hormones like cortisol. It helps to process all these experiences, all these emotional disturbances a lot faster. It offloads it, it frees up, it clears your working memory so your brain can transition to rest. Your working memory is kind of like, I always give this metaphor or image of in your kitchen, you have your table or desk where you do all the cutting, all the prep. Like your working memory is that clean space, clean cooking space. And as the day goes on, you put a lot of papers on.
14:05 Speaker 00 Well, in terms of cooking, you put like vegetables and meats and fish, you know, everything that's ready for cooking, for, for making stuff. And when your working memory is not clear by the end of the day, it's like having all of that stuff lying around for the next day, like being stinking. And, and also when you don't clear it, you can't really do much on top of that. And your desk or your working memory is still occupied. And for your brain to transition to sleep and rest, it actually needs to be cleaned. So then you don't have this nervous, in your nervous system, you don't have this agitation
14:44 Speaker 00 or this wired feeling like something is still working, right? You want your working, you, you kind of want to shut down your computer. And that's what you do when you clear your working memory. So writing or brain dumping helps you do that. Again, fifteen to thirty minutes before sleep, you write everything down for you. I, I usually set a timer four or five minutes and just dump it all. In research, has been shown to help people fall asleep like nine minutes earlier. The point is not exact timing, how fast you're gonna fall asleep. But I can promise you, based on my experience, experience with my clients and research, that you're gonna fall asleep faster, are you gonna remove this, or a lot of it, this wired state,
15:28 Speaker 00 this pre-bad anxiety, your wake-ups either disappear, or you're finally gonna be able to sleep all those seven to nine hours, instead of having your mind waking you up at 3 a.m. thinking about all of these unresolved problems, right? So if you're going especially through a lot of challenges, emotional stuff, and sometimes you're not even aware of that, but if that's happening and you wake up with a lot of thinking, and several times per night even perhaps, and not able to fall asleep fast, try brain dumping. And so again, I do brain dumping about three minutes before sleep, as it is recommended, and then right before sleep, when I'm already in bed, I do yoga nidra. So this is two things. Again, yoga nidra protocol is linked in the show notes.
16:13 Speaker 00 And the third, not less important, your dinner. Your dinner can really screw up your sleep experience. You're probably familiar with this fact, like when you eat right before bed, a lot of heavy foods, like it's hard to fall asleep and sleep well. It's almost impossible. So your dinner, it has to happen two to three hours before bed. Yeah, if you have like, I don't know, an apple or banana before sleep, probably not gonna do much and you're still gonna be able to fall asleep. But your real meals, your full dinner should happen somewhere between like two to three hours before bed. The bigger the meal, the earlier you need to eat it.
16:53 Speaker 00 What does work for your meals, your pre-bad meals, your dinner, not pre-bad, but dinner, which happens three hours before bed, lean protein, things like turkey, chicken, fish. The reason is, they are actually rich in one amino acid that helps you to relax and fall asleep, which is tryptophan. Not all of the foods are rich in it. And that is why it is recommended to have those lean proteins in your meals. So turkey, chicken, I actually looked up foods with the highest amount of tryptophan, that amino acid that helps you to relax and fall asleep. So the highest are turkey and chicken.
17:36 Speaker 00 They they they almost twice as amount if you compare it to plant based sources, top plant based sources, especially we're talking about calorie and servings. But here turkey and chicken, we then have beef, leaner cuts work a lot better. Uh uh simply because fat slows down your digestion and everything is gonna be stuck in your digestive system a lot longer. That's what a lot of fat does to your digestive system. It slows it down. So when it comes to beef or chicken and turkey, the leaner the better, especially for tryptophan, because the leaner the cut, the more fleshy stuff there is, and the more of this amino acid, tryptophan, that helps you to relax and fall
18:19 Speaker 00 asleep, there is. So we get again chicken and turkey, we have beef, we have lean pork chops, lean, lean is important. Plant based sources, your best bet is tofu and edamame. Fish, salmon is really, really good for tryptophan, but also like fish in general, but salmon is the superstar. Again, um you have your tofu, you have your edamame. Milk is also quite a good source, especially considering like how usually little calories it has. I don't know about you, but I since I was a kid, I remember that when I have a glass
19:02 Speaker 00 of warm milk with a little bit of honey in it right before going to bed, I sleep like a baby. And and maybe it's tryptophan, a little bit of honey, of honey helping me to maintain good blood sugar, which is important for sleep. I don't know what it is, but it's like magic. And so if you have your dinner and then feeling hungry, that might be actually quite a good uh a good thing to have. Before sleep. But remember, for your dinner, lean protein sources for tryptophan, specifically amino acid that helps you to fall asleep and relax. You have your chicken and a turkey and beef and lean pork chops. You have your salmon, you have your tofu.
19:47 Speaker 00 Those are the sources that I would go for. What else do we have for your meal, your dinner for good sleep? Complex carbohydrates, either tubers and starches like sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, not fried, you know, french fries. But well-prepared tubers, then things like oatmeal, whole grains, slowly digested carbohydrates, not some, you know, white bread pasta dose and not your slow digested fiber-rich carbohydrates. So in general, what you wanna focus on? Lean proteins and a lot, a lot of fiber. It seems like from what Andy Huberman also shared,
20:29 Speaker 00 that the more fiber there is, obviously not to the point of discomfort, but the more fiber in your meal, like lean protein, fiber, the better you're gonna sleep. And what to avoid? Spicy foods, greasy and heavy foods, caffeine, alcohol, sugary foods. All of that, you don't wanna have in your meal. What I've noticed in my experience, when I have this lean protein with a lot of vegetables, I also like to add some lentils, beans. Again, I sleep the best. And when I don't, when I go out for dinner, even when that dinner happens early. But you know, you go out for dinner and there is also always some greasy stuff
21:11 Speaker 00 unless you go to a very specific place that has those fiber-rich wholesome meals. Unless you do that, like whenever I go out and I eat a meal and I just don't sleep well, there is not enough vegetables, not enough fiber. You eat some fish with a tiny vegetable on the side and with a lot of also greasy stuff because it's cooked in some sauce or oil. And I just don't sleep well. And It happens every single time consistently. And again, of course, if you choose a place where you can get your fiber-rich foods and vegetables and beans and lean protein, then you'll sleep just fine.
21:51 Speaker 00 And I experimented enough times myself and with my clients to say, yep, that works. Those recommendations really make a huge difference. So if you're not having your good sleep experience, pay attention to your dinner. Also, again, remember that most of your dinner should happen, should finish by like three hours before your bedtime. Then your brain dump, your writing to clear all of your worries, anxieties and unfinished business onto paper. Brain dump, clear your working memory. And then in bed, do yoga nidra.
22:34 Speaker 00 Do those three things, guys, for a week on top of you already do. And I have no doubt that your sleep experience is gonna get a lot, a lot better. Especially if, again, your nutrition is not really optimal. And you know that better eating habits of could help you a lot to improve your overall well-being, but sleep as well. If you have wired and tired kind of state before bed, if you have racing thoughts, if you have a lot going on in your mind, you're going through a lot emotionally, you wake up, often you wake up 3 a.m.,
23:11 Speaker 00 you can't fall asleep fast without a glass of wine in you, which then actually destroys quite a lot of this beautiful architecture of sleep that you need to recover properly. So if that is the issue, try these three tools. Again, in the show notes, you also find yoga nidra protocol, link to YouTube. And record your own results for a week. And I can guarantee you, your sleep experience will be a lot, a lot better, if not perfect. Hope this was helpful, insightful. And don't forget that all the benefits you get from consistent practice, not from knowing and thinking about that or something you.
23:54 Speaker 00 Try sometimes and then, you know, you stop doing this and like, well, the benefits go away. Well, it's kind of like brushing your teeth. If you don't do it every day, the benefits will go away. With sleep, it happens usually faster than with brushing your teeth. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. Thank you for listening and till next time, yes, keep growing. But in order to do that, keep working on sleeping well.
Previous 5 steps to make progress in uncertainty of the world that's changing every moment: goal-setting is nonsense. Next Yaron Assabi: 8 thriving businesses, 3 cancers, the world's first mobile commerce transaction - and he's just getting started. Page updated November 9, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
