Rest Revolution: Transforming Midlife Sleep

Between Breath and Air
S1-E2: Rebecca Vigalius

Dana: Rebecca Vigalius is a sleep and stress management coach. She helps women who do it all finally get the sleep they need to wake up feeling well-rested.

And she does that through a one-to-one coaching and mentorship program that she combines simplicity, accountability, and science-backed behaviour change methods that retain your body and your mind so you can prioritize yourself, transform your sleep, and increase your energy.

She wants to live in a world where people are well-rested and functioning at their highest capacity, where stress doesn't get the best of us, where we have the tools to manage life's ups and downs, even the big ones so that they don't manifest into physical and emotional symptoms that bring us down.

Rebecca is a force and I'm grateful to share this conversation with her today from her office in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Welcome, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hi, thank you for having me.

Dana: Oh, this is going to be great. So I do have lots of questions, being part of the demographic of who you serve, a woman in midlife.

Why is sleep such a challenge for women in midlife?

Rebecca: Let's think about what we do in a day, okay?

So very active, very active minds, right? So between if you've got kids, partner, pets, you've got a career or you're running a business, you're trying to eat well, you know, get your veggies in, drink all your water, you're out there exercising, you are trying to move your body, you're looking in the mirror, looking at your new wrinkles coming in, you're looking at your gray hairs.

Like there is a lot going on for us, right, in midlife.

And so what happens is there's a bunch of stuff that happens, but ultimately when we lay down to go to sleep at night, all of these things are still running through our minds, our to-do list, our what we didn't get done that day. You know, we're trying to, I say, you know, do it all.

We're trying to do it all, and oftentimes we're not giving ourselves the space to, yeah, we're just, we're just not giving ourselves the space that we need to kind of bring those stress levels down before bedtime.

And how that manifests is that we end up lying down to go to bed at night and the lights are still on in our head, right?

All of those little stressors throughout the day, while they may seem small, they can add up and it ultimately results in difficulty with sleeping, whether it's falling asleep at night, waking up in the middle of the night and not getting back to sleep, waking up earlier than your alarm clock. There's all different kinds of ways that it shows up.

Dana: Yeah, that sounds very familiar.

Rebecca: There's a lot working against us in our society at this stage of life also, because I'm just thinking of a lot of people at this stage of life.

It's kind of like a sandwich generation, right?

Many people have younger people in their lives, maybe their own children or people who, young people who play a role in their lives, or maybe an older generation, perhaps aging parents or loved ones.

And we really are stuck right in the middle of it and supposed to be functioning at our quote-unquote (nasty, sarcastic, air-quote) highest performance level at this point in our careers.

And there's lots of pressure and it's certainly not just us.

So the way that you're describing all those things, it makes me really just look a little further into the circumstance that we're experiencing these symptoms of a greater problem.

I mean, just even that keeps me up at night, let alone all the little things.

I think there's this pressure to do it all.

Dr. Valerie Rein talks about this really well in her book, Patriarchal Stress Disorder, where women of our generation have been given this point of opportunity to have everything that we could possibly want and we're expected to want all of it all at once, right?

So that just puts this level of pressure on us that is almost, when you stop and think about it, it's almost incomprehensible.

Like that, if you just, you can feel the weight on your chest and your shoulders, you know, and that's ultimately why we're getting to the point where, yeah, stress management is a big issue when you're not managing your stress appropriately throughout the day.

That's really affecting us when we try to lay down and sleep at night.

Dana: Absolutely.

Yeah, I just feel like I need to take a breath with that heavy lift. Oh, man.

Rebecca, how the heck did you get into this? Like, I can really feel the passion in you on this topic.

Rebecca: Yeah. I mean, it started from a place of understanding how stress was affecting me. So I was going through a period a number of years ago where I noticed a lot of stuff going on with myself and thankfully, I took the time to notice it.

So, you know, it was a lack of energy. It was procrastination in building my business. It was lack of motivation. I was putting on some unwanted weight. I was moody.

Like all of these things, I'm like, what is going on? Like, this shouldn't be this way.

My life, you know, is for all intents and purposes great, right? And then I started kind of digging and I'm like, okay, no, actually, yeah, I've got several stressors going on right now.

You know, I have a parent with health issues.

I have a husband. You know, I became a stepmom in my 30s.

I got laid off from vice president role and ended up starting my own business, which was a major blessing in disguise and I'm so thankful for the universe stepping in on that.

But it was, you know, there was a lot of stress, quote-unquote.

And so I'm the type of person who, you know, really likes to understand what's happening with my body always have been. So I dove in and I mean, I got a mindset coach. I got an emotional eating coach. I started working with a health coach. All the coaches, right? I got a therapist. I tried psychedelic therapy.

And I actually learned that stress was really having a profound effect on my life. And as I dug more into stress management, I realized that sleep is the ultimate solution.

And because it was having difficulty sleeping, it's kind of, it's a chicken and egg thing, right?  Where stress causes sleep issues and sleep issues can cause greater stress.Which can manifest into physical issues.

So I just got super fascinated with this, learned more about it, decided to jump in and get myself certified as a sleep stress management recovery coach so that I could not only help myself as I came to this understanding about how stress impacts our lives and how sleep is like the overarching, you know, recovery or stress management rock star.

Yeah.I just really wanted to understand it and, and thankfully I have that kind of A-type brain sometimes. So I came to understand it and realized, holy crap, there's so much here that would help so many people.

And I just wanted to start sharing it with the world. So here I am.

Dana: That's fantastic.

Yeah. I'm a sleeper, fortunately. I'm not one of those people who has a hard time sleeping. And when I don't get a good sleep, holy banana, am I affected by that! Like I absolutely feel wrecked.

And I realized I think about, I always have deep empathy on days like that because I'm like, there are people who walk around like this perpetually for lots of reasons.

And I just, because I have that clean slate of knowing what it's like to be generally a well-rested person, just to feel what it, how it affects my systems.

And I don't have the resilience to manage that very well because I'm just not used to it. So yeah, incredible.

So tell us some tips. What are some top tips for people looking to improve their sleep?

Rebecca: Yeah. So one of the biggest things that I work on with my clients is a reframe around expectations and beliefs. And every time I say that, people are like, what? What the heck are you talking about? And it's like, I just need to go to sleep. Like just tell me what I need to do to go to sleep.

And there are lots of things that we can, you know, lots of, lots of levers we can pull from a sleep hygiene perspective, from a nutritional perspective, from an exercise and movement standpoint, all of those things do come into play when it comes to, to sleep stress management, obviously being a huge one.

But yeah, first thing I work on with clients is their sleep beliefs because your mindset towards sleep influences your perception of your own sleep. And not a lot of people realize that.

So one of the things that I like to do is talk about, you know, your expectations, letting go of expectations around sleep, rethinking that idea that sleep should just come to you when you want it, you know, that it's something that you should be able to just lay down and make happen.

When people think that it can become really stressful when it doesn't happen.

And so then we get stuck in a kind of, you know, spiral of thinking about sleep like, okay, you know, it's like you said, yours isn't a spiral, but for some people they can lay awake at night and be clock watching and be like, if I don't get eight hours of sleep, I'm screwed. 

Like, I'll be wrecked tomorrow. 

I'll be wrecked for the rest of the week.

Work is going to go terribly.

I'm going to have a tough time with my kids or whatever the case may be, right?

So sleep is affected by internal factors as well as external factors. And so yeah, coming to terms, kind of understanding, not coming to terms, but creating awareness around those sleep beliefs that you have, you know, things like, I've always been a bad sleeper.

I just, I can't change or, you know, I can only sleep in my own bed, you know, which makes travel tough, right?

And you think it's going to ruin your sleep and you're going to have a tough time.

Or you know, like I said, if I don't get eight hours, maybe he's going to be ruined.

So, you know, number one thing is reframing those expectations and beliefs around sleep, really creating an awareness of what your sleep beliefs are.

Stop for a second and think about, you know, what goes through your mind when you do wake up at, you know, three o'clock in the morning and you're laying there.

Or are you all of a sudden going into a bit of a spiral, watching the clock, lying there,

thinking all of these, you know, doomsday thoughts about what your day is going to be like.

Just notice that.

Just take a minute to notice it when it happens or when you lay down and you may have, you know, it takes you a little bit longer to fall asleep than usual.

And so yeah, once you, once you have an awareness of that, it's really interesting what happens.

And then, and then, you know, like I do with my clients, we kind of create that awareness and then we reframe those beliefs, you know, is it really going to create this massive havoc the next day if you get six hours of sleep?

Or if you, you know, it takes you a few more minutes to fall asleep than you want to.

So yeah, that's one of the biggest things.

Yeah.

Dana: Yeah, go ahead.

Rebecca: I was just going to say, like when you start to expect something to happen, there's a better chance that it will happen.

Right.

So if you fall asleep, struggle to fall asleep thinking that tomorrow is going to be a terrible day, then you wake up in the morning looking to prove that theory right consciously or unconsciously. Right.

So if you can, if you can get in there and go, oh, wait a minute, I see that thought pattern. What would the better outcome be that would serve me better?

You get in there at that point and plant that seed. There's a, you know, it's worth the experiment, I figure.

Dana: Absolutely.

Rebecca: Yeah.

And I mean, the thing is you can't force sleep. You just, you cannot force sleep. So the more you try to force it, the worse it gets because as your brain is, is creating these thoughts for you, I mean, we know what happens with, you know, cortisol will start kind of creeping up. 

And then all of a sudden your body's like, oh, we're, we're on guard.
We're on alert now.
We're awake.
Okay. It's time to be awake.

What?

And he's like, no, I just want to be asleep right now.

Yeah, the more we've tried and force it, the more our bodies kind of resist. So just remembering that, you know, if sleep is difficult at the moment or you have a moment of difficult sleep, right?

Dana: Yeah, that's a good one.

What else you got for us?

Rebecca: So this is a big one too. Making time for sleep.

So this is probably one of the top things I see in the, with the women who I work with is something that we call sleep procrastination or revenge bedtime, right? So this goes back to that stress management piece where we're not making time for ourselves throughout the day.

So by the time it gets to be the evening and your, you know, dinner is done, the dishes are done, you know, if you've got little ones, the kids are in bed, like whatever, if you've got, you know, if you've got teenagers or no kids at all, if you've got all this stuff going on, all of a sudden it gets to be nine or 10 o'clock at night.

Now it's your turn.

It's your turn to, to sit.

And you want to scroll. You end up going down a rabbit hole on Instagram or TikTok or you start binge-watching your Netflix show and you are like three episodes in when you promise yourself you'd only watch one.

And now you really want to get eight hours sleep, but now it's 1030, 11 o'clock and you have to get up at 6, 6:30, 7 o'clock.

So what happens is we are not giving ourselves enough time throughout the day to regulate our nervous systems, get those cortisol levels and levels of arousal lower. And so yeah, by the time we get to bedtime, it's more difficult.

So taking, you know, taking a few minutes, kind of practicing that stress management and you time during the day. I don't mean going for hour-long spa visits during the day. It's not, it doesn't have to be stuff like that. It can be five minutes of intentional breathing, you know, at your desk if that's where it works for you for that day.

It can be eating lunch away from your desk for 15 minutes with no screens.

Read a few pages of your book, you know, get up, go for a 10-minute walk outside, get some fresh air, look at the trees.

You know, if you, if you think about it ahead of time, book a coffee date with a friend for later in the week where you can meet up for even half an hour, like just these things that kind of signalled to us, oh, hey, I've made time for me.

So that when it comes to bedtime, you're not feeling like you didn't get any of that in your day. So you have to get it all right before bed.

One of the things that happens there too is we kind of cram, we try and cram our sleep into this little window. There's something called sleep opportunity and sleep opportunity is the time you give yourself to actually get the sleep you need.

So if your goal is to get eight hours of sleep, put it your head on the pillow straight out of, you know, the kitchen or living room or whatever at 10pm and having your alarm set for six.

While that's eight hours, the chances of you actually getting eight hours of sleep during that window are pretty slim.

So we need to be giving ourselves a bit bigger sleep opportunity window and creating a bit of a wind down for ourselves because, you know, you don't get up in the morning and go from zero to a hundred right away.

Hopefully, hopefully that's not how it's going for you.

You take a little bit of time to find your energy and move through the day, even if it's 15 minutes.

So my point being, you can't go from a hundred to zero and then expect to just pass out and boom, there's my eight hours.

So make time for sleep and make time for yourself throughout the day so you're not procrastinating sleep at the end of the day.

Dana:  Yeah, as much as we don't want to, we treat ourselves like machines that we have on and off switches.

Rebecca: Yes.

Dana:  And that's, we don't work that way and I think that falls into an expectation that probably society has put onto us that we're supposed to be on for certain amounts of time and functioning at a certain level. But we're actually these tender little creatures that require a lot nicer treatment.

Rebecca: It's true. And you know what? That kind of is a really good segue into the third thing I wanted to mention, which is about consistency with our circadian rhythm because we need, like, what did you say? You mentioned there, yeah, we're not on-off switch.

We don't have an on-off switch, right? So it's exactly the, that's exactly the case with sleep.

Sleep is not an on-off switch.

So we need to be doing things throughout our day beyond that stress management piece even to help ourselves be able to fall asleep, not just shut the light off at the end of the night, right? So, or when it's time to go to bed. 

So I just, yeah, wanted to share circadian rhythm, super important when it comes to sleep.So that's basically like your circadian rhythm is, it's time cues that set their, your circadian rhythm is your internal clock, right?

And so there are time cues that you can use to set that internal clock so that you feel awake when you wake up and you feel sleepy when it's time to go to bed.

One of the top things that you can use to set your circadian rhythm or your internal clock is the sun: daylight.

So spending some time outside in the morning signals to your body, hey, it's time to be awake.

Once you signal to your body that it's time to be awake, it will start its process because our bodies are so freaking cool.

It will start its process moving you towards sleep, creating that what they call sleep drive or sleep hunger.

You know, it's like, it's like getting that sun in the morning is like your breakfast, you know, think of it that way.

It's like your first meal. And then as you go through the day, you start getting hungrier and hungrier and hungrier for sleep.

And by the time you get to sleep time, your body's ready to go to bed.

So light in the morning, I use a really simple kind of thing to remember 10 before 10 if you can that applies.

So 10 minutes before 10am, go outside, get the natural light in your eyeballs.

That's where it needs to go. Keep the sunglasses off.

It doesn't work coming through your car windshield. So get your butt outside.

I know that in some places, you know, at time of recording, it's super cold right now.

So it can be a little bit difficult for that to happen, but do your best.

You know, there are also options where you can have like a light therapy box in your house if you if you need to.

But ultimately, you want to get outside into the natural light, the cloudier it is outside, the longer you want to spend.

The sun is still working its magic when it's cloudy and rainy, but you need a little bit more time.

I try for 25 minutes to half an hour each morning, you know, before 10am, I have a dog. So it makes it a little bit easier because I have to get out for a walk.

But that movement too is great in the morning. It will help kind of push you towards kind of growing that sleep drive throughout the day as well.

And then darkness at night.

So bringing those lights down in your house after dinner, you know, as the sun is setting, naturally just kind of like the sun is this, you know, magic wand in our lives.

Follow it, right? So as best as you can.

We can't always do this, you know, like I have a 13-year-old stepdaughter in place hockey and we're in, you know, ice arenas at sometimes at like nine o'clock at night.

And I'm sitting there going, oh my gosh, this lighting. But there's, you know, I want to be there. So there's not much I can do about that.

But I know that fairly consistently, as best as I can after dinner in the evening, the lights are dimmed in our house, you know, because you need to do that in order to kick that melatonin or sleep hormone into gear for you.

Melatonin only works in the dark.

So once it's time getting time close to time to sleep, bringing those lights down is important. So yeah, working with light in the morning and dark doesn't night will help with your circadian rhythm and really help that sleep.

Dana: That's fantastic.

Anything to say about travel and helping. I'm looking at going overseas pretty soon and I'm like, hmm, I wonder if there's any way I can influence, you know, that transition.

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So best thing to do, are you heading east or west?

Dana: East.

Rebecca: East. UK. Yeah. So that's always a little bit more difficult than coming west heading when you head home. But yeah, jet lag and all jet lag can be a beast.

Simple things you can do are just get on the local schedule as quickly as you can.

So sometimes we arrive in these locations, it's like, you know, seven o'clock or eight o'clock in the morning, nine o'clock in the morning when you would typically watch time be eating your breakfast at home.

But you're like, oh my gosh, it's the middle of the night at home. I'm so not hungry. You know, that type of thing.

If you can get your body into the time zone using those cues.

So like I said, your internal clock has a bunch of time cues that help it set.

So sunlight like I just was talking about, but also meal times, exercise, temperature, and of course sleep. So just do your best to get on the local schedule with things like your eating and even some movement will help for sure. Yeah.

Dana: Oh, you got me so riled up here. So many questions. I'm like, which are the relevant ones for today? That's great.

What I'm just reflecting back about is just how you set yourself up for sleep upon waking. So you're investing in your sleep the morning you wake up. That's just like a really cool frame to like you're starting your day with preparing to go to bed. That's really cool.

Rebecca: It is, isn't it? Yeah.

And another cool way to think about it too is even that you're preparing for your next morning than night before as well.

So one of the things that I work on with my clients is creating a wind-down schedule or pre sleep routine, which is what's going to be, it makes a huge difference in your ability, your body's ability to you're regulating your nervous system. 

You're basically like signal signaling to your body. It's calm down time.

Cortisol levels are starting to go down.

It's time for us to wind down and have some rest.

And so when you do that, you're setting yourself up to get that deeper sleep that you need.

The deep sleep is where the recovery, the replenishment happens and you're setting yourself up for a better wake up to feel, you know, more well rested when it's time to get up.

So yeah, it's like, it starts in the morning and it starts in the morning. It's kind of, it's cyclical, right? Like you're helping yourself kind of all day with all of these different things that you're doing. And so yeah, pre sleep ritual, I find is so important and it doesn't have to be this hour long thing that you do before your head hits the pillow. 

Like even starting with 10 or 15 minutes, things like making sure that you get into your, in my house we call them our comfy pants.

Gotta, put my comfy pants on, you know, so putting your pajamas on, washing your face, doing a bit of stretching. It could be spending 15 minutes reading a book, you know, not on a screen preferably if it's, if it's got the blue lights, it does the blue light.

Everybody's I think affected differently, but it does affect your melatonin. So when your eyeballs are hitting that blue light, it's basically saying, oh, hey melatonin, we don't need you right now. So right, talk to us later.

And so yeah, there's all kinds of things you can do for your, you know, pre sleep ritual.

Spend, if you just spend even 10 or 15 minutes really intentionally winding down.

So you're not just flicking the TV off and then head hits the pillow, but you're, you're giving yourself that little stretch where you're signalling to your body.

Hey, yeah.

Dana: What you're describing is conflicting with the time measurement strategies that we typically What you're describing is like these beautiful cycles that continue and they aren't in these linear calendar formats that fit in these little boxes, you know, that move on these grids and axes.

And I can see how this would be a really big change for some people's thinking that it would be a real reach to get out of, out of that grid format of like turning a calendar page or what have you.

And it's, but I also see the benefit in it because we're all affected by cycle. So if we could get off this arbitrary Gregorian calendaring methodology that we use and this clock system that I don't know who came up with, I don't think it really reflects actual human perception of time because our bodies sure don't really pay attention to it. You know, if we could learn to listen to the cycles of our bodies within the cycles of, you know, the day of the weeks of the seasons of the years, we'd be way better off because we were connected to the earth and to the cycles that are affecting us.

Rebecca: Yeah. And I mean, that's what circadian rhythm is all about, right?
Like it's all affected by, I mean, there's, I'm not a sleep scientist. I'm not going to try to go into a big, long explanation about it, but nor am I a doctor.

But yeah, our, our systems have little clocks everywhere that are regulated by all of these different cues that we're giving.

And there is a, I love how you just described it there.

There is, it's definitely cyclical, but there is, and there is almost a, it's like a beginning and an ending, but it's, it's still, you can visualize it as being cyclical.

It's almost less of a beginning and ending and more like, I'm kind of envisioning like the peaks and valleys on a, on a graph, right, or on a church.

If the listener could see my hands right now, they're like going up and down like a wave, right?

Anyway, yeah, I love that interpretation of it. Cool.

Dana: So what's, what's going on for you? What's next?

Rebecca: Yeah, just working with some awesome clients one-on-one right now and yeah, just having a ton of fun doing it.

I have a, I have a new resource that's just coming out called The Women's Guide to Waking Up Feeling Refreshed. So it's six steps to sleep better and transform your energy, focus and attitude.

So I'm excited to be sharing that with the world as well. And yeah, just making sure it can help as many people as possible with getting their sleep and stress management and check-in just feeling a heck of a lot better than they do right now.

Dana: That's fantastic.

We're on the same team for helping individuals optimize their existence so they can do the cool things that they've brought here to do, not just survive.

Right?

I laugh, but I'm not really laughing.

Oh, there's so much more. Awesome.

So we'll, I'll be sure to put all of your how-to find-you info in the show notes so that people can loop into your orbit.

You have so much to offer Rebecca and thanks so much for giving us a little teaser, this taster and some really good pointers on how we can really implement some good, better sleep strategies for ourselves.

You got definitely me thinking about how I'm thinking about sleep and some of my expectations. I'm like, I never thought of that particular angle of things.

So thanks. I'll let you know how work comes with it and comes of it.

Rebecca: Please do. And yes, thank you for having me.

Dana: Thanks, Rebecca.