Take a Deep Breath - Guided Programme
Your Day,
Your Day,
Your Breathwork
Tap into any part of your day below. Sleep is the priority right now, everything here is designed to protect it.
☀️
This is the bit that gets missed. Everyone focuses on the evening routine and skips this, but the more light you get in your eyes early in the day, the better you'll sleep tonight. It does not need to be a big walk straight away, even standing by an open window while you eat breakfast counts.
Pro tipAs the mornings get darker into autumn, a SAD lamp is worth having ready. Ten to fifteen minutes of that blast of light first thing does a lot of the same job as real daylight, and it is far easier to fit in on a grey Leicestershire morning.
👃
What you noticed is completely normal, and genuinely useful to know. Your nose is meant to alternate which side is doing more of the work, most people just never notice because both sides still open up fully. Yours are not quite getting there yet, which is why the blocked side feels properly shut rather than just quieter. That is the exact thing we are working on.
Mute Dilators, Daytime
Wear them whenever the nose starts sucking together
Pop them in whenever you notice the pulling-together feeling, especially on the walk, on a hill, or anywhere breathing picks up. There is no downside to wearing them all day if that is what it takes. The goal is simply to stop the mouth taking over when the nose feels restricted.
The nasal strip trade-off. The glue works brilliantly but is hard on sensitive skin worn every night. Rather than alternating nights and losing the benefit half the time, it is worth trying the nighttime Mute dilators instead, same opening effect, no glue, no skin irritation to manage.
🧘
Bringing back the structure you liked before, with a bit more in it. A full run through the ribs, the back and the chest, then a few minutes of box breathing to finish and settle. Same order every day, at the same time, exactly how you said you work best.
Ap
3 to 4 min
At
3 to 4 min
Vb
3 to 4 min
90
3 to 4 min
Be
3 to 4 min
Bx
3 to 5 min
🍽️
The dose has gone up. Ten minutes twice a day becomes twenty minutes once, seated rather than in bed, so it builds resilience instead of turning into a nap. This is the single biggest lever we have right now for the adrenaline bursts overnight.
Co
20 min, one block
or, on a day that feels like too much to focus
Co
20 min, one block
If twenty minutes in one go feels like a lot on a given day, ten and ten with a short break in between still works. Sitting up, not lying down, is the part that matters most here.
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This is where we untangle the routine. Right now, food, foot rubs, podcasts and moisturiser are all happening in bed, which is why you're waking yourself up again just as you're drifting off. None of it needs to stop, it just needs to move downstairs first, and this hour becomes the wind-down before bed even starts.
Map Your Evening
A one-off exercise, just for you, not for anyone else to see
- 1Write down everything you currently do between finishing dinner and falling asleep, in order, exactly as it happens.
- 2Look at the list and ask what can be prepped in advance, moisturiser left out on the side, podcast episode already chosen and ready to play.
- 3Decide which bits happen downstairs, on the sofa or in a chair, before you ever go up. Snack, foot rub, podcast, all of it.
- 4Only go up to bed once everything on the list is finished. Bed becomes the last step, not the place where the routine happens.
Once the practical list is done, sit down for the breathing part of the wind-down. Either of these works, pick whichever feels right that evening.
Co
10 to 20 min
46
10 to 15 min
Pro tipOnce it starts getting dark outside, clip on the blue light glasses or switch the phone to its red screen filter. Five o'clock is fine while it's still light, but once the sun's down, keep it dimmed from then on.
🌙
By the time you get here, the evening's already done. This is just the last few minutes, sort the nose, tape the mouth, get in, and that's it, nothing else happens in bed except sleep.
Nose, Then Mouth
Nighttime Mute dilator, then resume the tape
Try the nighttime Mute dilator instead of the strip, it should give you the same opening without the glue and skin irritation. Then bring the mouth tape back. MyoTape sits around the lips rather than sealing them, so it comes off easily and the mouth can still open if it needs to. Micropore across the lips works just as well if you prefer something simpler, it will just peel off on its own if it needs to.
Once you're in, that's it. No snack, no podcast, no fiddling with moisturiser, all of that already happened downstairs. If sleep doesn't come straight away, that's fine, just lie quietly rather than reaching for the phone.
🌟
This is common, and it isn't dangerous. The burst of adrenaline before the hot flash, the heart rate jump, the jolt awake, all of that fits with this stage of life and with a nervous system that's been under a lot of pressure this year. It is not a sign that something is wrong. The heat itself isn't really the problem, it's the adrenaline spike just before it.
Cu
60 to 90 sec
47
4 to 6 cycles
While it passes
There isn't one fix for this, but these help
- 1Don't fight to get back to sleep straight away. Let the adrenaline settle first, trying to force sleep on top of it usually makes the wired feeling worse.
- 2Keep the room dark. No phone, no bright light, even if you're waiting it out for a few minutes.
- 3Give the daily coherence work time to work on this specifically. Twenty minutes a day builds the kind of resilience that gradually turns down how strong these bursts feel, but that takes weeks, not one night.
Worth ruling in or outRun SnoreLab or SoundSleep for a couple of nights this week, just to check whether there's a breathing pattern worth mentioning to a sleep specialist. No pressure either way, it's just useful information either way.
The Plan in One Thought
Light first thing, the nose managed all day, a full structure at 9, coherence at 1, the evening routine moved out of bed, and a plan for the nights that wake you. There isn't one thing here that fixes everything on its own, but together they're aimed at the one goal that matters most right now. Sleep is the priority, everything else improves once that does.
