About Lesson
The ‘5 Principles’ were developed by Professor Colin Espie (1) for the UK National Health Service (NHS) campaign ‘Every Mind Matters’, initiated in 2020 by Public Health England, and supported by the Mental Health Foundation.
They are Value, Prioritise, Personalise, Trust, and Protect
- Value: When we value our sleep we know that it’s important, it’s a necessity in our lives and we won’t cut corners when it comes to getting sleep. Go back to the lessons of ‘Importance of Sleep’.
- Prioritise: If we value sleep then we know we have to prioritise it over other activities. It may mean saying no to certain things and situations. We need to be ok with being sleepy as an indicator that it’s time for bed and not staying up.
- Personalise: This is a trial and error experimentation to find out how much sleep you actually need for your sleep window. Try staying in bed a bit longer or shorter and see how that impacts on being alert and sleep drive. It can also help people to establish if they are night owls or morning larks (or intermediates) and adapt their sleep time accordingly (if lifestyle and work enable a more flexible approach).
- Trusting: Sleep is a natural process based upon our circadian rhythm. When we find our patterns of winding down behaviours, sleep time and adjusting our schedule then sleep occurs. It may take time to settle into regular nurturing and restorative sleep, but trust the process. Most ‘good sleepers’ are good at it as they don’t question sleeping! They go to bed when sleepy and sleep. Anxiety, pressure and worry will take away from trusting sleep.
- Protect: We need to avoid disrupting the pattern of our sleep by protecting it (this helps when we know how valuable it is to our health and wellbeing). Sleep hygiene practises come into play here, setting our boundaries, relaxation, letting go of the racing mind and pressure placed upon getting to sleep. It’s worth remembering if you go to bed when not sleepy it will be hard to sleep so get up and do something gentle until the feeling of sleepiness arrives.
Reference:
- Espie CA. The ‘5 principles’ of good sleep health. J Sleep Res. 2022 Jun;31(3):e13502. doi: 10.1111/jsr.13502. Epub 2021 Oct 21. PMID: 34676592; PMCID: PMC9285041.