Sleep Tape, a simple first step to taking control of your life
Sleep Tape – a simple and wonderful tool to improve your breathing while you sleep
Sensitive Skin Surgical tape used for sleep tape, and me trying to look as normal as possible and help your body learn how to really sleep
How it changed my sleep and maybe work for you too
Sleep taping changed my relationship with sleep. I used to wake up all the time, in pain, exhausted, feeling like sleep was suffering. I can tell you I went from mouth breathing all night, waking up 4-5 times per night, trouble going back to sleep, and sometimes sleeping a few hours per night. Now that I’ve started sleep taping my sleep has changed to waking up 0-1 times per night, the ability to go back to sleep more easily, and stay asleep longer. Just by doing this one thing. I’m sure many of the other things I have done also help, but this also is a great tool to use even if you don’t think you have time for something new, this is easy.
This process only took about a week of getting used to the tape. I tried a few options, some were too sticky while others were not sticky enough. For a long time I used sensitive skin surgical tape with about a 1 inch piece across my lips. Sensitive skin paper tape is also fine. There are tons of options. Yes I can do this despite having a glorious beard. It only needs to be placed directly on the lips to be effective. The first night you might want to take the tape off after about 10 minutes and that’s fine. The next day you’ll tolerate a longer and within a few days you’ll be sleeping through the night more easily. I have been doing this almost everyday for the last year and I have noticed remarkable change in my sleep. I wake up feeling much more rested than before and I am able to do more things in the morning rather than being overcome with the chronic pain issues that I currently maintain.
If you have a clogged nose we have options for that. There is the nose unblocking activity which you can learn if you attend of my of my Buteyko breathing classes. Along with nasal breathing, and other breathwork that can be combined with this activity to help make it easier and more effective (Link will be inserted here soon).
Sleep tape is a great, simple, cost effective tool to increase your sleep quality by helping your breathe more effectively while you sleep. It accomplishes this by gently holding your lips closed while you sleep so your body is much more likely to breathe through your nose while you are unconscious. Night time sleeping habits are the hardest to change because we can’t consciously change what is happening. Tools like tape will help to encourage nose breathing. You sleep for approximately 8 hours per day (or at least you’re in bed for many hours, if you aren’t making 8 hours in the sack we can work together to create new strategies to help you improve your rest and digest time. When you have tape on your mouth you can breathe easily and effectively for 1/3 of your life, that is a lot of breathing in the correct fashion for very little effort.
When you sleep with your mouth closed there are several benefits. These benefits impact your entire body and how your nervous system operates. When you nose breathe you will allow you nervous system to relax and go into the rest and digest recovery stage that is so unfamiliar. You’ve made it through every stressful situation in your life, but you haven’t recovered from that stress. With mouth taping you start to learn how to recover, with very little effort.
First your body will go into rest and digest mode, maybe for the first time in years. This is because your body interprets nasal breathing as calm breathing and mouth breathing as there must be some sort of emergency around that requires you to be breathing through your mouth in order to get the maximum amount of air into your lungs. Your body is low key thinking there is a bear lurking in the shadows ready to pounce on you because there is no other good reason to be breathing through your mouth. Fortunately this is not the case, unless you live in a much more interesting household than mine, and we are mouth breathing because our bodies are always looking for the most efficient (easiest) way to do things. Mouth breathing is physically easier than nose breathing but it is much less effective and causes a low level stress response every time you breathe through your mouth.
Next, you will need to wake up and pee less during the night. When you breathe through your nose, your kidneys receive the rest and digest signals from your brain and tell them to calm down, and rest. This allow the kidneys to release the appropriate rest and digest hormones and allow you to need to pee way less than normal. I personally went from getting up 4-5 times per night to 0-1 time per night (which is the normal) to pee.
You will need to drink less water and will wake up with a hydrated mouth rather than dry. This helps you need to drink less water because nose breathing causes you to lose approximately 40% less water than with mouth breathing, so you are breathing out less perfectly normal water and needing to drink less. If you are tired of your doctor telling you to drink 100 ounces of water a day, just change to nose breathing and you can drink 60 ounces instead (though this varies by activity and capability level). If you’re someone who’s always thirsty to dry in your skin, it may very well be a breathing issue that you can help remedy with a 5 second effort of putting tape on before you go to sleep. This is the closest thing to a pill that I can give to people because it is so easy, takes so little time, it just looks weird. Who cares if you feel better?
Nasal breathing will help reduce snoring. This activity will help train your airways to stay open while you are breathing. With long term practice you will be able to train your way out of snoring and breathing more effectively especially if you combine sleep taping with other breathing exercises like Wim Hof Breathing or Buteyko breathing. Both things that we teach here at Breathe Live Thrive. Along with a whole host of other options.
You can try this out for less than 5$, what do you have to lose?
