Sleep Training System™
Simple, common sense solutions
Table of Contents
Part One - Background
Important information to know before starting the STS. We highly recommend consulting with your doctor or other health care professional before starting the program to either treat or rule out insomnia caused by medical or psychiatric issues.
How to Use this Program
This overview section will give you an idea of what you will be doing over the course of the program, and how the pieces fit together.
Discusses how sleeplessness can evolve into a problem for otherwise normal individuals, and the epidemic of insomnia in society today. Also introduces some of the methods used later in the program.
Part Two - Foundations
Baseline
Introduces sleep logs, the interactive tool used to track each night's sleep experience. One week of sleep is charted for use as a baseline reference point prior to starting the STS. Sleep logs are kept throughout the duration of the program to monitor progress and to deploy the tools and techniques in the STS.
Provides a scientific framework for understanding the surprisingly dynamic process of sleep. Knowing empirical, proven facts about sleep will help you feel more relaxed and confident about working with and improving your own sleep system.
Understanding your Baseline
Use this simple self-assessment process to help recognize and understand the underlying thoughts and behaviors that may be preventing or interfering with a good night's sleep. Begin determining areas in which you can improve.
Part Three - The Sleep Training System
Week One | Sleep Timing
Your sleep system thrives on regularity, and regularity is something you can establish right away with sleep timing techniques. During this first week, you will learn and deploy this very effective method that has been clinically shown to help most everyone sleep better. This exceptional success rate is based on the simple but compelling fact that your physiological requirement for sleep is stronger than your insomnia.
Week Two | Self Talk
Learn how thoughts and expectations profoundly affect sleep. Examine how negative and often distorted thoughts about sleep contribute to a self-perpetuating cycle of insomnia. Use a very effective tool to help break that negative cycle -- by replacing recurring negative sleep thoughts with more positive, accurate, and realistic thoughts about sleep.
Week Three | Sleep Hygiene
Address ways to create optimal sleeping conditions for yourself. These methods comprise much of what is known as sleep hygiene - cultivating a lifestyle and habits supportive of your natural ability to sleep well, in addition to strengthening overall good health.
Week Four | Controlling Stress
Examine how stress -- and our reaction to stress -- interfere with good sleep. Counter stress and improve sleep by using a number of different stress management methods that are customizable to your own unique situation. Learn how to use a potent relaxation tool while in bed to help fall asleep and stay asleep.
Week Five | Managing Anxiety
Understand the differences between stress and anxiety. Learn how to comprehensively manage anxiety that often accompanies and worsens insomnia. Use effective cognitive methods to recognize and proactively address the negative thought patterns that underlie and perpetuate anxiety. By constructively reframing such recurring negative thoughts, you will not only sleep better, but have a much healthier and more realistic outlook on life.
Week Six | Long Term Maintenance
To sleep better long term, incorporate the empowering idea of whole person growth. Learn how to fine-tune the constructive imagination process to your own unique situation, and examine in detail the art of creating effective affirmations.
This final week we also tie all the components of the STS together into one unified whole. Transition from use of the daily sleep logs to a long term maintenance program you can use indefinitely to continue strengthening your sleep system at your own pace on an as-needed basis.