When experiencing nervous system dysregulation, most people try to solve the problem 'from within.'

But there’s something a lot of us forget:

The stimuli in our surroundings also have a tremendous influence in our nervous system.

In fact, it is accurate to say that we are constantly ‘co-regulating’ with our environment, taking external cues from all the sounds, the visuals, even the smells — and then tuning our internal state accordingly.

The issue?

Most of us don’t put enough thought into intentionally designing our environments.

Obviously, this isn’t your fault — nobody teaches you this growing up!

But without intentional Environment Design, our surroundings can have the opposite effect we were initially intending.

So today, I’d like to share with you a few tips and ideas to intentionally design the most important room of your entire home:

Your bedroom.

The Role Of Sleep In Our Nervous System Health

Sleep is critical to your Nervous System Health.

As anyone who isn’t sleeping well will tell you, it impacts everything:

• Your physical performance
• Your mental health
• Your mental clarity
• Even your digestion

Now, sleep is a deep rabbit hole.

Many great books and research papers have been written on the topic.

But instead of giving you a giant reading list, I’m going to attempt to share with you the 20% of the changes and recommendations that, in my experience, will give you 80% of the impact in terms of deeper and better sleep.

I’ve compiled them all in what I call my Sleep Sanctuary Cheat Sheet.

Today’s Protocol: The Sleep Sanctuary Cheat Sheet

Below, you can find 8 potential passive or environmental changes that you can make to your bedroom to improve your sleep quality over time.

The beauty of all these suggestions is that they’re one-time changes.

So once you make them, they can have a positive impact on your sleep forever.

Now, a quick word of caution:

You may choose to experiment with more than of these suggestions — but please know that it’s usually more long-term efficient to pick one or two at most in the beginning and commit for 21 days before adding more.

That said, here’s the list:

☑️ 🌱 Use house plants to improve air quality in the bedroom and create an aesthetically calming environment.

☑️ ⏳ Use an auto timer to turn off wifi power and/or lights 90 minutes before sleep.

☑️ 🌡 Keep the ambient bedroom cool at an optimal temperature — between 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 to 19.4 degrees Celsius).

☑️ 🛌 Purchase breathable sheets or consider investing in a temperature-regulating mattress or mattress cover (eg. the EightSleep, which allows for different temperatures on each side of the bed).

☑️ 🕯️ Buy candles or Hue lights to replace overhead LEDs.

☑️ 💨 Use relaxing natural incense to burn or an essential oil diffuser (e.g., lavender) in the evenings.

☑️ ⏰ Buy an analog alarm clock or Hatch to wake-up more naturally with your sleep cycle.

☑️ 🔢 Track your sleep quality and consistency over time using an Oura ring.

☑️ 🛏️ If you experience anxiety, try sleeping underneath a weighted gravity blanket.

Ready to improve your sleep—and your Nervous System Health?

I hope this email got your wheels turning—and you found at least one or two tweaks you can make to your bedroom over the next few days.

Now if you’d like to dive deeper into Environment Design (and leverage it as a tool to overcome the nervous system regulation challenges you’ve been experiencing), I’d love to have you in our next Nervous System Mastery live cohort.

Inside this training, you will not only find more actionable frameworks and resources but also:

• Live workshops
• Feedback & guidance
• And a community of likeminded peers

​Click here to learn more & join the waitlist.​

PS… In case you’re curious to hear from others, here’s what Caryn, an alumni from last year, said about her experience: