How to Meditate in Bed Without a Phone
When you just want to turn off your brain and sleep, meditation apps are perfect. A guiding voice or the sounds of something peaceful, like rain, help fill the silence so that your thoughts can’t creep in. The best ones strategically tire you out. (You can look for traces of sleep-oriented meditation, but my fault is that I misused the introductory Headspace lessons for this purpose. Hey, this is a free country.)
But messing with your phone in bed is a bad idea. The light hints to your body that it is daytime, and the slight excitement of games or anger at tweets makes your brain hum at exactly the time it should end. But with a few tricks, you can turn on the autopilot for relaxation without having to hold your phone in sleepless hands.
Use wireless headphones
Here, your favorite wireless headphones are your friend. I have an ear-covering device that I use to make phone calls, but I will also bring it to bed and hold it to my ear so it doesn’t press against the pillow. Usually at night I wake up halfway, notice that it is still on, turn it off and lay it next to my pillow.
This approach has pitfalls: one night my earphone fell out, but I forgot to turn it off. I didn’t realize that my alarm clock app would then play sound through the earphone, so I missed the wake-up time. (Fortunately, the app had a setting to ignore Bluetooth devices, so this only happened once.)
You can also place the Bluetooth speaker by your bed while your phone is charging in another room, or keep your phone nearby but out of reach. I keep my phone on a dresser, which I can’t reach from my bed, with a short charging cable. Play the dynamic meditation and you’re done.
If you prefer meditation tracks from a music app, try setting a sleep timer. (For example, on an iPhone, simply select Stop Play instead of the sound effect under When Timer Ends.)
Ask a smart speaker
If you have a device like the Echo or Google Home in your bedroom, ask it to help you meditate. Alexa has skills like guided meditation and meditation studio and you can find others by browsing the Health & Fitness section. Google has, among others, ” Sounds of Meditation” and ” Micro-Meditation” .
Depending on your device, you may also be able to access your preferred meditation app this way. Calm is only available in Google Assistant , while Headspace is available in Google Assistant and Alexa .
Go to the old school
Once you get used to it, meditating without a guiding voice is not that difficult. As a bonus, you can use these methods anywhere, even if you are off the beaten path and need to conserve the last 10 percent of your phone’s battery. Several effective meditation-inspired techniques:
- Listen to your breathing. Count your breaths if you like.
- Try to recreate a meditation track you liked before, or create your own.
- Pick one thing and focus on it . A happy image, perhaps, or a person you love.
- Do some calculations, such as counting in triplets or calculating the Fibonacci sequence .
- Open your eyes and do not think of anything other than being awake . Hey, sometimes reverse psychology works.