049: 3 Must-Do Things Before You Sleep

The podcast discusses the importance of an evening routine for relaxation and recovery. It emphasizes three key elements: stretching, breathing, and meditation, to help the body relax before sleep. The conversation challenges the common belief that simply falling asleep equals recovery, highlighting the need for intentional relaxation to allow the body to heal fully.

Connect with Mike Chang:
- Instagram: @mikechangofficial
-Youtube: Mike Chang
- Website: www.flow60.com

Connect with Stephen Yeh:
-Instagram: @iamstephenyeh
-Twitter: @iamstephenyeh

Transcript

mike (00:05)
So morning routine is just as important as an evening routine. Oh, let's do that again.

Stephen (00:11)
Hmm.

mike (00:14)
An evening routine is just as important as a morning routine. When we go to sleep, there are three things that we need to do. And if we don't do these three things, there's a chance that our body is not going to be calm and relaxed. In other words, we're not going to recover. So these three things allow us to be able to relax, let go of tension, silence our mind.

So this way we're not so agitated. Whatever happened throughout the day, we're able to let it go, feel peaceful. So our body can actually relax. If we don't do these things, our body isn't relaxed when we go to sleep. And it doesn't matter if you sleep for seven, eight hours. If your body's not relaxed, it's not going to recover. And if it doesn't recover, you're going to feel like you didn't sleep. You feel like when you wake up in the morning, you still feel...

Groggy, you still feel tired. And that's so many people in the world today. And that is if you are getting the seven hours, eight hours of sleep, which many people aren't. So then that creates even more issues. So today we're going to be talking about what these three things are. And they're really simple things that everybody can do and need to do every single night. So these three things, they are.

Number one, stretching. Number two, breathing. And number three, meditation. You got to do these three things every single night. You got to stretch because when your body is tight, when it's holding onto tension, you can't relax. And if your body can't relax and you're sitting there, even if you go unconscious, which is sleep, your body is not going to recover.

Your subconscious mind or your body still believes, I still need to handle things. I'm still going. We're not done yet. Even though you're laying there doing nothing, your body is still ready to go and take on the day. So your body is not going to be recovering. It's not going to be rebuilding the tissues. It's not going to be rebuilding the muscles. So you got to let go of that tension. That's why stretching is so important. So then after you stretch, then you want to breathe.

The reason you want to breathe is you want to go deeper and you want to clear the energy. If you felt stress, you felt frustration, you felt agitation throughout the day, and you may not have had an opportunity to fully let it go. Now you need to do it before you go to bed. Cause if you don't, you will take all of this emotion and you're going to place it deeper into your body and you're going to program it literally into your mind. You're going to program stress. You're going to program anxiety, worry, fear.

in your mind. And then when you wake up the next day, you're going to have a higher likely chance of seeing situations through this perspective. So you got to let go of that. And that's why breathing is so important and why it's such a powerful combination to accompany stretching right away. And then last thing is meditation. You need to meditate so you can put your body and your mind in the most relaxed state.

Meditation before bed is actually going to put your body in a deeper restful state, then sleeping itself. Okay. Then sleeping itself. Because when you sleep, this doesn't mean that your body is totally relaxed. Like I mentioned, you can still be agitated. You can, your mind is still thinking about the day. You're still, um, haven't fully let go of the things that happened today, or maybe even the...

You know, the prior days and weeks. So when you meditate, you're actually getting your attention to be here in the present moment, to be silent and still in your mind. Now there's no thoughts that is agitating the body. And when you're thinking about stress, that's actually attacking your body. Like when you think about, Hey, I'm upset about this thing. Instantly feel how your body feels.

Instantly, you're going to feel, you're going to feel this tightness, you're going to feel this tension. So when you are sleeping and you are still running scenarios of what he said, what she did, what happened, I'm worried about this. You're literally attacking your body with your mind at night. And if you sleep for seven hours and you didn't clear those thoughts because you didn't meditate, then you're going to be attacking your body for a while. And now you think about why people wake up and they don't feel rest. Why people start to have chronic pain.

chronic sickness, stuff that is so simple like a cough that doesn't go away.

Things like pains that just seem to ache and ache and ache. Our body's having natural ability to heal. And all we have to do is just get the body to relax when we are sleeping. And then the body will do its job. It's so easy. We don't even need to consciously do anything. But if we can't do that one simple thing, get the body to relax at night, then our bodies will not heal. And when it does, it's so little. We need it to heal 100%.

But if it heals only 15%, 20%, then every single day our bodies are breaking down more and more and more. This is why when people are young, they seem to be healthy and strong. And most people, as they get older, they start to break down more. Cause you imagine you heal just a little bit. Instead of healing a hundred percent, you heal 20%. But it's like having a new car. You never get an oil change. Your car is not going to just break down instantly. You can go without an oil change for a while.

You can not rotate those tires and exchange out the shocks and the spark plugs and the filters. And you can do that for a while and your car will still run. But at some point, if you don't go ahead and take care of your car, it will start to break down. And this is why you see people in their twenties now, dealing with pains, dealing with mental issues, dealing with sicknesses in their twenties. I mean, that's insane. That is absolutely crazy. But it's because of the amount of stress that's happening in our modern day world.

And we can, we don't have to avoid those things. Okay. That's another story. But all we need to do is get the body to be able to relax so it can recover. And then therefore whatever stuff we deal with throughout the day, whatever challenges, we can recover from it. We wake up the next day, we're ready to take it on again. And that's it. It's so simple, but it needs to be done. Everybody needs to do it. And because it's so easy, everybody have the capacity to do it.

as well.

Stephen (07:15)
So it's great that you're mentioning these things and I'm just thinking in terms of like the average person listening to this, you know, if they're not doing the routine and right now the mentality I think for most people is hey, sleep is the recovery. You know, when you're tired throughout the day and you get to bed, that's the time to finally get the rest.

from throughout the day. And so when you fall asleep, that's when the body will relax and then you can start to recharge for the next day. So, you know, that that's very common. I mean, essentially, that's what almost everybody does. So like, how are people even going to know?

mike (08:00)
That's the misconception. Well, that's the biggest thing, right? Somebody goes, if I go unconscious, my body's recovering, right? And if I don't go unconscious, then that means I'm still awake, therefore my body's not recovering. So you see, that's why we need to dive in and we need to uncover, we need to uncover that lie because that's not true. The body recovers when it is relaxed.

Stephen (08:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

mike (08:29)
If it's not relaxed, it does not recover.

So you asked a good question, which is like, how does somebody know if they're relaxed? How do they know if their body's actually recovering? You know, and number one, is your body relaxed? How do you know? Feel into your body. And you can tell if you're relaxed simply by feeling into your body. It's like, look at your hand. Is your hand tense? Well, if you're balling a fist, it's tight, right? If your hand's loose and it's, then it's relaxed.

How does your shoulders feel? Is it tense or is it relaxed? So if somebody isn't checking, then they have no idea. Cause you know, from the outside point of view, it's hard to look at this person and go, Hey, your muscles are tense. We can tell, but there are so many areas inside the body that isn't as visible to the outside, to the outside view. So feeling the body becomes a really important thing to do.

Now we can also look at brain waves, right? We can plug up to a machine and read the waves and go, oh, okay, this waves are filing right now. These brain waves are active. That means you're in this state, but it's not necessary. The only thing we need to do is just pay attention to the way we feel. If we just spend just one or two minutes checking in on how we feel, instantly we're going to know, am I relaxed or am I feeling...

stressed, agitated, nervous, uneasy. And if we are feeling that way, well, all we got to do is just get the body to relax. That's it. That's how we can tell.

Stephen (10:14)
So, I mean this misconception is huge then. Especially nowadays, the past five, 10 years, people have been having tremendous amount of sleep issues. I mean, number one, even just trying to get to sleep. And then number two, also like, hmm.

mike (10:31)
Well, that's the thing. You don't even need to sleep. Think about it. We're not even talking about going unconscious, right? Because that's what sleeping is, right? You go unconscious. We're not even talking about going unconscious. All we're saying is that you just need to get the body to relax. So imagine like somebody laying there on the, on the bed or wherever they sleep. You know, I sleep, I sleep on, on harder surfaces, but to lay there.

Stephen (10:43)
Hmm.

mike (11:01)
Relaxed. That's it. Whether we are asleep, conscious or unconscious, it doesn't matter. You can be fully awake. You know, when I go to sleep, half the time I'm laying there, I'm awake. I'm just not moving. And because I'm not moving and because my body is relaxed, I'm already recovering.

You see, so you don't need to be asleep.

Stephen (11:23)
think for some people, I think for some people that sounds miserable. To to lay there and not be able to get

mike (11:31)
Well, it's miserable if they aren't being

Well, then you see the problems much deeper in that. The problem, if you can't be with yourself, if you can't be with yourself, then there's a bigger issue there. Right? If you can't lay there and be with yourself, right? There's, there's nobody's bothering you. Nobody's, you're there, you're there with yourself. And if you can't do that, well, then that should be a very big, obvious thing. That there is something that needs to change.

Okay. So if somebody was to lay there and they can't be okay with being themselves, well, here's the thing. That's why you don't just go from it's nighttime, it's time to go to bed. Let me just lay there. And if I can't fall asleep, I'm just going to lay there. You're right. For some people it's very difficult, but that's why you need to do these three things. If you don't do the three things, if you're not stretching, breathing, or meditating, then...

You're not going to, not only are you going to lay there and not fall asleep, but you're going to lay there tense, agitated, stressed, worried, feeling off, uncomfortable. Okay. And you're not going to fall asleep. But most people don't know how it's like. Imagine you lay there, right? Your body is entirely calm. Your body feels good.

feels really comfortable. Your mind, there's no thinking. You're just present. You're just enjoying just a moment. There's nothing happening and you are perfectly okay with the fact that nothing is happening. And through this experience, as you lay there doing nothing, thinking about nothing, you feel this...

overwhelming sense of peace, the sense of lightness.

When you experience that...

There's no problems with being with yourself because being with yourself feels really nice. But if a person is not doing these three things and then they go to bed and then they're feeling all this agitation, their mind is just attacking their body and attacking themselves and just, well, yeah, it doesn't feel good because there's all this commotion going on. It doesn't make any sense. Why would a person do that?

You know, it's like, it's like having a, it's like having your phone play random videos and just volume turned on high and you just put it next to your ear and you just leave it playing the whole night. And then you try to go to sleep. Why would somebody consciously do that? That doesn't make any sense. They would turn it off. But if they're going to turn off the device because the device is making too much noise, why won't they go and spend 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes.

turn off their body and mind. So this way the body and mind can rest. That's not the only thing that's running. It's not their phone that's running. It's their body and mind that's constantly running. Why don't they just turn it off as well?

Maybe the device, there's an off button, there's a pause button, there's a swipe up and close the window. Well, for their body and mind, the button comes in three different ways. The first button is you want to stretch, the second button is breathe, and the third button is called meditation. And then once you hit that third button, boom, your body and mind starts to turn off.

Stephen (15:23)
What I'm hearing right now is like, I'm just imagining someone saying like, great on you, Mike, amazing, but I can never do that. Cause my brain operates at a million, you know, a million different pictures in a second, you know, and you know, even just shutting my eyes, all of these pictures and events and experiences are all popping up. So it's like,

Yeah, like, do they have hope?

mike (16:02)
You know, for somebody who's don't remember or maybe never experienced how it's like to feel at ease in their body or to feel their mind not, you know, not running constantly with that chatter.

It may feel like it's just impossible. Like they can't even fathom how that would even feel like.

I can understand. My mind used to be like that. My mind used to constantly run. And it wasn't just random stuff. It was constantly complaining, blaming, figuring out, trying to figure out solutions to all these problems that I had that I couldn't see around it. And this was running all the time. It ran when I went to sleep.

It was also there when I woke up. It was there throughout the day. My mind was so loud. I can, couldn't pay attention to my managers. I couldn't engage in conversations anymore. I couldn't understand complex conversations. You gotta be saying something simple to me for me to keep up. Let's just say it like that. I couldn't understand.

That's the craziest thing. That was absolutely the craziest thing when I realized that it was happening and I can't understand what people are talking about. What the heck is going on? But yet that's exactly what was happening. But you imagine that, right? This double -edged sword. I don't understand complex conversations anymore. When I mean complex, it's not like we're talking...

Stephen (17:24)
Thank you.

mike (17:47)
quantum science. No, I'm talking about like, here, there's this problem and there's this problem. And the reason why this problem is happening is because of that thing. And I'm sitting there like, you know, deer with headlights.

No idea.

And now imagine, imagine I'm feeling that way and I don't understand what they're saying and I don't understand why I don't understand.

So if I wanted to understand what was happening to me, I would need to be in a different state of mind. But if I was in a different state of mind, then I would understand what the heck people are talking about. You see this double edged sword. So yeah, I know exactly what people are experiencing when they just can't fathom the idea of their mind being silent. Cause it's just like, it's, they, they can't even connect to that reality.

This is why if, if somebody is experiencing what I experienced before, this is what they need to do. Number one, you can't try to understand this because you're not. Your, your mind's going to fire off a million things when you go, Hey, try to do this. Well, what if, what if, what about what that won't work? Okay. You can't, you can't try to go and convince a mind that is, that will say 10 things every time you try to say one. It doesn't work. This is what you need to do. Do.

The three things stretch, breathe, meditate. When you stretch, set a timer, go stretch for about five, 10 minutes. You know, go with what you feel. Ideally, if your mind is like racing, like how mine was, I'd be more closer to that 10 minutes. Breathe. Okay. Breathe at least five minutes. Set a timer. Make sure this timer can go off without you having to get up and impress it. Breathe for five minutes. Lay down.

Just breathe into your stomach the best you can in and out of the mouth. So even if your nose is blocked, it doesn't matter. Just breathe. This way you can get the most amount of oxygen in. Okay. Five minutes. Keep breathing. Then after that, exhale all of your breath. Right? Hold your breath and just lay there. Don't move. Don't move a single muscle. Just lay there. And then when you can't hold your breath for any longer, then breathe normal in and out of the nose.

That's it, and don't move.

Just do that every day. Okay. Every day for one week, just one week. When your mind is going, what if, what if, what if, you know what? One week. Okay. Just try it out. Let your own experience give you the answers to the what if questions that you're asking. And what's going to happen is that person's going to go, okay, well, you know what? What do I got to lose?

Doesn't cost me any money. I'm not investing a tremendous amount of time. We're talking about what? 15 minutes in the evening. 20 minutes. I mean, at most, what do you got to lose? You know, not saying buy this machine. It costs a, you know, two grand and no, it costs nothing. And it takes 15 minutes. Okay. And do it for one week. Okay.

I guarantee if you do this for one week every night, do that, okay? You will feel a massive difference, not a little one, massive difference. And then your what if questions is not gonna be like, what if it doesn't work? It becomes, holy crap, what is happening? Because I feel it, it's changing, oh my God, I feel so, what's happening, what's happening, what's happening? It's not so much a questioning, you see, whether it works or not anymore.

People start to get interested in what are they doing? They, it's working, but they don't understand why. But all they know is that I do this and it works. Now they can go ahead and dive in. They can start to understand what's actually happening. Until then, the questions is what if it doesn't work? Right? So skip that part and just invest one week of your life and it will change everything.

Stephen (22:17)
Here's one of the last big questions I think this skeptic mind would ask. Mike, what is the catch? If it's free, if it only takes this small amount of time, what's the catch?

How is this possible?

mike (22:40)
You know where the catch is? Here's the catch.

You got to put in that effort.

even if it's 15 minutes. That's still 15 minutes of effort.

People got to care enough about doing something different, creating some change in their life. If somebody doesn't care, it doesn't matter if it's 60 seconds. They're not even going to lift a finger because they don't care. So when I'm helping people and I'm telling people, Hey, try this out. I'm talking to the people that care because if they don't care, it wouldn't even matter. Wouldn't even matter. That's the catch.

Somebody's got to invest that time and energy and the only way somebody's got to invest that time and energy, even if it's just 15 minutes is they got to care. They got to care enough about themselves, about their life, about the people in their life.

Because they influence people in their life, the closest people in their life. And if their body is, is agitated and they're in pain and their mind is foggy and energy is really low, they're not able to serve the people in their life. They're not able to connect. The quality of their life is not good. So they got to care. That's the only catch. If you care enough about your life, you're going to do this work.

You're going to spend that little bit of 15 minutes a night that will change everything in your life.

Stephen (24:25)
Amazing. Okay. Well, everybody, you know, I hope you come to a point where you actually do care about essentially yourself, because I've experienced this myself deeply as well. And having a night routine really helps me to have that deeper rest that's much needed to be able to be a lot more.

free and joyful in your life. I hope you guys all at least test this out, just like Mike said, for one week and see how that works.

mike (25:06)
Well, before we do that, I want to, let's talk about, let's talk about your, uh, your evening routine. Right. Cause I think you have, you have an evening routine. What do you do in the evening to help you sleep better?

Stephen (25:12)
Hmm?

Hmm. In general, I do not all three, but two of them are there, you know, specifically stretching, especially if I'm feeling tight somewhere, you know, I work through anything that that just feels tense in my body. Because just like what you said is, is, you know, that that's just chronically, if you don't take care of it, it's just chronically going to be around.

And then another thing that I found tremendously helpful is the meditation aspect. And, you know, for me, I've tried different types for me. I personally like to just sit right now and just close my eyes and just not even think about meditating, but just, just observe. And what I found is if I have a very busy mind throughout the day or whatever, I could start to notice that and

And as I just sit with it, that starts to release, release, release until I get quite peaceful and sometimes even just tired. And then all of a sudden I go to sleep. What I've also noticed and seen is there's periods where I either forgets or, you know, I, I for some reason got out of the habit of doing these things. And especially during busy or, or challenging times.

If I don't do those things, it starts to add up. And then throughout the night, I'm sleeping kind of anxious or tired or groggy. And then I also wake up anxious, tired and groggy. And sometimes even for myself, I've studied and I've done plenty of work on myself. Sometimes it takes a little while before I remember, oh yeah, I'm missing these certain things. I'm...

I'm missing these certain practices. And then when I get back to it, I can immediately start to notice just how tense my body and my mind feels. And then when all that starts to relax, then I get back into this centeredness where I get much better recovery. But like you said, it's nuts.

You know, the sleep aspect, I feel it's it's absolutely important. But for me, it's like, why? Why is it important? It's because throughout the entire day, I get into a different type of state. When I'm very stressed, and I'm agitated, I can feel how that affects the work that I do the performance of my work, I can feel how that can carry on to my the people surrounding me, my kids.

my partner, and I can see the ripple effects of the state that I'm in. And so I do my best to essentially stay in as much of a centered state that I can in order to not just have a good life for myself, but all those around me as well.

mike (28:34)
You know, earlier when you said that you, you know, you would do your best to stay on this consistent practice at night and then you get busy sometimes and then you stop doing it and then you feel all these things. And then when you do your practice at night, you suddenly notice how stiff notice how agitated your, your body is. Right. I think that that right there, we forget how our body feels.

Stephen (28:56)
Hmm?

mike (29:05)
We're doing our practices. It feels good. Everything is great. And then something happens in life where we're really busy. And then that was skipping one day, turns into two day, three day. Before you know it, we skipped out for a few weeks. And then you start to notice the effects in the day. Everything is going downwards. And suddenly we do practice again, right? And then you connect to your body and you feel how tight your body is. You feel suddenly how agitated the body is. As if it's the first, it's the first time you actually.

noticed it for, you know, the last couple of weeks. And that's the thing. That's why it's such, it's so important to have a daily check -in. That's why I always tell students check in every morning and every evening in the morning so you can check in with yourself. How are you feeling? How's the mind? You have a whole bunch of, a whole bunch of stuff going on. You got a lot of issues going on. If, if you do, you need to be aware of it because it's going to affect you, right? Check in.

That's why we do practice in the morning time. And then we always finish practice with the meditation. So if you got stuff going on, well, you're aware of it. So it's not just like, you know, in the background, just, um, unconsciously sabotaging everything unconsciously creating a lot of problems for you. Right. Suddenly we just want to avoid all these things, make these bad decisions, not realizing that we got some stuff going on the inside, but if we don't know it, it's like, it's just.

in the shadows, right? Creating a lot of problems for us. And then when we go throughout the day, now at nighttime, let's check in again, because we cleared it in the morning. All right. Ideally we cleared it. If we didn't clear it, well, at least we know that it's there. And at nighttime, we have an opportunity to clear it. So not only can we, um, get the rest that we need, but also we don't program it into our mind and body, you know, when we go to sleep.

But if we don't check in, it becomes a double -edged sword again. If we don't check in, well, then we don't even know that it's happening. And if we don't know that it's happening, then, then right, we will keep doing the stuff we do until we start to see the consequences in our day, until we start to see the decisions and we go, wow, I think something is wrong. Now for, for people like us that have been training for a long time, you don't go that long without checking in.

Stephen (31:11)
Mm -hmm.

mike (31:33)
It happens, right? Sometimes it's like a week or two weeks or a few weeks.

But there are so many people out there that are not checking in for months, years. And when they check in, yeah, to the point where they may not even know. And by the time they check in, it's like, they're not checking in with themselves. They go to the doctor and the doctor tells them, Hey, there's something wrong with you. And by the time they check in, it's like, yeah, you got something wrong. It's not like I feel a little off. And I think that's the...

Stephen (31:47)
They don't even know how to check in.

mike (32:08)
That's the biggest, that's the biggest message that really needs to get out there. You can't run away. There's no running. You can't run away from, from yourself, from your mind. If you are angry and you're saying all, you can't run away from that. It is affecting you every single moment of your life. Your body feels agitated just because you're not paying attention, just because you're not feeling doesn't mean nothing's happening. Check in every day. Face that stuff. Get rid of it.

because it's jeopardizing every single thing in your life. All of your relationships is jeopardizing. It's jeopardizing your money. It's going to get you broke. It's going to make bad financial decisions because you're emotional and you feel bad. Can't run away. Check in. So you can say that these three things that we have people do every night, not only is getting them to be recovered, clear their mind, clear the injuries, get the body to actually recover, but it's a important time to check in with ourselves.

So I hope people do it. And I think like what we mentioned, what I said earlier.

There's no point to try to dive in deeper to understand if you got a million questions running because your mind is running at a thousand miles. The best thing to do, try it out for a week. Spend 15 minutes every night. That's it. That's it. And just do those things and let your own experience allow you to realize how powerful it is and how simple it is. You're not doing much. You're just...

You don't even need to do any special stretching, you know? There's a lot of stretching sequences. Do the ones that feel good for you, but just start releasing some tension. Lay down, breathe, and then just lay there and meditate. You don't even need to sit up and meditate. That's even easier. Lay down. And if you fall asleep, well, no problem. Fall asleep.

So try it out.

Stephen (34:08)
And like always, right here we do our best to share as much as possible, but we can only go as deep as this podcast allows. So if you do want to explore more and really be guided through this journey, of course, Mike, he does have his mentorship that you can go and take a look at and really take the time, energy.

to handle this because it is one of the most important aspects of your life, your mind and your body and your emotions. So go check it out, flow60 .com and we will see you on the next episode.

Okay.

mike (34:55)
And then we can cut out the wrap up from last time, from the earlier middle part. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen (35:01)
Okay. Editor, please cut out the last part where I was about to wrap it up.

So let's end that recording there.

mike (35:22)
And then...

Okay, so...

Let me see how to do this.

Stephen (35:34)
There should be a big red button in the lower

mike (35:37)
Stop. Okay.