![]() To keep the spine properly aligned, resist the urge to twist your head to the side or rotate your knees to the left or right. The head and neck should be neutral to reduce any tension that could cause pain. Naturally, the first step is lying flat on your bed with your head facing directly up. ![]() If you’re new to back sleeping, you can use the following tips to help train yourself to rest in this position. Yet, despite being the least popular sleep position, experts say it’s the healthiest for spine alignment, among other benefits that we will go into detail on further below. I'm confident that I'll get to the point where it's 100% natural (I now know these things take time), but for now, I'm just happy I can comfortably sleep on my back.How to Train Yourself to Sleep on Your BackĪ 2022 national survey found only 10 percent of respondents are back sleepers, compared to 16 percent who sleep on their stomachs and 74 percent who are side sleepers. If I don't have my nap pillow positioned just so, it won't matter that I've created the perfect wedge for my upper body. If I skip stretching a few too many times, my back will ache when I lie down. And while I've finally gotten to the point where it's comfortable to sleep on my back, I'm still not to a point where it feels totally natural.Įvery night when I go to bed, I work to get the conditions just right. Not to mention the months of trial and error that led me to the solutions I now rely on. Each of the little tweaks I made took weeks to get used to. The pillow for your head should support your head, the natural curve of your neck, and your shoulders."īut here's the really important part: When I say, "I finally trained myself to sleep on my back," I mean I finally trained myself. If this particular trick doesn't work for you, try this method from the University of Rochester Medical Center: "If you sleep on your back, a small pillow under the back of your knees will reduce stress on your spine and support the natural curve in your lower back. This keeps my upper body propped up slightly, which makes it more difficult for me to roll onto my side. ![]() I create a little wedge of pillows under my head and upper torso. I'm not sure why this works or even why I thought to try it in the first place-but I did, and it does. Since the pillow barricade has already proven to be no match for my body's desire to side-sleep, I tried the incline technique. I use it to cover my left ear and eye, and it feels almost as if I'm sleeping snugly on my side, which is a moot point if, when I'm in this position, my lower back is in pain. My nap pillow is a small blue one I've had on my bed for years. It can be anything, really-a throw pillow from the couch, one of the gazillions of decorative pillows on your bed, anything soft enough to set on your face. Instead, I use what I like to call a nap pillow.Ī nap pillow is a smaller pillow. My regular pillows are too big, to the point where I basically end up smothering myself. The trick here, though, is finding the right pillow for the job. Since the pillow-to-face thing really only applies to one side of the face, I figured why not ditch the unsuccessful all-angles approach and just lay a pillow across one side of my face? Genius, I know. Eventually, I tear through my barricade and end up at square one. While this solution seems like it'd have the double benefit of preventing you from rolling over in your sleep and re-creating the sensation of side-sleeping, I've found that it doesn't do either. One thing I tried was sleeping with a barricade of pillows around me. Trying to re-create some of the magic of side-sleeping is tough.
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