Heal Within with Dr. Evette Rose

Sleep as Medicine: Healing Trauma Through Rest + Meditation

• Dr. Evette Rose • Season 15 • Episode 26

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Sleep is not a luxury — it’s one of the body’s most powerful healing tools.

In this episode, I explore how rest itself becomes medicine, especially for a nervous system shaped by trauma, chronic stress, or emotional overload.

We gently look at why poor sleep can intensify emotional sensitivity, overwhelm, and reactivity — and why true rest is essential for the brain and body to process, soften, and release what no longer needs to be carried. This conversation invites a shift in how you relate to sleep, not as something passive, but as an active, restorative process that supports deep healing.

The episode also includes a calming healing meditation designed to help your body settle, your mind unwind, and your system feel safe enough to truly rest.

You don’t have to push harder to heal.

Sometimes, healing begins when you allow yourself to rest.

With love,
Dr. Evette Rose 🌙

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Speaker:

Hello and welcome here with me, Dr. Evette Rose, trauma therapist and also creator of Metaphysical Anatomy Technique. And this podcast is your safe space to explore emotional healing, nervous system regulation, and also deep inner transformation. And if you are ready to go deeper and you would like to be supported on your healing journey, you can always book a one-on-one session with me or with one of my certified metapsychology coaching practitioners as well. And join us also even for some of our upcoming live healing events, workshops, or retreats at metaphysicalanatomy.com. And so now let's begin your journey back to wholeness, one breath and one breakthrough at a time. And I look forward to today's topic for this episode because sleep is something that I have come to learn over the years is not just a luxury. My goodness is it's a necessity. And the value of sleep for me have progressively changed over the years. I never in the past really truly understood the power, and it's especially the healing power of good sleep. Because you always would think that sleep is just sleeping, and that's it. Then we wake up, then we have the day, we have our activities, we have goals that we have to reach. You see, sleep is not just a passive sleep, but there's a lot of healing actually involved. It's a very therapeutic process. And it's a process that helps our brain to organize and to and to also process traumatic memories, stressful memories. And of course, the intention is to ultimately reduce the emotional charge. Because poor sleep, it can actually exacerbate symptoms of trauma. I don't know about you, but for me personally speaking, I know that when I don't sleep well the next day, lights feel brighter, sounds feel louder, and my emotions are a lot more sensitive. Things that would normally that really upset me, my goodness, can really get on my nerves when I'm tired. I've just come to learn that when when when I'm tired, I try to minimize my contact with people and going outside because I can get really snappy, but it's not, I'm not talking about just one day of bad sleep. Of course, this would have to be a few days like you know, I have two kids, sometimes both of them are sick, and then my husband's sick on top of that, or I get them sick and their whole house is sick and no one sleeps well. And so my body isn't trying to heal at the same time, so it can be in scenarios like this where it can be tough. You know, and some people have really, really bad insomnia. And the list can go on. I mean, the reasons why we can wake up during the night it can also be because the liver or the kidneys are trying to clean themselves out during certain times of the of the evening, and of course, the more emotions we have stored in them, the more impact it's going to have on our ability to actually sleep through this cleaning process in our body as well. So when we sleep, and something that I came to learn that's so powerful about good quality sleep is that there's a lot of emotional memory processing that's taking place, hence, also why we have sometimes these strong dreams, we have um you know vivid dreams. Sometimes we wake up and you know you're you're feeling a bit stressed, or your heart is beating really fast, and you don't necessarily remember why. You see, during our REM sleep, the brain is actually processing our emotional memories in a state where um where stress-related neurochemicals, like um neuroperipherin, right, and also that where they are suppressed, because this now allows the brain to review and then to integrate traumatic memories without the intense emotional reaction. You see, so this ultimately is reducing the power of their intensity, that is at least the intention. But in order for the brain to be able to do that, we need rest. And another very powerful element that takes place when we are sleeping is memory consolidation. So while there is REM sleep, um, well while we're sleeping, at least during these REM processes, our that all this emotional content that we have in our mind, um, such as non-REM sleep, this now plays a very crucial role in consolidating um like almost like the factual aspects of memory, right? Because this helps to turn these different fragmented, um, disorganized traumatic memories into a more coherent narrative, which can make it for us, of course, a lot easier to cope with it over time. And to give you an example, I'm sure that I mean absolutely for me, where I have had a lot of moments where I would feel very stressed, you know, especially during the day. We have so much cortisol that's just flooding our mind. And too much cortisol can sometimes actually impair the hippocampus ability to consolidate memories correctly, right? So we remember bits and pieces, and we feel like we have brain fog, we have memory loss. It's not that the memories are missing or just not filed, it's just filed incorrectly. And you know, this is now what happens when we sleep. These these pockets of data, these these memories, this information, it gives it time to consolidate properly. But of course, if we if we don't sleep well, this is not going to take place really well either. And some people say, Well, Yvette, my goodness, I sometimes sleep eight hours a day and I wake up exhausted. Yeah, I I hear you on that. And sometimes feelings of what I personally have noticed, I'm speaking personally for myself, feelings of depression and hopelessness can play a really big role in that. Because the stress and the strain of what's not going right in your life, the the um your worries, your your challenges, because that's all where your energy and your focus is. And what does that mean? The body stays in that state of threat, distress. I can't relax because I'm constantly worried, right? So, and this is what can it's not the only reason, but one of many reasons, and specifically something that I found for myself that played a very big role in my ability to not sleep well, because the moment I started really strongly addressing this habit of always worrying, this bad habit of always focusing on what is going wrong in my life instead of what is going right. So I consciously actively start to shift my focus, and of course, with my healing technique MIT, and with this combination, let me tell you, I actually get seven to eight hours of sleep with two kids and I feel rested in the morning. Of course, sometimes I wake up during the night because maybe they had it, one of the kids had a bad dream or there's a disruption. However, I go back to sleep incredibly fast. I don't sit there and linger and or feel stuck now with you know processing or feeling frustrated because I had to wake up, and my body just goes immediately back into my deep sleep state. And just that small adjustment had such an incredible impact on my health, on my mental health, and on my physical health. Right? My brain fog started to improve. Um, I had a lot of motor retention that released, my body felt very inflamed. That correct that started to correct itself. I didn't have these hot flushes anymore. And this is not menopausal hot flushes, this was actually inflammatory hot flushes. There's actually a difference, and all of this just amazingly subsided just because of that incredible, powerful, impactful shift that I made. But let's get back on track. So, what else is great about really good sleep? So I've already touched on it, right? That that that part where it starts to help you to improve emotional regulation because as I said now already from my personal experience, what I had with it, is that adequate sleep also actually strengthens the prefrontal cortex ability to function properly. Remember, this is the part of the brain that that um helps us to make decisions, it helps us, um, especially with self-control, right? So this really helps to restore emotional balance. And this is also helping to reduce a lot of common post-traumatic symptoms like anxiety, irritability, mood swings, and feeling like this this hopelessness feeling. I don't want to say depression because I'm not saying that if you feel hopeless that you have depression. No, but you know, it can it can just be hopelessness, it can be a season, a phase, maybe it's been there for a while. The reasons are for, I mean it different roots, right? So what sleep also does, and something that I absolutely have noticed when I started to address my my challenges around getting good sleep, is I feel that or I started to feel this incredible um physical restore um restoring my my physical body because goodness, burnout, I have no energy, I feel um there my body feels really heavy, I don't really want to move. We all know the physical toll that trauma and just long-term low-level stress, which can become traumatic after a while, how the toll that it can take on the body, and how deep sleep promotes cellular level healing, it promotes tissue repair and also the reduction of inflammation. You see, it also boosts immune function, which is also weakened by chronic stress. And the most important part for me, at least, that I deeply value about good sleep is the impact that it has on neuroplasticity. Because quality rest supports neuroplasticity. And remember, that's the brain's ability to form new neural connections. And this adaptability, it is essential. It's essential for rewiring neural pathways. And it's especially rewiring new neural pathways with positive messages, with positive thoughts, if we also address our challenges. Because if we don't, these pathways might be filled up with more negative thoughts or feelings. Remember, we have over 90,000 thoughts a day, and at least 70,000 thoughts are repeated the next day. We are negative bias, we focus on threats, danger, negativity. The brain, the mind, the body, it doesn't care about what makes you happy. Right? So there's a higher chance of a lot of negative thoughts and feelings being carried over into the next day. So what you go to bed with, this is now processed also in your subconscious mind. That is why they say what you think of, what you process four minutes before you go to bed, this is very, very important. For me personally, when I look at Instagram, I love at nighttime to look at Instagram. All everyone is sleeping, and now it's my time to kind of like come back to my myself. I'll do my my my um square breathing for maybe two, three minutes, and then I'll also look at um this specific page that I love that shows the ocean, beautiful waves, the sand. Sometimes the camera goes under the water, and every time when I see this page, my nervous system instantly regulates. My nervous system instantly regulates. I absolutely love it. For me, it works hands down every single time. And then I switch my phone off and then I go to bed. And let me tell you, it works magic for me personally speaking. So maybe you prefer not to have your phone. So what you can do is you can even have pictures, just pictures that you can flip through that you know will help to regulate yourself, that will bring back positive good memories and you know things that can make you feel at ease as well. For me, flowers as well. I love that. It's very, very soothing for me as an example to look at that. So I hope today's discussion was helpful. I mean, it's for me it's good sleep is is it it's it's a necessity. It I don't negotiate on my sleep. But some people think, oh my goodness, you know, let's go, let's go out at nine o'clock. And I'm like, yeah, well, I'm I'm in dreamland at that point. You know, I have two small kids as well. So for me, brilliant. You know, I I love to crash with them because they get up early, and that means I also get you know a bit of my time to just relax a little bit and then wake up early again. Because if you have children, you know that they there's no sleeping late when you have them. So you take every minute to rest that you possibly can. And for me, now it is good quality rest. All right, let's start our healing meditation, and when you are ready, let's start by taking a nice deep breath. Very good. And now, let's start by just focusing on our breathing, just allowing your breath to gently bring you back into your body. And I invite you now to find yourself standing in an open space. And as you are in that open space, I invite you to imagine now a very big, gentle or small healing waterfall, and finding yourself stepping underneath that and noticing as you do, feeling that healing waterfall flowing over you, feeling that waterfall flowing through every single cell in your body, and now I invite you to think, let's think back to perhaps the previous night when you went to bed. Maybe there was an unsettledness in you, a part of you maybe felt really restless or unable to fully switch off from the day. Whatever your sensations are. For me, there's this feeling of I feel my heart sometimes um beating a little bit fast, not heart palpitations, but it beats a little bit fast, faster than normal, and there's this feeling of I need to move, I can't lie still, I need to do something. And now, as you are noticing that part of you, I invite you to allow that part for now just to be there because the only reason why it's there, it's just old stress. Right, there's just a part of your body that is just trying to communicate something within you that feels unresolved. And I invite you now that as you are noticing this, notice Is this a feeling of feeling overly responsible for others or things that you need to get done? Could it be maybe an argument that feels incomplete for you? Maybe you just feel restless and you don't know why. That's okay too. I invite you now, regardless of what the source of your stress is, I invite you now to acknowledge deep within, with your future wiser self coming forward now in that healing space with you, to realize that you're not always needed everywhere, that you are allowed to bring your energy, your attention, and your focus back to you when you need to rest, handing the world and people's responsibilities that you've taken on too much, handing that back to them now, and noticing as you do that as well any guidance that your future wiser self perhaps is sharing with you right now. Bring healing light over that part of your body as well. Especially if the stress could be related to unresolved events from the past. Helping your body to understand that in this very specific moment right now, right here, you are safe. You are safe and allowing your body to feel this wave of expansion coming over it, embracing this very moment in the here and now of absolute stillness and safety feeling so deeply supported by that surface beneath your body as well, feeling supported by your breath and its consistency as well. Feeling the presence and the support from your future wiser self as well, and allowing yourself just to bathe in that healing waterfall that you're standing underneath now, fully receiving its healing capacities. And while you're standing there, let's also affirm some affirmations together, and all that you have to do is listen to my voice. My body is relaxing, my mind is calming, and I welcome peaceful sleep. It is safe for me to let go of the day and to fully rest. With every breath I breathe, I release tension and I ease into comfort. I deserve deep nourishing, healing, and sleep. My thoughts become softer and quieter as I drift into calm. I allow my body to restore itself while I sleep. I'm wrapped in safety and comfort and ease. My mind and body knows how to deeply relax. My mind and body gracefully releases tension and responsibilities that are no longer mine. I welcome peaceful dreams and gentle rest. I allow my mind and body and my spirit to always be ready for deep rejuvenating sleep. And when you are ready, take a nice deep breath. Hey, very good. And I invite you now to bring your full focus and awareness back to your breath, feeling that surface beneath your body. And giving yourself a nice big stretch. Beautiful. And welcome back. Well done. Well done. I want to thank you for being here with me today and remember that you are not alone, you are healing one step at a time, one breath at a time. And today's affirmation is every breath I take, my body starts to feel safer and safer. And remember that if this episode touched you, then please share it with someone who's now maybe perhaps also on the healing journey. And as always, breathe deep, listen within, and stay gently curious. I love you. Thank you for being here with me today. And until our next episode, be the light that you are. Bye for now.