Why Your Sleep Problems Start At Sunrise | Morgan Adams on Rest, Recovery & Revenge Bedtime

summary

In this episode of the Remember to Live podcast, I chat with with Morgan Adams, a transformative holistic sleep coach. We discuss the importance of sleep and rest in living a fulfilling life, Morgan's journey to becoming a sleep coach, and practical tips for improving sleep quality. The conversation covers the significance of circadian rhythms, creating a sleep-friendly environment, the role of nutrition, and the pros and cons of sleep trackers. We also explore common sleep disturbances and the importance of establishing morning and evening routines for better sleep.

takeaways

Living authentically and respecting your own timeline leads to fulfillment.

• Sleep is crucial for overall well-being and quality of life.
• Circadian rhythms play a vital role in sleep quality.
• Morning light exposure helps regulate circadian rhythms.
• Consistent sleep and wake times are essential for good sleep.
• Creating a sleep sanctuary can significantly improve sleep quality.
• Meal timing impacts sleep; avoid eating close to bedtime.
• Sleep trackers can provide useful data but may cause anxiety.
• Identifying sleep disturbances can help address underlying issues.
• Establishing morning and evening routines can enhance sleep and daily life.

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Holistic Sleep Coaching

05:49
Morgan's Journey to Becoming a Sleep Coach

11:45
The Role of Light and Meal Timing in Sleep

17:44
The Pros and Cons of Sleep Trackers

28:17
Creating a Sleep Sanctuary

35:20
Understanding Revenge Bedtime Procrastination

41:01
Finding Joy in Daily Routines

About Morgan Adams:

Morgan Adams is a transformative holistic sleep coach who empowers women to conquer their battle with sleepless nights, without reliance on sleep medications. With her powerful sleep toolkit, Morgan not only ensures that women experience a profound enhancement in their sleep quality, but she also guides them in rekindling their relationship with sleep, paving the way for less stressful and more fulfilling days.

Having struggled with insomnia and dependency on prescription sleeping pills for almost a decade, Morgan intimately understands the profound impact sleep has on one’s quality of life.

Morgan’s resilience shines bright as a two-time breast cancer survivor. This experience fueled her advocacy for a lifestyle rooted in disease prevention. Her wisdom and guidance extend far beyond just sleep, as she champions holistic well-being in all aspects of life.

Connect with Morgan:

Website: 

https://www.morganadamswellness.com/

Free Guide:

https://www.morganadamswellness.com/awake-again

Link to book consultation:

https://calendly.com/morganadamswellness/20minutes?month=2025-02

LinkedN:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/morganadamswellness/

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share with a few friends so we can all help each other Remember to Live.

To connect with and learn more about me and how I am Remembering to Live, you can find me on Instagram @coreancanty or at coreancanty.com.

To work with me and explore freebies, check out: https://coreancanty.com/links/

If you are ready to re-imagine, re-claim and re-design your life, book a possibility call today.

Transcript

Corean Canty (00:00)
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Remember to Live podcast. It's your host, Corean and I have a very special guest today, Morgan Adams. She is a transformative, holistic sleep coach. And I have to say, when I learned to sleep and rest, it was a game changer in my life. And so I feel like everyone should have a sleep coach. So I'm so excited to have this conversation with you today.

So to get started, let's just take a moment to get present, take a breath, make sure we're here with each other, remembering to live. A lot of that is about showing up to the moment that we're in. So I'm very excited to share this moment with you.

All right, so I always start out the podcast by asking one particular question, and that is, how do you live a life and how do you live one well from your perspective?

Morgan (00:58)
Yeah, well, you know, living a life well, I think starts with living in authenticity and being true to yourself and also respecting your own timeline. You know, I feel like a lot of times society is rushing us to these mileposts, right? You know, got to get married by the time you're this, you got to have kids, you got to climb this career ladder, but you know, all these extraneous

things that we're supposed to do at a certain time. And I feel like when you can kind of release that and do things according to your own timeline, I think you're going to live a happier, more fulfilled life overall. And I also feel like I try to adhere to this philosophy. And it's I don't know who said it, but leave people better than you found them. Essentially, what that means is like when within every interaction that you have with somebody.

Corean Canty (01:49)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Morgan (01:54)
they should feel better having left your presence than they did before they were in front of you. Right? And so I try to live my life in accordance to that. mean, I'm sure I fail sometimes in my daily life, but that's just something I always keep in the back of my head as sort of like a guiding principle to live by.

Corean Canty (02:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. That's one of the mantras that I try to live by as well. And I think one of the things I realized probably later into my adulthood than I would hope looking back is it's hard to show up when you don't feel good, right? And I think for so long, I mean, I was a single mom, I had multiple jobs raising my children. I didn't get much sleep or rest. I probably spent decades on like four hours of sleep a night.

thought that that was my normal, right? I thought I was okay until my body no longer allowed me to work at that pace and I had to learn how to get real rest. And then I realized, I've been missing out on what I should feel like in how much more I can show up and how much more I can enjoy life. And just my overall quality of life changed when I understood not only sleep, but

the multiple forms of rest and how to make sure I prioritize them. So tell me a little bit more about how you got on this path of this journey of becoming a sleep coach and helping people transform their sleep, therefore, in my book, transforming their lives.

Morgan (03:26)
Yeah, I love your story. Well, for me, my journey with sleep sounds very, different from yours. But let's compare and contrast here. Because mine started maybe 20 years ago when I had a really bad bout of insomnia where I could not fall asleep. call it sleep onset insomnia. Basically, that just means you have trouble falling asleep. would lie in bed one to two hours most nights. Sleep would never come.

Corean Canty (03:42)
Hmm.

Morgan (03:54)
After a couple months of this, I decided I'm going to go to my doctor. I need help. need to figure out a way out of this. And I went to my doctor and I was given Ambien. And during that time of my life, I was a pharmaceutical sales rep.

Corean Canty (04:00)
Yeah.

Morgan (04:12)
So my currency was pills, drugs, you know? And so I thought nothing of it. Yeah, sure, I'll take this pill, whatever, no biggie. And you know, the Ambien did help me get to sleep more quickly, but I had a lot of side effects the next day. We could even touch more on that later, but I just kind of mustered through it. you know, then eight years later, I met a guy who is now my husband.

Corean Canty (04:15)
Yeah, yeah.

Morgan (04:42)
And he said to me, when you take those pills at night, you kind of act like a zombie and it freaks me out. And I was like, my gosh, yeah, yeah, you're right. It's it's not good. It's I need to stop taking these pills. So I did what I don't recommend other people do, and that is just to take yourself off a medication.

Corean Canty (04:49)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (05:04)
If you're on a medication and you want to come off of it, whether it's a psychiatric medication or something else, it's really best to consult with your prescribing provider and get some direction on how to do it properly. Well, I just went rogue. I didn't know any better. And fortunately for me, because I have a lot of grit and a lot of will,

Corean Canty (05:18)
yeah. Yeah.

Morgan (05:24)
I got through it okay. And I slept pretty well for many years after that until there was a little bit of a plot twist. And that was a plot twist we collectively experienced. March of 2020, right when the pandemic started, for that first couple months, there was a lot of uncertainty in the world and we didn't know what was going on. And my sleep started to suffer again.

And I got really concerned. I started to look to Google to, you know, how to get better sleep. I bought myself an aura ring to track my sleep and I was able to get my sleep back on track pretty quickly. And I just got kind of excited about that. Like, wow, it wasn't that hard. You know, I wasn't like rocket science. So I started sharing what I was doing on Facebook, just organically. It wasn't a business then. And I, and I found out that a lot of other people in my circle

were struggling with sleep too and were appreciative of the things that I was sharing. And so it was late in 2020 that I had this really powerful revelation. And that was Morgan, you need to be a sleep coach and help other women with their sleep. So, and just to kind of backtrack by a couple of years and.

In 2018, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And that was a really pivotal time in my life because it got me thinking about my journey, my passion, what I wanted to do to help other people. And that was really helping people get healthier. But at that time, I didn't really know.

Corean Canty (06:58)
Yeah.

Morgan (07:04)
how that would actually play out. And then when I found this fascination with sleep, it was like, okay, I get it. Like I can actually help people.

Corean Canty (07:05)
Yeah.

Morgan (07:13)
I decided, okay, I'm going to be a sleep coach. Well, that's awesome. But like, you don't just like hang up your shingle and be like, I'm this, you have to like, learn about it, you have to, you know, get qualified. So I enrolled in some health coaching and sleep coaching certification programs, took a year to really delve into the science of sleep. And then in 2021 launched my sleep coaching practice. So that's kind of how I got into this field. And it's just been quite a ride. It's been amazing, actually.

Corean Canty (07:19)
Yeah

Yeah, I love that. And I love how you pinpointed how this collective uncertainty can have an impact on us all, right? Because I feel like we're kind of there again. You we made it through the pandemic, but right now there's a lot of uncertainty in the world, especially if you live in our country, we have our own, other countries have a lot of uncertainty going on. We just don't know necessarily what we might be facing in the near future. And so right now,

Morgan (07:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Corean Canty (08:12)
there may be people going through the same thing that you went through of not being able to sleep well at night, having all of the thoughts in your mind. Like I try to avoid the news. I get whatever information I need to have, but I don't allow myself to really sit and absorb it. But it's really hard to not have some concerns or have some fears or have some worries. And that can keep us up at night. So for people who are maybe at the point where they're realizing, I need to do something or I need to get some sleep or they're struggling.

based on your experience, your personal experience and what you've trained in, what do you recommend? Because so many people may, they may just be going to their doctors and getting sleeping pills. I know there's other ways to set yourself up for rest. Like what would be your advice for someone in that place?

Morgan (08:55)
Yeah, yeah.

There's so many things we can do, but when I'm first starting to work with somebody or giving people counsel, I really say start with strengthening your circadian rhythm to get better sleep because good sleep is actually an output of a strong circadian rhythm. sure, absolutely. So you can think of your circadian rhythm as your 24 hour body clock.

Corean Canty (09:14)
Can you explain what a circadian rhythm is for those who may not know?

Morgan (09:22)
and all of our, we have something called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is our circadian pacemaker. And that is sort of supposed to be syncing up with all of these other little tinier circadian clocks all over our body within every cell. And what we really need to do is get everything synced up. And primarily what is driving the circadian rhythm and keeping that going is light primarily. And there's some other things too, but what I really,

help people focus in on when they're beginning their sleep optimization journey is getting those circadian rhythms synced up. And so there are a few ways to do that. And really the most basic way that...

I think it's accessible to everybody for the most part is starting off getting morning light every morning, whether or not it's sunny or cloudy, people will say to me, the sun's, you know, there's really no sun out. Well, there is sun. It's just it's not as intense. So what I recommend for people to do to keep their circadian rhythm really going strong is after they wake up.

get outside first thing and expose yourself to light for about 10 minutes. It doesn't take that long. You don't want to wear any glasses though. People a lot of times will go outside and wear their sunglasses. And the problem with that is the glasses actually keep the light from hitting your retina. your eyes have to have that.

Trigger that sends a signal to your super cat is back Super guy is magnetic nucleus. It's a tongue twister and When that happens, there are these really beautiful triggers of Neurotransmitters and hormones going off. So for example

Corean Canty (11:07)
Yeah.

Morgan (11:18)
Any melatonin from the night before shut off, your cortisol boosts naturally. Melatonin for the next night gets prepared. So there's a lot of really good things happening and people will lose those benefits if they put on sunglasses. So that's just kind of something to think about. Another thing is having a consistent wake up time every morning, right? That's another thing that really keeps your circadian rhythm strong.

And we talk a lot about this consistency of our sleep wake times. It's a lot easier to have a consistent wake time, excuse me, a consistent bedtime when you have a consistent wake time, because after you've been awake for about 16 hours or so, you begin to accumulate this sleepy chemical called adenosine and that adenosine has to be released through sleep. So just by virtue of that, that very consistent wake up time, you're going to become

sleepy around the same time each night. So that kind of gets your regularity happening. And then also one other thing that I would definitely urge people to do.

for their circadian rhythm, as well as building that sleep drive is exercise. And you don't have to go really intense. What I recommend is 30 minutes, five days a week. And there's been so much data supporting this in the literature. And exercising does not have to cost money. I mean, you could just go outside and walk.

Corean Canty (12:33)
Yeah.

Morgan (12:50)
or you could run if you run, if your knees can handle running, good for you, mine can't. But yeah, just moderate exercise. those are really sort of like the three main things that I would, and then there's another one that I forgot. And again, it goes back to the circadian rhythm, is timing your meals regularly. So I mentioned light as a very powerful circadian cue, it's called a zeitgeiber, which means time giver.

Corean Canty (12:54)
Yeah.

Morgan (13:20)
our meal regularity is also one of those time givers. So if you can kind of commit to eating your three meals at regular intervals, you know, within an hour of, you know, so have breakfast from eight to nine, lunch from 12 to one and dinner from six to seven, just for that's just as an example. And, you know, there are times, of course, when our schedules get out of whack, we have, you know, games, kids games, and those run late and we have

dinner dates and those may run late. Not to get too bent out of shape about that, but for the most part, just keeping that regularity with your meals is very, very helpful.

Corean Canty (14:00)
Yeah, having some of the flexibility for the lived experiences and life experiences that come up. But when it's all over the place, it's very hard for our systems to regulate. And I love that because I study Ayurveda, I'm certified in Ayurveda, and I think a lot about our connection with nature, right? And so what this really is, is like taking us back to our connection with nature and the earth before we created artificial light, before we created artificial circumstances. When the sun came up, that's when we could...

get up and do our work. And that's when we ate our biggest meal in the middle of the day. When the sun went down, we all prepared to rest. We didn't have a world where light was available 24-7 in this artificial light and just kind of made us feel like we don't need sleep, right? And the whole mantra of like, oh, sleep when I die. I can work all day now, you know?

Morgan (14:50)
Yeah. Oh, that's

like nails on a chalkboard to me. But yeah, you're right. You're so right. We actually, according to a 2001 study, we spend 93 % of our time indoors or in our car. So if you I really think that if you did that study now,

in 2025 post pandemic more people are working from home. We have a lot of just things at our disposal door dash. I mean like you could like not have to leave your house at all. I would say we're probably spending even more time inside and you're right like our ancestors were only able to do things during the day like you couldn't just like have a snack at 10 p.m. like we do now. So basically what what's happened is

Corean Canty (15:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan (15:40)
The light dark patterns that were conducive to our ancestors have been flipped on their head now. So instead of having bright days and dark nights, we're having dim days and bright nights and we really need to start working on shifting that so that we're getting a lot of bright light during the day and we're really honoring the darkness at night.

Corean Canty (16:03)
Yeah. And I've also learned how important it is not to eat right before you go to sleep. When I started understanding my digestive system and how our body works and how to even stay well, especially when things are happening like the pandemic or flu season, like in order to keep our immune systems well, in order for our bodies to be able to replenish and turn over cells and do the cleanup it needs to do at night, like we have to be done digesting or all of our energy is going there. So if we're eating at 10, 11 o'clock at night,

Morgan (16:08)
Yes.

Corean Canty (16:31)
and then we're only sleeping a few hours, we never actually get to that cleanup part.

Morgan (16:35)
Yes, I'm so glad you said that because there are, I think a lot of people just have out of habit this late night snacking kind of thing. They turn on the TV and then they just have their snack. They're not even really cognizant of what's going on. So I'm really always trying to get my clients to think about their meal timing, like when they stop eating dinner. And ideally you want to stop eating two to three hours before bed.

Corean Canty (16:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Morgan (17:03)
I mean, I think even if you could get to four hours before bed, that's even better. I mean, I've personally done experiments on myself where I will kind of test that out. And I feel like if I can get four to five hours in of time between my last bite and bed, my sleep is just a lot deeper. The quality is better.

Corean Canty (17:03)
Yeah.

Morgan (17:22)
So that's just something I'm glad you brought that up because there are a lot of people who are just eating way too late, snacking and all that just mindlessly.

Corean Canty (17:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, many times it's just habit. Like we're not even hungry, right? It's just like we've had it stacked to the bad things. Like, Netflix and snacks at night, you know? And so it just becomes like something we just do, like you said, mindlessly. So tell me about, I've been hearing a lot about sleep trackers. Can you talk a little bit more about like, what does that really mean? Is it useful? Like, what are your thoughts on that?

Morgan (17:35)
Yeah. Right. Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure. Well, I have a sleep tracker. In fact, I have three, but who's counting, right? It's my job, right? So I get a pass on that. So I think there's a good side and a bad side to sleep trackers. I think for somebody who is interested in optimizing their sleep, getting it to a better place, sleep trackers can be useful. Now,

Corean Canty (18:06)
Yeah.

Morgan (18:24)
Although you have to think about the fact that you're getting all this data from your sleep tracker.

are you going to do something with that data? Right? Like that's the question. So you could have all this data, not even look at the score and not even pay attention. So what's the point of getting the sleep tracker anyway? You have to really be willing to kind of play detective and look at the data. And most of the sleep trackers in this day of AI, there's usually some kind of embedded coach in it that kind of gives you little bit of guidance on what's going on.

Corean Canty (18:56)
Can you give a few examples of some sleep trackers for people who may not know what the technology is? Yeah.

Morgan (19:00)
Sure, sure.

So the Oura Ring, think, is probably the gold standard as far as sleep tracking and being accurate in their metrics. So it's measuring things like what time you sleep, what time you wake, your deep sleep, your light sleep, your REM sleep.

It's measuring your sleep efficiency, which is basically the percentage of time that you're actually asleep while you're in bed. You're aiming to get sleep efficiency to be 85 % or higher. It also measures readiness, which is heart rate variability, heart rate, breath rate, temperature.

So that's the or a ring is really kind of the gold standard. But there's also the whip band, which I have as well. I love it. The whip band for me. I'm using it more for fitness tracking and stress management, but it does track sleep. There's also the Apple watch. There's Fitbit. Those are the main players in the sleep tracking category. And so again, I recommend them for people who are able to look at the data.

and then make behavioral changes based on what they see. The downside of the sleep trackers is that a lot of times people can get more anxious about their sleep. There's something called orthosomnia, and that's basically being a little bit too hypervigilant about the data and reactionary. So in my work,

I'm mainly seeing people who have insomnia and tied with insomnia is often quite a bit of sleep anxiety. And so for someone who has insomnia, I have found that the sleep trackers can actually backfire and that it makes people more anxious about their sleep. They get more reactive about the details. So I don't always recommend that people with insomnia who are actively working to fix their insomnia and wear them.

There's also something I call it the middle ground approach. This is sort of like a hybrid. So quite often people will look at their data every morning. I'm one of those people. I just kind of like it. It's kind of fun part of my morning. I'm a data geek. But there's also the approach of taking a step back.

Corean Canty (21:18)
Mm Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan (21:26)
and looking at your data weekly. So maybe Saturday or Sunday morning, looking at the week and noticing the trends versus getting really caught up in the headlines of each day of looking. So that's another approach for people who are starting to get a little bit too attached to their data. And then one thing that I should note is that really at the end of the day, what matters most is how you feel about your sleep. Like how do you subjectively feel you slept?

Sometimes it doesn't match what the sleep tracker says. And they've done studies where, for example, they've told people who slept well, they said, your sleep score is not good, right? And so that person starts to create behaviors to reinforce the negative sleep. So it's almost like...

it really is what you feel how you feel you slept is really going to be the main driver, right? The main your main barometer of your sleep is how you feel about it versus what the data tells you because honestly, the data sometimes can be weird. I mean, my sister my sister for this is a real life example. She sent me a screenshot of her whoop score this morning. She's like, What's this about? It says I only needed three hours of sleep last night. I'm like, they're totally wrong.

Corean Canty (22:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Morgan (22:46)
I'm like contact support. They're totally

wrong. You know, obviously like her sleep need is not three hours a night, right? So there's room for error with these things, for sure.

Corean Canty (22:52)
Right.

Yeah, well, and

I love that because like at the end of the day with all things, we need to check in with ourselves, right? Like nobody knows ourselves better than ourselves. Like it's great to have these tools or have coaches or have things that can help be mirrors and reflect us back or give us things to think about or respond to. But we also have to listen to our body because our body knows and our body will tell us and it tells us in many different ways. There's so many

Morgan (23:03)
Sure.

Yeah.

Corean Canty (23:24)
times I look back in when I thought I was feeling okay, it's like, but I always had like maybe a slight headache or aches and pains, or I had to feel like I had to have caffeine in the afternoon. Or like there's ways that our body talks to us, but we get so caught up on ignoring our body, right? And so, and thinking about that, is there like a difference or is there something people should think about for...

Like there's people who have a hard time falling asleep and then maybe they do and they stay asleep all night and there's some people who can fall asleep and then they wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep. I know there's like a lot of different types of sleep disturbances or challenges that people have with sleep. How should someone be thinking about thinking about that information for themselves and kind of listening to their body based on what's happening?

Morgan (24:12)
Yeah, yeah, those are the main two sleep complaints. And really what I see most often is people complaining about waking up in the middle of the night. That seems to be a bigger complaint. And, I was taught something in training, in my training with sleep that is a generality, but I think it's worth mentioning is they said that

for the most part, when people have trouble falling asleep, it tends to be more of a psychological thing, more anxiety, know, less, less, I guess, calm to their, you calm in the evening, they're just wound up too tight or whatever. Yeah, they bring the busy brain. And whereas he they said the middle of the night awakenings can be more indicative of physical problems.

Corean Canty (24:53)
Yeah, brain won't turn off. Yeah,

Mm-hmm.

Morgan (25:04)
So that would be like sleep apnea, blood sugar dips, like stomach issues, like parasites or something like that. I have actually seen that play out in my practice, but it's not a hard and fast rule. It's sort of like a quick assessment. But generally what I urge people to do, you know, for

Corean Canty (25:07)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Morgan (25:30)
regardless of their sleep issue is really pay attention to their environment and like take kind of do a bedroom audit if you will and Really when you think about our bedrooms They should be a sleep sanctuary, right and they should kind of resemble a cave in many ways So if you think about a cave, it's cool dark and quiet, right? So quite often people will have their temperatures too high, right and so

Corean Canty (25:52)
Yeah.

Morgan (25:59)
they that when the temperature gets too high it tends to make us you know a little bit overheated we might wake up sweating and we actually need our core body temperature to be a couple of degrees lower to initiate and maintain sleep so i always ask my clients about you know what temperature are you falling asleep to

And generally, there's no one magic number really, but we're aiming like mid 60s to upper 60s is sort of like the sweet spot for most people. You some people like it even colder than that. I prefer 68. That's kind of where I like to land. So keeping it cool, keeping the room dark. So really making sure that you don't have a lot of light coming in from the outside.

Corean Canty (26:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan (26:47)
blackout shades and curtains are a good idea. If those are out of reach, sometimes those can be a little expensive. Just an eye mask will really help block out the light. Quite often people will have some appliances in their bedroom or maybe they have a computer or some kind of electronic device that has like a bright blue light.

you can just easily tape those up with electrical tape or they've got these things called junk light dots that you can just kind of press on and kind of mind those types of obnoxious lights. And then having the room quiet, like it's hard to keep a quiet room if you have maybe city noise in the background. We live in different environments. I have clients who live in a rural environment.

Corean Canty (27:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Morgan (27:38)
Noise is not a problem. But if you're in the city somewhere busier, you might hear sirens at night and even if you have like a Quiet neighborhood if you've got kids or pets. Well, you can't really control for that So a lot of times people will sleep with white noise or some kind of music in the background kind of Looping so that's a way to kind of block out the noise and then there's earplugs, know And when I talk about earplugs, sometimes I'll have mom say well

Corean Canty (27:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan (28:08)
I gotta hear the kids, right? So sometimes what you can do is just put one ear plug in, right? And have the exposed ear like up.

Corean Canty (28:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Morgan (28:17)
away from you and so that you can kind of hear. So that's just really kind of how I like to look at the bedroom is really just like the sanctuary, like the cave, really not having clutter around, preferably no TV. That's a difficult one because if you're in a partnership, sometimes someone wants the TV in the bedroom and that can be a little bit of a negotiation point.

Corean Canty (28:18)
Yeah.

Morgan (28:43)
but just kind of keeping a, you know, a chill bedroom, like literally, literally, and you know, not so literally. Yeah.

Corean Canty (28:50)
Yeah,

yeah, I really feel like that made a huge difference in my sleep quality. So I haven't had a TV in my bedroom in over a decade or more because I had, when I had a health crisis and I got really sick and I started really figuring out all the ways to be as well as possible. in sleep was the cornerstone of that, right? Like I knew I needed to rest to recover.

So like I don't sleep with my phone in my room. I sleep with it in the bathroom. I can still hear it. I'm one of those like moms, like my kids are grown, but I'm a caretaker to my mother. So it's like, I have to hear. So I put it in the bathroom. So I'm not like getting the disturbance from it. Just being next to my bed. I do sleep with like a sleep mask. I also tape my mouth. And like you're talking about like those little, when I travel, even sometimes with my sleep mask on, like the little lights in the hotel rooms.

Morgan (29:32)
Yeah.

Corean Canty (29:41)
They never used to bother me when I used to do business travel all the time and I didn't sleep well anyway. But now it's like, it's like almost like they're painful. It's like, ah, they seem so bright and you don't think about it until you've actually started to get some good sleep and then you get put back environments that make it harder to what you're used to. And then you realize like, oh, all these things actually do make a difference.

Morgan (29:41)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

They do, yeah, and when you travel, if you can just kind of keep a thing of a black masking tape or electrical tape, I think it's what it's called, in your suitcase. So that way you never have to remember to pack it. That has been a lifesaver for me. I just keep it in my cosmetic case. It looks kind of odd, like black electrical tape in my cosmetics case, but it's been a game changer because...

Corean Canty (30:10)
Mm, mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Morgan (30:27)
If you travel and you go to Airbnbs, know, those aren't as consistent as hotels. Hotels tend to have a little bit more of a kind of a standardized way these days of like preventing the light from being from shining on you. But it's been very helpful, you know, and I sleep with mouth tape as well. I really like that. There's not everyone should be doing it. But I think the main thing is with mouth tape.

Corean Canty (30:45)
Yeah.

Morgan (30:51)
you want to make sure that you've been screened for sleep apnea and that you don't have that because that can sometimes exacerbate sleep apnea. But it's a great way to kind of get your parasympathetic system kicking into better gear. I like it.

Corean Canty (31:05)
Yeah,

and for anybody who's more interested, just kind of even learning why the book Breath by James Nestor is a really good one to kind of just learn the power of your breath, especially when it comes to sleep.

Morgan (31:17)
Yeah.

Yes, great book.

Corean Canty (31:23)
Yes, yes. So.

Can we talk a little bit more about what are some additional kind of things people could start today? Like, there's a lot of little tips that you've talked about in ways to kind of set up your environment and kind of figure out where you are with your sleep. But for someone who just is struggling and they just need those little tiny steps to start, like what are the things you recommend first to kind of get on the journey?

Morgan (31:37)
Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah, I think that something that

can be very, very helpful is looking at the bookends of your day. So really kind of auditing your morning and your evening. I think a lot of times people will put too much emphasis on the evening routine. Like they'll just like really dial it in. They'll just like almost to the point where they've over scheduled their evening routine to make it like really regimented. And that can sometimes backfire. But like, let's just start with the morning because I think a lot of people

Corean Canty (32:12)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (32:27)
the morning as part of their sleep routine and actually good sleep starts the moment your feet hit the floor. And there's a quote by Louise Hay, how you start your day is how you live your day.

Corean Canty (32:33)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Morgan (32:39)
So

I'm a real big believer in establishing some kind of morning routine with intentionality built into it. And that can look very different for people, you know, according to like what your daily life looks like, whether you've got several kids or you're retired or, you know, you're a student and you don't have any responsibilities, but really thinking about just...

Having some kind of grounding practice, whether that's, you know, five minutes or half hour, whatever time you have to give, but really just centering yourself, thinking about your day, setting intentions.

If you are starting your day, like rushing around, like putting out fires, what you notice often is that your day just kind of snowballs into even more chaos, right? So really just kind of setting the tone for the day in the morning, I think is really helpful. And then at the end of the day with the bookends of the day, I think a lot of times people will...

Corean Canty (33:26)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Morgan (33:41)
do, there's something called revenge bedtime procrastination. Have you heard of this term before? It's a term that got used a lot around the pandemic, but it's been, the term was actually coined years before that. And basically what this is, it's when people intentionally blow off their bedtimes in favor of doing something that

Corean Canty (33:45)
No, I've never heard that term.

Morgan (34:05)
is for their own enjoyment, like Netflixing or maybe drinking wine while you're Netflixing. And it tends to be something that is done more often by busy professionals, especially moms, because as women, think, you know, as professionals, and especially if you have kids, you're doing things for other people all day long.

Corean Canty (34:08)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Morgan (34:30)
Right? And so quite often the things that you want to do get pushed aside in lieu of something that your boss wants or your kids need that. And so it's sort of like the mom is sort of like, okay, I know my bedtime and I know I should be in bed by 10, but screw it. I'm going to watch my show and have popcorn and wine.

Corean Canty (34:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Morgan (34:50)
And they know it's totally not insomnia. They are capable of sleeping, but they're choosing to actually blow off their bedtime in lieu of, it's kind of like the rebellious teenager coming out, like, I can stay up, I'm a grownup, right? But the reality is, is if you're doing it on the regular, you are gonna be a kind of low grade sleep deprived over a period of time, right? And that's gonna impact your whole life, your job, your relationships.

Corean Canty (34:54)
Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Morgan (35:20)
So what I usually recommend for people to do when they're in that cycle is

take stock of like, why do you want to sleep better? Like, do you like think about what you're going to get from actually prioritizing your sleep? Like, what's going to be better for you? And then thinking about that really deeply. Also doing things during the day that bring you joy, right? Instead of procrastinating all of that stuff into the evening, like what, like even if it just, even if you're taking your calendar and you're doing a few time blocks every day of 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes, three

Corean Canty (35:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Morgan (35:58)
times a day, which is doable if you think about it. Everyone's got 10 minutes in pockets of their day to do something that they like, whether that's maybe it's watching cat videos on YouTube. Who cares? Like it's something that you enjoy doing, right? So you do that. That way you're less prone to kind of binging on whatever that is later, you know, after you should be going to bed. And then also creating some kind of like timer on your phone, like setting an alarm.

Corean Canty (35:58)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right. Yeah.

Morgan (36:27)
We often have an alarm for bed to get us up in the morning, like wake up. But we need to actually, a lot of us need to have an alarm to notify us that it's time to wind down. And I always recommend at least a half hour of wind down time. mean, an hour is ideal, but like we all have different schedules.

Corean Canty (36:38)
Yeah.

Morgan (36:48)
where you're just, you're decompressing. You're not taking anything, you're not taking any new information in. You're reducing any kind of novelty into your day. If you're watching TV, like I personally, people are like mind blown sometimes. I'm a sleep coach and my wind down activity is TV. They're like, what? I'm like, yeah, it's okay. If you're watching something that's not going to be overly stimulating or frightening, TV can be a great practice.

if you're like comedies and documentaries about food or travel, things that are just not going to rile you up, those can be great. And of course, like you want to be mindful of your light environment at night. Like you don't want to have the bright lights overhead while you're watching TV. You want to have ideally blue blocking glasses on if you're in front of the screens at night. But yeah, just just.

Corean Canty (37:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan (37:44)
Just being mindful of just carving out a little bit of wind down time can make a world of difference.

Corean Canty (37:49)
Yeah, I'm definitely advocate of that when I'm coaching my clients. I call our bookends sacred brackets, right? Because so many of the people that I coach are busy professionals, parents, like we have all the things, right? We've built up all the things that we feel responsible for and do all day. And so we so often say, don't have time for the things for me. I don't have time. And like the two times that you can control no matter what happens in your life is when you open your eyes and right before you close your eyes, right? Even if you have small children,

Like the baby can cry for a couple of minutes for you to lay there and take a few breaths and check in with yourself and slowly ease out of bed, right? There's so many different ways that you, like you said, it doesn't have to be a long time. It's great to build up to a long time. Like I definitely have at least an hour of wind down time. I love to read at night and I have like two hours to myself in the morning before anybody else gets any of my time. And that's me doing all the things that I want to do for myself, whether it's my spirituality practice, my movement practice.

whether it's me getting organized for the day, making an actual breakfast and sitting down and eating it before I like jump into everybody else's stuff. Because not only does your day snowball from chaos, but it snowballs from doing things for everyone else but yourself. And so I really think that that is a great practice for rest and just overall wellbeing. And I love like the...

Morgan (39:08)
Yeah.

Corean Canty (39:09)
the joy slots, right? Like we deserve joy. We deserve to enjoy our day. Like that life only happens in the days. And so I'm always telling people, figure out how to design your ideal day and let that be your North Star. Not all of these external societal titles and salary. Like if you understand how you want to live your life and you start to design towards that. And we aren't ever going to live our ideal day every day, but it helps us make decisions on how we spend our days when we know what's best for us and what we're really striving towards.

Morgan (39:11)
Yeah, of course.

Yeah, I love that. So well said.

Corean Canty (39:42)
Yeah, yeah. And so I believe you have a free guide that people can get to help them start their sleep journey.

Morgan (39:49)
Yes, my guide is really designed around the biggest sleep complaint that my clients have and that's the 3am wake up. It is just a thorn in so many people's sides.

I started to think about putting this together for people. really kind of helps you troubleshoot what's going on, what could be done about it, why it's happening, how to manage it. And so it's a free resource on my website if anyone wants to download it. It's a great start if you're struggling with those wake ups, which so many people are, especially as we get older and our sleep becomes more fragmented and our circadian rhythm starts to shift. It's just you see more of those middle of the night

Corean Canty (40:25)
Yes. Yes.

Morgan (40:29)
wakeups as we get older.

Corean Canty (40:31)
Yeah,

especially when you're like my agent going through perimenopause and your body's like, wait a minute, everything's changing. So definitely, definitely that's a, it's a topic of conversation for me and my friends on a regular basis. So we'll definitely put the link for that in the show notes. so before we wrap up, I do have a few fun questions I like to ask everyone just to help us all get to know each other a little better, because I feel like, you know, building community is really important, especially.

Morgan (40:34)
Yes. Yep, exactly.

yeah.

Yeah.

Corean Canty (41:01)
and this time right now. So my first question is, what's currently your favorite part of the day?

Morgan (41:09)
Well, it's a tie between sitting down in my cozy chair with my morning coffee and doing my little morning routine or my nighttime TV watching with my husband and my two little pups on the couch. Those are both like really joyful parts of my day. it's depending on which day you ask me, I'm going to answer one or the other, but it's the bookends.

Corean Canty (41:32)
I love that. It kind of ties it together. And that leads into my next question.

So this might make you have to choose one of those times because what's your favorite current cozy?

Morgan (41:42)
Okay, so a couple months ago, I discovered fuzzy socks for sleeping. I didn't just discover it, I had worn them on and off. But I'd been getting the cheap ones from Amazon. And I was listening to this podcast with a woman, a midlife influencer person who was doing like a holiday gift guide. And she mentioned these socks from I'm going to say the company, no affiliation. They're

Corean Canty (42:08)
Yeah, no sponsorships. This is just sharing good things.

Yeah. Barefoot dreams.

Morgan (42:11)
Barefoot Dreams, I think is the name of that, Barefoot

Dreams. And she kept going on and on about these socks. I'm like, okay, I've got to these socks. I mean, it's like they're, you know, they hung the moon or something. And yeah, they're next level. They're real fuzzy. And I just, I just love putting them on at night. I kind of like even put on like heel cream to like soothe the cracked heels. It's super sexy, you know, of course. So yeah, fuzzy socks at night. That's, that's my newest cozy.

Corean Canty (42:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's like a little self-care treatment, you know? Yeah.

I'm gonna have

to check those out. I love all things cozy. So do you have a current go-to feel-good song?

Morgan (42:42)
You

Yeah, there's a song that comes on my playlist every now and then called Lovely Day. I think the guy's Bill Withers. It's a song from the 70s. I'm not like a big older music kind of fan, but it's just like such a pleasant song. Like it just, it's so just like, okay, you feel good when you listen to it. It's nice. Yeah.

Corean Canty (42:57)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

That's a good one. I know exactly what song you're talking about

and it's a really good, feel good, bring you into the right kind of energy song, yes. So we've talked a lot about like wellbeing things and rest things, but I'd like to know like what's one thing that you do right now for your 80 year old self?

Morgan (43:13)
Yeah. Yes.

lift weights. Yeah, I've been very, very diligent about doing that over the past several years. Just because I'm learning so much about how muscle is protective for us as we age and I do not want to be a frail old lady. I want to be, if I fall on my butt, I want to be able to get up without calling for help. I want to be able to carry my own groceries.

Corean Canty (43:28)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Morgan (43:49)
So I'm just, you know, even though I don't love it every day, I'm after it. I'm lifting the weights and I'm thinking about my older self while I'm doing it.

Corean Canty (43:58)
Yeah, yeah, I love

that. I love that. And there's a difference, right? It's interesting. When I took yoga teacher training, had people in my class who were in their 70s and 80s taking yoga teacher training just for fun and they have done it before. And so they're like on the floor, doing all the poses, studying with us. But then I'd come home to take care of my mother who was the same age, who barely has any mobility at this point. And I realized like, there's a choice and it starts now.

like at this age to determine your quality of life then. So I appreciate you sharing that. Okay, last question is how do you remember to live?

Morgan (44:25)
Yes. Yes. So true.

I think by slowing down and noticing the simple moments that bring you joy, right? I think that when I was younger, I was always focusing on like the next big trip. Like I always had to have a big trip on my calendar or maybe it was like, you know, back when I was in pharmaceutical sales, I would get these massive bonus checks, right? And I would go out and buy like a really expensive handbag. Guess where those handbags are now? They've been consigned.

Corean Canty (44:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Morgan (45:05)
I don't give a crap about those. Like I'm just like, you know, observing my beautiful dog or just holding hands with my husband while we walk. It's like those like very simple, they're free moments that I just like think about and look forward to and just really cherish. And it's just the slowed down moments I think are the most meaningful.

Corean Canty (45:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, the magic and the everyday moments that we take for granted until we can't have them anymore. Yeah, I love that. Thank you, Morgan, so much. Tell people where they can find you.

Morgan (45:33)
Yes.

You can find me on my website, MorganAdamsWellness.com. You can get that free guide. And I'm on Instagram somewhat, but I'm on LinkedIn more. That's how we met. I found LinkedIn to be an awesome place to connect with cool people like yourself. like, yeah, yeah, it's really like an underrated social platform. So you can find me there. Like I'd love to connect with people who are like-minded and...

Corean Canty (45:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

It is. It is. I have a whole LinkedIn community. Like I love LinkedIn. Yeah.

Morgan (46:08)
doing cool things in the world.

Corean Canty (46:10)
Awesome. Well, we will put all those links in the show notes so people can connect with you. Thank you again for sharing all of your tips and perfect ideas for us. And I believe this is National Sleep Month. Is that right? Sleep Awareness Month. Yes. Yes. So perfect timing for us all to take a look at our sleep and do things to help us get a little bit better. Thank you.

Morgan (46:22)
It is, it's sleep awareness month. Yes, March, that's it. Yeah.

Thank you so much.