The Dusk Walk

A short walk after dinner can do more than support digestion. It can become a transition ritual that helps your body recognize night is coming. In this episode, Justin explains how lower light, cooler air, gentle movement, and less stimulation can work together to prepare your nervous system for sleep. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to Night Shift with Justin S. King, how to transform your life one night at a time. Quite a few episodes ago, I talked about walking after meals, and the basic idea was simple after you eat, go for a short walk, and this helps your body use the food, smooths out your blood sugar spike, and shifts you out of that heavy, sluggish feeling that can hit after your meals. So tonight I want to reinforce that idea and take it a layer deeper outside of just digestion and leveling out your blood sugar. You can also use an evening walk to signal that the day is ending. Your body falls asleep when you have enough signals that tell you the same thing, such as lower light, lower temperature, lower stimulation, lower noise, lower input. So if you are in a quiet, nice, quiet neighborhood and you finish dinner and it's nice outside, don't sit down and watch TV or start scrolling. Instead, go out and take a short walk at dusk. Ten minutes is just enough to feel the cooler air and the signals of the light to signal to your brain that it's time to go to sleep. Don't take any stimulation with you. No headphones, don't bring your phone with you. Don't make it productive. You can go back and review the episode I mentioned with Coot Blackson's How to Find Peace, where he talks about slowing down. So on this walk, you can take deep breaths, be really present, just slow down, notice everything around you. Try to notice something new. Use all five of your senses, smell, touch, and after the end of the 10 minutes, head back inside and continue your evening routine without your phone screen. That's it for tonight's episode of Night Shift. So tonight or tomorrow night, add a 10 minute evening stroll at dusk after you eat. My name is Justin S. King, and I help entrepreneurs find peace tonight, tomorrow, for the rest of their lives through sleep optimization, emotion regulation, and discovering their purpose. Good night.