Using Hypnova while traveling: sleep on planes, jetlag, weird hotel beds

The three travel situations that wreck sleep

Travel does three things to your sleep. It forces you to sleep in short windows (planes), in unfamiliar beds (hotels), and at wrong times (jet lag). Each one is a different problem and benefits from a different approach.

• Planes: you need to drop into sleep fast, often in a position that isn't horizontal. Short sessions (8-12 min) work better than long ones because you're going to get interrupted by turbulence or a beverage cart anyway.
• Hotels: the problem is unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar sounds, unfamiliar smells. Your nervous system stays on low alert all night. A session before bed tells your body the room is safe, which helps more than you'd think.
• Jet lag: the issue is that your internal clock is wrong. A session won't fix the clock, but it'll help you fall asleep at the new local bedtime even when your body is convinced it's noon.

A two-minute travel playbook

Download sessions to your phone before you leave. Airplane wifi and hotel wifi are both bad, and the worst time to discover your app needs to stream is 1 AM in Tokyo. hypnova lets you download sessions for offline use, which is the feature we reach for first on every trip.

On the plane: one earbud in, eye mask on, session running, phone face down. If you wake up at landing, you wake up. You didn't fully sleep but you got the closest thing to it.

At the hotel: run a short session the first night even if you're tired. You're training your nervous system that the room is okay. Night two usually sleeps itself.