Why a Bath at Night Helps You Sleep

There is a reason a bath before bed works, and it is not only that it is nice.

When you get out of a warm bath, your body temperature drops. That drop is one of the signals the body reads as the beginning of sleep. A bath an hour or two before bed gives you the warmth, then the cooling, in the right order. You are working with the body rather than against it.

The heat helps in its own right. It loosens the shoulders and the lower back, the places the day collects. The breath slows in warm water without being told to. And a bath is one of the few times most of us are unreachable: no screen, no list, nothing to answer.

To make more of it:

• Keep the water warm, not hot. Too hot and you come out wired rather than calm.
• Give it time. Ten minutes is enough to change how you feel. Twenty is better.
• Add the scent to the body, not just the water. A few drops of a natural essential oil on the chest and the back of the neck will follow you out of the bath and into bed.

Lavender is the obvious choice, and it earns it. Soothe, lavender with rose geranium and eucalyptus, was Emily's first blend and is still the one she comes back to at the end of the day. If you would rather not run a bath, the same oils on a warm flannel over the face give you a smaller version of the same thing.

Then get out before you are tired of it, dry off, and go straight to bed while the warmth is still leaving you. That is the whole trick.