💤 A Better Night’s Rest: How to Sleep to Relieve Pain and Wake Up Rested
The Overlooked Link Between Sleep, Pain and Healing
Sleep is one of the body’s most powerful healing tools — yet it’s often the first thing disrupted when we’re in pain. For many people, waking up stiff, sore or restless is so common they consider it normal. But pain that disrupts sleep is a signal from your body that something isn’t aligned — literally and figuratively.
At Neurohealth Wellness in Allambie Heights, we see how poor sleep posture can perpetuate neck stiffness, shoulder tension, back pain and even foot discomfort. What’s often missed is that the very way you sleep — the positions, pillows, and habits you maintain through the night — can either support recovery or feed inflammation.
Quality sleep isn’t just about how long you rest. It’s about how well your body can switch into a healing state. During deep sleep, the nervous system shifts into “rest and digest” mode, the body releases growth hormones, and tissues repair. When pain or poor posture interfere with this, the cycle of healing is interrupted — and the result is waking up tired, sore and inflamed.
At Neurohealth Wellness, our approach combines chiropractic care, massage therapy, acupuncture and holistic techniques to help patients sleep better by addressing the root causes of tension and imbalance. Let’s explore how science, sleep posture and spinal alignment work together — and what you can do tonight to wake up refreshed tomorrow.
🧠 The Science of Sleep and the Spine
Your spine plays a surprisingly large role in sleep quality — not just because it supports your body physically, but because it’s the core communication pathway between your brain and body. Every joint, muscle and organ is regulated by signals travelling through your spinal cord. When the spine is misaligned or restricted, those signals can become interrupted, affecting muscle tone, stress response, and even breathing patterns during sleep.
The Nervous System’s Sleep Switch
The body’s ability to enter deep, restorative sleep depends on the balance between the sympathetic (“fight or flight”) and parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) branches of the nervous system.
If you’ve ever gone to bed with tension in your shoulders or a racing mind, you’ve felt the sympathetic system at work — keeping your body in a subtle state of alertness. Over time, spinal dysfunctions, poor posture and muscular imbalances can keep that system switched on, leading to restless sleep, clenching, grinding, and chronic fatigue.
Chiropractic adjustments help by restoring joint movement and resetting nervous system tone, allowing the parasympathetic system to take over. This is why many patients notice not only better mobility but also deeper, more restful sleep after treatment.
Spinal Alignment and Sleep Positions
Different sleeping positions load the spine in different ways:
- Back sleeping supports even weight distribution but can strain the lower back if the natural curve isn’t supported.
- Side sleeping is the most common and can be excellent for spinal alignment if the neck and hips are properly cushioned.
- Stomach sleeping forces the neck into rotation, compressing joints and often causing neck or lower back pain.
When these positions are mismatched with poor pillows or mattress support, your body compensates by tightening muscles overnight — often leading to morning stiffness.
A properly aligned spine allows muscles to relax and circulation to improve, giving the nervous system the conditions it needs to repair tissues, clear inflammation and consolidate memory.
The Spine, Breath and Sleep Apnoea
Another often-overlooked connection is how spinal tension impacts breathing. Restriction in the upper thoracic and cervical spine can interfere with rib expansion and airway openness. This is particularly relevant for people with snoring or sleep apnoea, where airway obstruction limits oxygen flow.
Chiropractic care targeting the thoracic and cervical spine has been shown to improve rib cage mobility and breathing efficiency, which can indirectly support better oxygenation and reduce apnoea-related arousals. Combined with posture correction and side sleeping, this can lead to significant improvements in energy and alertness.
🌙 Why Sleep Position Matters for Healing
You spend around one-third of your life asleep. That’s roughly 26 years in bed — and how you position your body for that time has a lasting impact.
The key principle is neutral alignment: your spine should maintain its natural curves from head to tailbone. This allows muscles, ligaments and nerves to rest without compression. When alignment is lost, your body subtly fights against the imbalance all night, leading to tension, inflammation and reduced circulation.
When Sleep Positions Become Pain Habits
Over time, pain can change how you sleep. For example:
- Shoulder pain may cause you to favour one side, creating imbalances in the neck and upper back.
- Lower back pain might make you curl into a tight fetal position, shortening the hip flexors and hamstrings.
- Plantar fasciitis or calf tension might cause you to point your toes downward, tightening the fascia overnight.
These adaptations may feel protective, but they reinforce the problem. Correcting them isn’t just about pillows — it’s about teaching your body to move and rest symmetrically again.
The Role of Chiropractic and Soft Tissue Care
Our chiropractors focus not only on adjusting joints but also on retraining your body’s movement patterns so that even while you sleep, your posture supports recovery. By improving spinal mobility, joint mechanics and muscle balance, the body naturally adopts more neutral, comfortable sleeping positions.
Massage and myotherapy with Ana help release deep muscle tension and fascia restrictions that make certain positions uncomfortable. Acupuncture with Lucia complements this by calming the nervous system and improving blood flow to the tissues that repair overnight.
Together, these therapies create a body that can truly rest — not just lie still.
Common Sleep-Related Pain Patterns
Neck pain: Often caused by too many pillows or sleeping with the chin tucked. Keep the neck neutral and use one supportive pillow.
Back pain: Relieved by placing a pillow under the knees (if on your back) or between the knees (if on your side).
Shoulder pain: Avoid sleeping on the affected shoulder. Hug a pillow to keep your upper body stable.
Plantar fasciitis: Keep sheets loose to prevent toes pointing downward. Gentle stretching before bed helps.
These small adjustments, paired with chiropractic alignment, can transform how your body feels in the morning.
🧘♀️ Pre-Bed Mobility & Relaxation Routine
A comfortable sleeping position begins before you even get into bed. Modern life — sitting at desks, scrolling on phones, training hard, and managing daily stress — builds up tension that doesn’t disappear just because you lie down. A short nightly mobility routine can help release it.
Try This 5-Minute Pre-Bed Reset
- Cat-Cow Stretch (1 minute)
Move gently between spinal flexion and extension on hands and knees. This lubricates spinal joints and improves circulation. - Child’s Pose (1 minute)
Sink your hips back and stretch your arms forward, breathing deeply. This decompresses the lower back and hips. - Wall Chest Stretch (30 seconds each side)
Place your hand on a wall, rotate your body away to open the chest. Great for those who sleep curled or sit long hours. - Neck Rolls & Shoulder Shrugs (1 minute)
Gently roll your neck in circles and shrug your shoulders up and down to release tension. - Diaphragmatic Breathing (1–2 minutes)
Lie on your back with one hand on your belly. Breathe in through the nose, allowing the abdomen to rise. This activates the parasympathetic system, preparing your body for deep rest.
💡 Tip: Avoid heavy stretching before bed — the goal isn’t intensity but relaxation. As Dr. Andrew Huberman’s research highlights, consistency in low-intensity mobility before sleep is more effective for long-term recovery than occasional deep stretching sessions.
🌊 Sleeping Well on the Northern Beaches
Here on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, many of our patients lead active lives — surfing at dawn, running the trails, cycling, or training at the gym. While this lifestyle keeps the body strong, it can also tighten muscles and compress joints, particularly in the spine and hips.
That’s why good sleep posture and recovery are crucial. The combination of daytime movement and nighttime alignment is what keeps you pain-free, balanced, and ready to enjoy everything our coastal lifestyle offers.
Our chiropractors often help athletes and weekend warriors who can’t seem to “switch off” at night. Their nervous systems are so used to high activity that they stay partially activated, making sleep shallow and recovery incomplete. By improving spinal alignment, posture and breathing mechanics, we help retrain the nervous system to downshift into rest mode naturally.
Environmental Sleep Factors for Coastal Living
The Northern Beaches’ climate can bring humidity, late sunsets and occasional noise from ocean breezes — all of which can affect rest.
- Keep your bedroom cool and dark to support melatonin production.
- Choose natural, breathable bedding materials like bamboo or cotton.
- Avoid tucking sheets too tightly — especially important for foot and calf comfort if you’re prone to plantar fasciitis.
- Maintain a consistent bedtime, even after long summer evenings outdoors.
These small adjustments reinforce your body’s circadian rhythm and help you wake feeling restored.
🌿 The Bigger Picture: Why Good Sleep Supports Spinal Health
Sleep and spinal health are a two-way street. When your spine is aligned, sleep quality improves. When you sleep well, the spine and nervous system recover more effectively. Poor sleep, on the other hand, heightens pain sensitivity and slows healing — creating a frustrating cycle.
Research shows that chronic sleep deprivation amplifies inflammatory responses in the body and reduces tissue repair rates. People with back pain often experience disrupted sleep, and vice versa (Gordon et al., BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, 2019). Correcting posture and addressing pain through chiropractic care helps break that cycle.
At Neurohealth Wellness, our philosophy is prevention over reaction — we want to help you restore healthy movement and sleep before pain becomes chronic.
🌙 Your Sleep-Alignment Checklist
Before bed tonight, take 60 seconds to review your setup:
✅ Pillow supports your neck’s natural curve (not your head only).
✅ Hips and knees are cushioned to reduce spinal rotation.
✅ Feet are free to relax — not tucked down.
✅ Bedroom is cool, dark and quiet.
✅ Mind and body are calm from light mobility and deep breathing.
These are small, achievable steps that add up to enormous benefits over time.
💆♀️ Wake Up Rested with Neurohealth Wellness
At Neurohealth Wellness, our multidisciplinary team is here to help you reclaim restful, restorative sleep naturally — without relying on medication or temporary fixes.
Our services include:
- Chiropractic care — improving spinal mobility, alignment and nervous system function.
- Massage and myotherapy with Ana — releasing muscle tension and fascia to enhance comfort.
- Acupuncture with Lucia — calming the nervous system and supporting deep rest.
- Hypnotherapy and NLP with Katarina McNamara — addressing subconscious stress patterns, anxiety and insomnia.
Whether your sleep issues stem from pain, posture, or stress, our practitioners collaborate to find the root cause and guide your body back to balance.
🌙 Book Your Path to Better Sleep
You deserve to wake up refreshed, energised and pain-free. If you’ve been struggling to find a comfortable sleeping position or waking up sore, it’s time to take action.
A personalised assessment can help identify what’s disrupting your sleep — from spinal misalignment and muscular tension to nervous system overactivity. We’ll guide you step by step through a plan to help your body restore its natural rhythms.
📍 Neurohealth Wellness
33–35 Kentwell Rd, Allambie Heights, NSW
📞 (02) 9905 9099
💻 www.neurohealthwellness.com.au/booking
References
- Gordon, S.J. et al. (2019). Sleep posture, spinal alignment, and back pain: a systematic review. BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, 5(1): e000482.
- Khoury, R.M. et al. (1999). Influence of spontaneous sleep positions on nighttime recumbent reflux in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease. J Clin Gastroenterol, 28(2):142–145.
- Shariati, M. et al. (2021). Effect of foot muscle strengthening on plantar fasciitis: a randomized controlled trial. Clin Rehabil, 35(5):643–653.
- McEvoy, R.D. et al. (2016). Effect of CPAP on cardiovascular outcomes in obstructive sleep apnea. New England Journal of Medicine, 375:919–931.
- De Koninck, J. et al. (1983). Sleep positions and their relationship with personality traits. Sleep, 6(6):572–577.
- Huberman, A. (2023). The Science of Stretching and Sleep. Huberman Lab Podcast.
