STRECH YOUR NECK AND SHOULDERS,
massage aromatherapy oils along your temples and jaw, breathe deeply and focus on the
calming music. These are just a few of the instructions sleep guru Robert deStefano offers me as a “z-scription” for restless nights. Straightforward, and they work. I quickly sink into a long slumber, tuning out the worries of the daytime world.

For insomniacs across North America, deStefano’s all-natural approach to helping stressed-out, anxious and harried people get some shut-eye is just what our over-prescribed, over-caffeinated and over-stretched culture needs. And deStefano knows this firsthand.
He once ran a highly successful advertising company, where pulling all-nighters fueled on coffee and Red Bull instead of getting a solid seven to nine hours of sleep was simply par for the course. “Everything was very good, but I didn’t sleep,” says deStefano. “I was really dosing myself with caffeine and adrenaline.” Although business was booming, his 24-hour workday eventually led to health complications—it started with a twitch in his eye and grew to include heart palpitations. “I got into this vortex of anxiety,” he explains. “I was being stresstested, and my blood pressure was too high.”

In order to protect his health, deStefano retired from advertising, and for the first time in his life concentrated on relaxation. The only problem was that he still couldn’t let go. “With no more scripts to write, no more deadlines, meetings or pitches, I was still up at 2:30 in the morning,” he says, noting that he assumed insomnia was simply a bad habit that would eventually disappear. It didn’t. Looking for a healthy answer to the problem rather than piling on prescription drugs, he embarked on two very different streams of education, immersing himself in ancient arts of relaxation like yoga and studying western theories on sleep disorders and psychotherapy. He found valuable ideas in both places, and realized that no one else was combining both schools of thought. “The sleep expert thing didn’t really exist,” says deStefano, who, now rested and revitalized, knew it was a role he could fill. “There are medical doctors who are focused on very tough things like sleep apnea, but my specialty became the big bucket of insomniacs—the ones who happen to be under the thumb of our cultural obsession
to raise the bar and get things done.”

Today, deStefano runs sleep workshops at spas across the US such as Utah’s Red Mountain
Spa, Arizona’s Spa Avania at the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale and Connecticut’s Mayflower Inn and Spa. He also runs Sleep Garden, a company that produces slumber-inducing zMusic CDs and zMovie DVDs (think restful images of nature). A book is in the works and he has developed
sleep aid kits for numerous hotels including the Mariott group and the Hyatt Regency in
Scottsdale—projects deStefano takes on while being careful to retain his balanced lifestyle.
For those who attend his workshops, deStefano’s chief goal is to demystify insomnia.

“It’s an illusion,” he says, noting that he considers himself more of a coach than a therapist. “I try to shatter the illusion of insomnia, not with empty affirmations but with practice.” By having people engage in specific actions like stretching, aromatherapy and mind-clearing exercises itemized in his own z-scription, deStefano aims to help us experience a change in state—from alert readiness to graceful relaxation—and prove that one of the modern world’s growing problems is easy to beat. “If we can put ourselves at the front door of sleep, our bodies will know what to do with it from there,” he says. “It’s not a magic trick, it’s a biological function we’re all born with.”

 

Robert deStefano’s
Tips for Insomniacs

        
Enter Sandman: Robert deStefano offers sleeping tips at the Mayflower Inn and Spa.

1. First and foremost, remember this: Insomnia is not a disease or illness. Don’t think “medicate,” think “recalibrate”! It’s easier than you might think.

2. Make a to-do list before you fall asleep so you don’t wake up at 2 a.m. and start stressing.

3. Practice a ritual: Take a warm bath, play relaxing music, use soothing aromatherapy or read a poem every night to get that Zen feeling. Once there, you’re ready to turn off the light.

4. It’s a big mistake to ignore your sleep space. Declutter your bedroom of all chaos—this will have a remarkable effect on clearing your mind of sleep-robbing thoughts. Remove magazines, photos and especially the TV. Studies show that having the telly on can actually rev your brain waves even while you sleep.