Inside our first Sleep Wellness evening, and why it won't be the last.
There's a particular kind of tired that a good night's sleep doesn't fix. You know it. You've been productive all day, you've answered everyone, you've held the whole thing together and then you get into bed and your mind starts its second shift. Tired, but wired. Rested, but never quite restored.
That's the gap we wanted to close. Not with another supplement or another tracker, but with something almost old-fashioned: an evening where nothing was asked of you. The transition from work to bed is the part most of us get wrong at home. We go from laptop to pillow in eleven minutes and then wonder why our nervous system hasn't caught up. Slow, passive postures held for several minutes, with the out-breath longer than the in-breath, are one of the few reliable ways to shift toward the rest-and-digest side of things, the state that has to arrive before sleep, not after it.
That's why on Wednesday 19 August, we hosted the first Nite-Nite Sleep Wellness event in Amsterdam. A 60 minutes of yin yoga, breathwork, meditation and a bedside read, held at the American Book Center on the Spui after the shop had closed for the evening. Books on every wall, lamps low, phones away, a deliberately small group. A little bit more than an hour on a weekday evening, and then everyone went home to bed.
We suspected it would be nice. We didn't expect the feedback we got back.
Every woman who responded said she'd recommend the evening. Not one lukewarm answer. And the thing they described wasn't better sleep. It was permission. Permission to stop, to take up space, to be somewhere that didn't want anything from them. One person put it almost exactly like that: the feeling that she needs to take time to disconnect and slow down more often.
The Guidance: Anouk Maas
The evening was guided by Anouk Maas, yoga teacher, breathwork coach and orthomolecular consultant and honestly, she is most of the reason it worked.
Anyone can put out mats. What Anouk did was pace an entire room from doing into not doing without ever making it feel like an instruction. Long yin holds, extended exhales, a meditation that landed somewhere between guided and simply quiet. She read the room rather than a script.
The bedside read: Lighter
Every edition closes with a book, chosen for the night ahead rather than for the shelf.
This one was Lighter by Yung Pueblo — short, spacious writing about setting down emotional weight instead of carrying it into tomorrow. Read aloud, in a bookshop, with a room full of women who had just spent an hour breathing slowly. It's a good argument for reading on paper before bed: a looping mind will happily go somewhere else if you give it a door.
So we will be doing it again. Soon. So Stay tuned for the next one.
Take a piece of it home
You have the book, you did the yin yoga. What else? The objects you reach for at the end of the day are what turn a good intention into an actual ritual.
- VERDEN Magnesium Night Balm — €40. The closest thing to the aromatherapy close of the evening. Worked slowly into shoulders and calves, it's an unmistakable signal that the day is finished.
- DORE & ROSE Silk Stripe Sleep Bundle — €75. Changing into something you actually like wearing is its own kind of full stop.
- LIV BOTANICS The Midnight Ritual — €135. For the nights you want the ritual to feel like something.
And if you want the wind-down structured, our 3–2–1 Wind-Down Ritual maps it onto an evening.
Come to the next one
To hear first: join the newsletter or follow us on Instagram.
Sources & further reading
- Yung Pueblo, Lighter — this edition's bedside read, in our Bedside Library
- Nite-Nite, Nervous System Dysregulation: The Hidden Reason Women Can't Sleep
Wellness note: our products are intended for general wellness and lifestyle purposes only. They are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition.
