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How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less
- pthreads 9y agoThose who are keen on exploring more should look up various relaxation methods that fall under the umbrella of Yoga Nidra. The technique described here is generally a preparatory exercise for a following 61 point or 31 point relaxation method (usually done lying down on the back). As one makes progress in their practice they will find that their body and mind will start experiencing deeper rest for the same or lesser amount of sleep. Some of the relaxation methods can be done upon waking up too -- gets rid of grogginess.
- gabiruh 9y agoShit.. that's almost exactly how I've been doing since I was a kid. The difference is that I do the other way around, starting from my feet.
- empath75 9y agoI have podcast subscriptions to like 10 different history podcasts and they put me to sleep within 5 minutes most of the time. The key is that it has to be interesting enough to engage me, but not so interesting that it keeps me awake. The History of English podcast is my favorite for that. It’s the entire history of English from Indo-European onwards. It’s 100+ hours of readings from old English poetry or medieval monastic rule books interspersed with word etymologies (Did you know that ‘green’ and ‘grow’ and ‘grass’ are all from the same root word?). Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely fascinating but I challenge anyone to stay awake longer than three minutes listening to it in bed.
- blatherard 9y agoI'll second the recommendation of the History of English podcast. I'm roughly 20 episode in and adore it. However, I can't speak to its efficacy as a soporific.
- amitp 9y agoThis is my favorite podcast of all time. It's completely fascinating and yet, as with other history podcasts, it puts me to sleep in 5 minutes. I listen to them over and over to catch bits in those 5 minutes. You get to learn thing like the connections between father/pater/vader and brother/frater/bruder (f/p, th/t/d, b/f), the reason many plurals with 'f' become 'v' (elf/elves, wolf/wolves, half/halves), why 'x' at the beginning of the word sounds like 'z' but in the middle of a word like 'ks'. Or how some languages have more than singular/plural [1] Unexpected word connection: 'c' in Latin/Spanish to 'h' in English: century/hundred, cornu/horn, casa/house, caliente/hot Unexpected word connection: 'w' in German-to-English words and 'g' in French-to-English words: warranty/guarantee, warden/guardian (also seen in English/French: William/Guillome, war/guerre) [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Localization/Localization_and_Plurals#List_of_Plural_Rules https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Localizatio...
- tvanantwerp 9y agoSounds like meditation techniques. I often practice mindfulness meditation in a dark room for ~10 minutes in the mid-afternoon when I get tired. It usually gives me new energy and focus similar to if I'd napped.
- bsaul 9y agoAfter having one course of zen meditation, it seems to me meditation is pretty much the complete opposite of falling asleep. You want to stop thinking about anything, but only to feel perfectly aware of the current time and place. And your mind becomes completely focused and concentrated on.. nothing. In particular, the part in the OP where you "picture yourself being on lake, etc" looks to me as completely anti-meditation.
- mirceal 9y agoAnecdotal evidence: meditating in the evening helps me fall asleep. Don’t know if it’s the breathing part or clearing my mind but it works really well 90% of the time. The trick is that I do it laying down instead of a more conventional meditation position.
- bsaul 9y agoi believe it's pretty easy to fall asleep after step 1 . I suspect the uncomfortable sitting position is made to help you stay awake. In the course i took, people could even ask for someone to hit them on the shoulder with a stick, to help them keep themselves awoken.
- eternauta3k 9y agoZazen is just one form of meditation. According to The Mind Illuminated[1], some traditions (eg. shamanic) cultivate dullness as a source of visions. [1] http://themindilluminated.com/ http://themindilluminated.com/
- somenewacc 9y agothere are many meditative techniques, and some of them promote sleep see http://marc.ucla.edu/mindful-meditations http://marc.ucla.edu/mindful-meditations "Body Scan for Sleep" for example
- magoon 9y agoThis works for me. I’ve found that it’s all in my head.
- Waterluvian 9y agoJust this year I learned an invaluable lesson about falling asleep. When my brain starts "daydreaming" random chains of thoughts, just let it do that. I used to try to clear my mind, but the opposite seems to work much better for me.
- dqpb 9y agoI was just about to post the same thing. Sometime over the last few years I started to notice I was moments away from falling asleep because my stream of consciousness would become nonsensical. I then discovered I could fall asleep faster by purposefully daydreaming nonsensical sceneries.
- bhouser 9y agoObligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/313/ https://xkcd.com/313/
- dude01 9y agoI can actually confirm this -- my father served in WWII (but in the Army), and he came back with this skill to fall asleep quickly. I, sadly, don't really have it. But this article has given me the idea to work on it more. The relaxation ideas here, of course, come from Indian yoga techniques, but maybe they didn't mention the history of it when teaching it. Now that would be a selling point, ha!
- kapauldo 9y agoIt's neat that you can confirm this first hand. So often you read stuff like this that you aren't sure how real it is.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- arbie 9y agoThe physical relaxation technique is more akin to self-hypnosis, while the mental relaxation technique is meditation to clear your mind. Both techniques require months of practice to get right.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoDisagree strongly. That could well be true for some people, but it's a skill I picked up in just a few days of effort. Relaxing well enough to fall asleep quickly, that is. You don't need to meditate properly to do that. You just need enough of it to fall asleep.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoI'm one of those that can fall asleep anytime, anywhere. The technique I use is to work on my "novel". I guess my mind knows I've been "working" on it for over twenty years, it's not important. At this point it's just a fantasy environment in my head I can drop into where the stresses of the real world don't exist.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoBut there's another important part: this only works if I've been away from screens for at least 30-60 minutes and if I haven't had any caffeine in the last 6 hours. f.lux et al reduce the amount of time necessary to be away from the screen, but don't eliminate it. The only screen that's "safe" for me is a small black AMOLED screen (aka no backlight) with dim text.
- Fnoord 9y agoKobo e-reader with e-ink and night mode does it for me.
- joelwilliamson 9y agoI recently upgraded from an Aura to an Aura ONE, and the backlight is much better. It can be amazingly dim, and at night it uses a hue that has almost no blue light.
- cm2012 9y agoSame for me. Comfortable fantasy world replaces worries, then sleep is easy. Figured it out in middle school. I explained it to a teacher once and they called it meditation...
- cuckcuckspruce 9y agoI can do this too! I was born with a superpower, one that ensures I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime - untreated obstructive sleep apnea! With obstructive sleep apnea, you too can fall asleep in those stressful situations like driving, in the middle of a fire drill at your desk, and while attending an important work presentation! (On the serious, I have an appointment to get a CPAP tomorrow and in the meantime I sleep sitting up with my feet elevated and avoid most of the ill effects, but it's only a short term solution because it must be weighted against the possibility of a DVT or other blood clot.)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- chrisvalleybay 9y agoI’ve found a simple approach to falling asleep. I close my eyes, and start trying to hear instruments. I start with the bass drum, add some hi-hats. It’s difficult at first, but as my mind drifts off, other instruments start appearing, and I hear a voice singing, a melody. Songs I’ve never heard before. I do this every night now, and I drift off nearly right away. Sometimes I’m jolted by the complexity of the songs, and return to reality to check if I’m not just hearing music coming from my neighbour.
- p0ints 9y agoRegarding falling asleep - I've noticed an interesting phenomenon in myself. Usually it takes me around 30 minutes to fall asleep, during which period I seem to gradually mellow, my internal narrative becomes weaker until I finally fall asleep. During the final stages of that process, I sometimes imagine beautiful and quite complex music or art that I like a lot (unfortunately, I'm nowhere skilled enough to try to create actual pieces based on this). This does not happen to me in any other state - it's as if there's a temporary imbalance between my mental functions (perhaps the logical brain shuts off first) that generates this unsolicited creativity.
- TuringNYC 9y agoFor me, this exact state is also an ideal one to truly enjoy great music. The music can become surreal and surround me. I've never used drugs, but this is how I imagine hallucinogens to be...
- drakonka 9y agoThis reminds me of an experience I had once. I was lying in bed, it was about mid-day, listening to music. Suddenly I started to feel pins and needles all over my body and then felt my body disintegrate, as if I was just a "blob" of energy or something hovering in the air. Lastly, I could clearly hear every single instrument and note in the song I was listening to without trying, as if the different layers of the music were being deconstructed in real time. The experience felt kind of like a dream, because the more I evaluated or thought about it in my head the more it seemed to slip away - it was strongest when I just calmed down and experienced it without trying to think about it. Eventually my mind got the better of me and it stopped. I've never done drugs, but I imagine that this might be what some hallucinogenic experiences feel like (though to be honest I have no real idea). I think a couple of things contributed to this weird state that I've never been able to reproduce again: * This happened soon after my family relocated to the other side of the world and my sleep schedule was still a bit messed up. * I was a teenager and at the time was going through a phase of interest in lucid dreaming, so I'd been keeping a dream journal and got to the point where I had really good dream recall. I think it also helped me stay conscious closer to the boundary between sleep and wakefulness (eg as opposed to just blacking out into sleep I would remain conscious during more of that transition process) * I had been practising taking mid-day naps because I read that those might be the best time to induce a lucid dream. I wasn't trying to do this when this happened, but it _was_ somewhere around mid-day and I _was_ in bed, maybe my body just decided it was time for a nap and entered that state between sleep and wakefulness. I wish I could make it happen again, but I've never been successful with inducing this.
- benmarks 9y agoYes, "Art of Manliness" website, please send me all of your push updates to my browser
- digi_owl 9y agoHonestly the way the page is styled reeks of "overcompensation".
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoStarting from the name.
- benmarks 9y agoValiant anonymous downvoter, please explain.
- benmarks 9y agoWell, HN is not devoid of shittiness.
- grzm 9y agoSpeculation: I suspect your initial comment drew downvotes because it's pretty insubstantial. Yeah, requests for notifications are a annoyance. Commenting on it isn't likely to promote any kind of worthwhile discussion, and whatever discussion it does engender is likely to be off-topic as well. While not always successful in practice, HN members do tend to value substantive, on-topic discussion. Your second likely drew downvotes because it's explicitly against the site guidelines. > "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html FWIW, at least from its text color, it looks like the initial comment is non-negative. In my experience, things like this often balance out.
- benmarks 9y ago
- zwischenzug 9y agoI have two 'tricks' to falling asleep (but this article looks better). The first is to play the 'unrelated words' game, where you think of a word as completely unrelated to the last word as possible. The second is to count up and work out whether the current number is prime. Both occupy the mind while minimizing stress, allowing the body to relax into sleep. I'm definitely going to try the techniques in the article though. This also made me think of Feynman's sleep experiments: https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/1p1107/richard_feynmans_account_of_his_investigations/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/1p1107/richa...
- tigershark 9y agoHow determining if a number is prime is not stressful? O_o
- zwischenzug 9y agoWell, there are algorithms... but I guess everyone's different :) Maybe there's a kind of thinking you like to do that's 'routine' and irrelevant to daily stresses?
- allenbrunson 9y agoi had trouble falling asleep for about the first 35 years of my life. then i hit on a technique i call “scenarios.” i have various made-up fantasy settings, like an island nation surrounded by a sea of mud, and i make up stories about its inhabitants, building on whatever stories i made up last time. this seems to short-circuit the problem i had earlier, where i could not get my brain to stop racing, worrying about various real-life issues. i have always considered my technique to be so weird and awkward that i have never discussed it with anyone. but now i see, from reading the comments here, that other people have similar techniques. who knew.
- intrasight 9y agoI expect there are many who use what you call "scenarios"
- kmonsen 9y agoI have done this for as long as I can remember, except I didn't do the physical relaxation. I just close my eyes and think "sleep, sleep, etc". Slowly and methodically to take away other thoughts. It doesn't work 100% for me. Maybe I will try to add the physical relaxation.
- kqr 9y agoI'll mention something related, just to see how widespread my experience is. Sometimes when I am just about to fall asleep, I suddenly become very aware of my receding consciousness. It's a strongly uncomfortable feeling accompanied by a rush of energy that wakes me up instantly. It feels almost like my body thinks it's about to die, so it does a desperate hail mary to stay alive, or something. Very unsettling. Does anyone know what this might be about?
- 0xcde4c3db 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk
- kqr 9y agoI have always mentally separated what I described in my first comment from what I have come to associate with the term hypnic jerk. The first is more of a mental, physically still thing. The other is, for me, a sudden motion of a large body part, usually linked to dreaming about falling off something. More importantly, the latter is emotionally neutral. I wake up going "oh, I didn't really fall. It was just a dream." When the former happens, it is very emotionally uncomfortable. It's a feeling of pure dread, but sort of wrapped in cotton.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y agoIt's not a terribly precise term, to be sure. The physical jerk and anxiety aspect are often lumped together.
- SCHiM 9y agoYes I have this sometimes. It's even accompanied with a sort of tingling in/on my head that starts from the back/crown of my head. I always realize it's happening when I start to lose track of what I was thinking about, and can't recall thoughts I had just before I realized that I was falling asleep. By this time it's too late to just let it happen, and I'll have wasted a 'chance' to fall asleep so to speak.
- 9y ago
- njsubedi 9y agoWhen I have to sleep I just start reading comments in a HN post, or start scrolling 9GAG Cute section with my eyes purposefully half-closed. I don’t remember when I fall asleep but most of the times I have only scrolled through less than a dozen posts/comments. Night mode with lowest backlight possible is what helps. This trick is useless in public where there’s a chance of losing the grip of your phone; I’ve been using this technique for several years now after a friend of mine in my Uni taught me.
- toisanji 9y agoI've had various forms of insomnia most of my life. If this could really be turned into a reliable technique or product for people to fall asleep, they would become rich. Recently, my bigger problem is I wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep easily. Insomnia effects so many people and it increases to effect more people over time. I have found that reducing overall internet and computer usage has greatly increased my ability to fall asleep.
- huffmsa 9y agoI've been thinking about my sleep a lot more as of late. I have no trouble being awake and activity 18-19 hours a day, but unless I'm trying to keep going, around hour 18, I naturally do what Mr Winter describes. It's lights out for 5-6 hours. However, I'm told that I'm a frequent sleep talker and have a habit of standing up, surveying the room, and then lying back down (of which I have no recollection). As well it's come to my attention (partly from those who happen to live with me) that my body seems to "cycle" different sensory groups on and off. The talking and standing being part of it, but I've also noticed external sounds influencing my dreams, many of which border on lucidity. I assume this is abnormal (would like to hear otherwise), probably stemming from some deep seated need to be in constant control, but I quite enjoy being able to actively think and remember during my sleep cycle. Which is a contrast to when I was younger and would have trouble falling asleep and had to actively drill more or less what Mr Winter taught, to no avail. Counting sheep just led to an internal Wikipedia dive into sheep and sheep related topics.
- huffmsa 9y agoA fun extension of this I just associated was that in my school years, I'd fall asleep in class, but my auditory processes would keep piping information into my brain in such a way that when the teacher thought they'd have me "caught" by asking me what the answer to the problem on the board was I could more often than not answer correctly without delay.
- dloss 9y agoI use this simple technique, which is a simple technology-assisted hybrid of mindfulness meditation and counting sheep: http://www.dirk-loss.de/calmyourmind/ http://www.dirk-loss.de/calmyourmind/
- mratzloff 9y agoI've never been good at taking naps except when exhausted, so I'll have to try this next time. I'm very good at getting a good night's sleep, though. I fall asleep within a minute of my head hitting the pillow. The key for me is to go to bed at a consistent time (plus or minus 30 minutes or so) every night, get 8 hours consistently, limit light exposure before bed, eliminate caffeine entirely, and generally adopt a stress-free mental attitude. I can deviate slightly from this, but if I deviate too much I start having sleep issues. As a result I consistently wake up without an alarm at the same time every day (plus or minus 30 minutes) feeling refreshed.
- moltar 9y agoHow do you adopt a stress free attitude?
- mratzloff 9y agoThat's a long answer, but the short version is introspecting about my fears, separating events from my internal narrative about them, having compassion for others as well as myself, framing and contextualing issues that come up, and living in an authentic and vulnerable way. It has been a long journey (still ongoing) that involved reading, therapy, mentorship, and coaching. The Landmark Forum (a paid seminar) also produced great results for me.
- cjbenedikt 9y agoSounds a lot like this:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training
- BlackLotus89 9y agoThe technique described in the article is the common autogenic training [0]. I was taught this when I was a child, althought it was never of much use to me, because it didn't seem to help when I tried to use it before tests or when trying to relax. But it is effective for many people and I was even warned not to do it while bathing, because of a risk of drowning. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training
- odammit 9y agoBookmarked in case I ever have trouble sleeping. I have the opposite problem, I can just fall asleep pretty much anywhere and in any position. Just had a triple espresso or four cold brews, no problem. I frequently take “desk naps” throughout the day. I’ll set a timer for 15 minutes and lay my head down on my wrist rest. I fall asleep in less than a minute. Does anyone know if there is a name for that? I generally refer to it as controllable narcolepsy or “luck”.
- hh3k0 9y agoThat could be many things, to be honest. I wonder, though, since you particularly mentioned "desk naps": Does focussing on your work exhaust you to the point of sleepiness?
- odammit 9y agoI usually do it when I can’t figure something out or I’m flip flopping on a solution (software engineer). I originally started doing it to try to take my mind off the problem to not overthink it. But then I’d find that I’d slept for an hour or so. Thus the timer.
- rsyring 9y agoMy son has narcolepsy. When they tested him using a day time sleep study, it was his ability to fall asleep quickly, in just a couple minutes, that was the primary indicator of his condition. I believe the doctor said an ability to fall asleep and hit a certain deep stage of sleep in less than eight minutes is what they look for. In movies and such narcolepsy is often portrayed as uncontrollably falling asleep mid-activity. Turns out that's not actually narcolepsy but a specific form of cataplexy. They are often present together, but are distinct. My son, for example, has very strong narcolepsy but relatively mild cataplexy.
- odammit 9y agoOh so it could actually be narcolepsy and I’ve just been an ass making a joke about it for years. I’m not familiar beyond the movie tropes (that I now know are misrepresentations). Are there complications or other serious things that it can lead to? Are people with narcolepsy generally deep sleepers?
- kaiwen1 9y agoCounting increasingly larger numbers as I'm trying to fall asleep will sometimes make me feel anxious as I become aware that the numbers are getting large and I'm still awake. So now I just count "one" repeatedly. Works much better. The next thing I do is search for patterns in the blackness behind my closed eyes. Once I find myself following random images into whatever they become I know sleep is imminent. Finally, I discovered that mimicking REM by moving my eyes back and forth usually makes sleep come on even faster.
- endymi0n 9y agoHow to fall asleep in two minutes or less: Have kids.
- archlight 9y agoI am in the minority group of fast sleeper but it is more to do with my blood stickiness. sometimes I am a bit scared as it is too quick.
- allannienhuis 9y agoWhy do you believe falling asleep fast is in any way related to how sticky (thick?) your blood is, and why do you believe your blood is sticky/thick?
- esaym 9y agoI guess I'll have to try this...
- gilbetron 9y agoI have had weird sleeping issues all my life, and the key for me to falling asleep was when I found out that our body gets tired not when it is warm, but when it warms up. So next time you can't fall asleep, take off the blankets, make sure your room is cold, and then get really, uncomfortably cold, and stay that way for at least 15 minutes. Then, and this is key, cover your whole body only with your sheet, and then pull the blanket just over your legs. You'll warm up and fall asleep. If you pull the blanket all over yourself and "mummify", then you'll risk getting too warm, which will wake you right up again. I'm sure this doesn't work for everyone, but I think many people get too warm and comfortable, and that will keep you awake. Get cold, warm up, and snooze!
- sdrothrock 9y agoI can vouch for this too, but the down side for me is that because I've done this for so long, it's nearly impossible for me to fall asleep quickly if the room is remotely warm already...
- slfnflctd 9y agoThis is where strategic fan deployment comes into play. Works for me, anyway.
- JosephHatfield 9y agoWhen I was younger, and living in an unconditioned house in central Florida, I used to sleep with a big box fan at the foot of the bed pointing directly at my feet. It kept me cool and kept the mosquitos at bay as well
- gilbetron 9y agoOh definitely - if I'm in a room that is still and is 68+ degrees, I know I'm not really going to actually sleep that night :/
- cortesoft 9y ago
- zombieprocesses 9y agoThis works for me. Half an hour before I go to bed, I have a glass of wine or a shot of whisky while browsing the web or watching youtube/netflix/etc. Boom, it's lights out as soon as my head hits the pillow. An added benefit is that 8 hours later, I have to pee so bad that it forces me to get out of bed. It's a sleeping aid and an alarm clock all in one.
- anonuser123456 9y agoAlcohol will delay and reduce slow wave sleep. Not an ideal solution.
- goldenkey 9y agoI always wake up within 5-6 hours if I goto sleep drunk. Is this the reason why?
- zombieprocesses 9y agoIf you get drunk, maybe. But having a glass of wine isn't going to affect your sleep. Also, this is about falling asleep quickly, not the quality of sleep. I fall asleep within seconds.
- qwerty456127 9y ago5hz binaural beats may help some lucky people (used to help me greatly once, stopped working some years later). You can generate them easily with SBaGen, just make sure to avoid joint stereo mode and bitrates below 192 kbits if you compress to MP3 then.
- peterburkimsher 9y agoThe relaxation method in the article requires physical comfort, which isn't always available. I used to lie awake for hours when I was younger; now I can fall asleep quickly in all places (bus seats, desk chair, etc). What changed? I ride a bicycle. That fixed my blood circulation, so I don't get cold feet. I also read the Bible and pray. It's very easy to fall asleep in church on a hard wooden pew. The same approach works at bedtime. Sleeping less once a week (CouchSurfing meetup from 9 pm to 1 am on Wednesdays) builds sleep debt. That increases my emotional extremes, but the prayer handles the low points, so I end up happier. It also makes me pretty tired, so I'm able to sleep more easily on Thursday & Friday.
- Froyoh 9y agoGod bless you
- lgats 9y agoGesundheit
- d23 9y agoBold move being honest about your religiousness here. I respect that.
- busterarm 9y agoIt's also interesting to hear that the CouchSurfing community still exists. 10 years ago I had friends that used it a lot but left because it got flooded with guys trying to get laid. If it returned to what it was, that'd be pretty cool.
- kyleblarson 9y agoI've always been amazed how quickly people can fall asleep on trains in Japan.
- yacse 9y agoAny steady stream of thoughts can stop me from falling asleep, even for hours. I have noticed that long hours of programming or programming late in the day causes this state of constant hard thinking that keeps me awake. It can be really exhausting and even end in nightmares. I think that the article is right that you need to stop this cycle before falling asleep. Meditation practice helps to stop your thought cycle by focusing on your breath. As soon as your focus shifts away to any new thought, and you recognize it at some point, then you try to refocus again on your breath. However, meditation is done while being fully awake. You want to feel the mind stopping, being fully present in the moment. I found a trick, that helped me to find sleep, even when having the hardest thought cycles. Lying on the back in the bed, I try to focus on my breath just like being in meditation. After a while I slow down my breath as much as I can. It does not take long and I'm fully asleep. I use this trick everytime I have a hard time finding sleep. And it always worked for me. Its one of the most valuable tricks in the toolbox of my life.
- chris_st 9y agoOh yeah. I think it's almost like there's a really active part of my brain that does programming... If I wake up in the middle of the night, if I start thinking about my latest project, bam, I'm wide awake and going back to sleep is way off. It's almost like the old crock of "you only use 10% of your brain"... when I wake up, I'm on 10% mode, but programming thoughts spin up the whole engine.
- yacse 9y agoAnd the great thing is that this technique helps even falling asleep in such situations for me. Its like imitating breathing, like you would be fully asleep and the real sleep follows. You should be aware that this allows me to ignore and procrastinating on pressing issues which I should face head-on. But practicing meditation in the mornings helps with that.
- ams6110 9y agoWhat works for me is to just put on a documentary and something about the monotone narration voice just shuts my brain down. I don't even pay attention to the words. I'm generally asleep within minutes. I assume audio books might have the same effect. I guess it might be related to my young childhood as I had parents who would almost always read to my brother and me at bedtime. So possibly there's a part of my brain that has associated falling asleep to the sound of a voice speaking.
- opinali 9y agoThe mental part is easy, if you can do that: close your eyes and focus on the background white noise that exists inside your head, until it becomes a clearly audible buzz that oscillates in sync with your pulse.
- balabaster 9y agoAs someone who falls asleep in roughly 15 seconds of putting my head on the pillow, it's fascinating that people have to adopt strategies to fall asleep. I wonder what's different about me than other people. I know of insomnia of course, and know plenty of people with it, but it still seems utterly alien to me to not be able to sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. I don't particularly have any bedtime rituals, but I often have a cup of caffeinated black tea right before bed. I don't know whether my ability to sleep at the drop of a hat is physiological or psychological. I'd be interested to figure it out... once I fix the 831 unit tests I just broke by upgrading all the nuget packages in this solution XD
- bergerjac 9y agoSame here. I'm 31. My mom said... even when I was a baby, she would lay me down at 10:00pm, I'd fall asleep almost immediately and wake up at 6:00am like clockwork. On the ultra-rare occasions I don't fall asleep... Instead of trying to relaaax... first I tense the muscles, then relax. The contrast is key. Tension, release. It's almost like sticking your hand in bucket of room temp water. If you would've stuck your hand in an ice bucket for 5 seconds, THEN put your hand in the room temp... different feeling.
- emerged 9y agoReading does it for me. I could be high on 200mg of caffeine, tossing and turning for hours, but 5 pages into a book and I'm out.
- pmoriarty 9y agoThere's a new trick I found that's been working out pretty well for me recently. To backtrack a bit, I've been having decent success with meditating to fall asleep. Namely, the basic technique is to simply focus on my breath -- specifically, on the very point at which I can feel my breath entering and exiting my nostrils (or wherever the outermost point of my body is that I can feel my breath going in and out of), and whenever I notice my attention drifts away from my breath to just gently, without reproach, to focus it back on my breath again. That technique usually worked for me, if I wasn't too agitated. The problem was that sometimes I'd have thoughts really rushing through my mind when I tried to fall asleep, and then even meditating like that wasn't enough. I analyzed what was going on and decided that just focusing on my breath was too monotonous, and gave me too much time for my mind to drift away to thinking about other things. What I needed was a better way to keep my mind busy with something monotonous, but not too monotonous. So I came up with a small modification which has worked better. It's basically the same as above, except on every other breath, instead of focusing on the breath, I'd focus on whatever sensation in my body that's most noticeable. For instance, I might feel a lot of pressure on a body part that I'm lying on, like a certain part of my left arm or something. So every other breath, I'd focus on that. Whatever that is that is most noticeable might change from time to time, so I'd just go with whatever it happens to be. And every other breath, I'd focus on the sensation of my breath as usual. So effectively, I'd be alternating from focusing on my breath on one breath, and on the next on whatever sensation in my body was most noticeable, and then back to my breath. Wearing earplugs and a night mask (blindfold) helps too.
- yacse 9y agoI think I use the same technique with another variation you might want to try out. Focus on your breath like in meditation but, at some point, slow it down as much as you can. So slow that you are on the edge of the body forcing you to breath again. You may calm down and shift into sleep quite easily.
- jyriand 9y agoEasiest method I know: Count up to ten and then down to one again. And repeat. Other way is to count down from 100, if you make a mistake or get confused, just start over again.
- manmal 9y agoHere’s a trick I‘ve stumbled over a few years ago: Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four. Hold your breath for a count of seven. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight. http://www.medicaldaily.com/life-hack-sleep-4-7-8-breathing-exercise-will-supposedly-put-you-sleep-just-60-332122 http://www.medicaldaily.com/life-hack-sleep-4-7-8-breathing-... For me, it does not work immediately, but it makes me fall asleep much faster. AFAIK this works by calming the sympathetic nervous system, just like meditation would. A downside I‘ve experienced is that sometimes I‘m very cold for a while after waking up.
- adamonkey 9y agoThank you for recommending this article! Just what I needed!
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- misterbowfinger 9y agohttps://imgur.com/a/cwnFw https://imgur.com/a/cwnFw Man I HATE it when random websites ask to show notifications. Why would I ever allow it!!!!!
- avip 9y ago[EDIT: I'm afraid this only applies to men] Sexual activity also triggers hormonal activities related to sleep. Or, to quote someone: "Sure there may be a certain outcome, but that's not why we do it"
- Ngunyan 9y agoUsed to do this as a "sleeping pill". Doesn't work anymore.
- anoplus 9y agoDon't worry about sleep too much. Let it be.
- tunabee 9y agoThis is very similar to what’s known as a body scan meditation, which, if performed at bedtime, will usually knock me right out after focusing on just a couple of body parts (you start from the toes of the left foot on up to the head—I’m usually out before getting to the left knee).
- Tomminn 9y agoHistorically, I had the classic problem of instinctively holding on to some stream of thought which I subconsciously felt the need to unwind before I would let dream consciousness take over. I figured out a nice trick to fix this. I close my eyes and visualize myself in an absurd, impossible fantasy scenario. It's amazing how quickly you will let dream consciousness kick in, when you subconsciously know you're giving it a job it's actually good at.
- BirdieNZ 9y agoThis is exactly what I do! I just start "day-dreaming" some story with myself as the main character, often with the setting being from a fantasy novel. I never manage to find out what happens in my story though, because I fall asleep before getting anywhere
- lucidguppy 9y agoWhen I fall asleep I know exactly when I'm going to go off quick - and when I'll stay awake. Learning something new of a physical nature (new sport or physical game). That helps. I can see my mind wander and drift quickly. You just have to let go of mind concentration and you'll drift off. Now if I can figure out how to FORCE the drift then I'll be good. When I can't sleep - my mind is stuck on one thing or another. Like the brain isn't lubricated. Sometimes low level pain just perceptible (normally not enough to warrant a pill) enough to keep you awake. Delayed onset muscle soreness can keep me up as well - but not exercising can keep me up too.
- pklausler 9y agoI always have multiple books going, and I switch to a boring one when it’s time to shut down. Right now that’s Robert Gordon’s “Rise and Fall of American Growth”.
- joveian 9y agoIt should be noted that the military and athletics are both areas that tend to select for people with good sleep to start with (since poor sleep has negative impact on the things they look for) and then often overwork people. So the high success rate is not surprising in those conditions. Sleep is not just the result of both physical and mental relaxation, although most people are likely to be able to sleep in that situation. Every self help book on sleep has varitions of this technique and many people find it helpful, but not everyone is able to sleep quickly even with relaxation.
- JoshMnem 9y agoThis might sound strange, but if I focus on a point about a foot in front of my eyes and hold it there while breathing slowly, I'll often fall asleep quickly. I don't know exactly how to describe it. It's something like projecting your thoughts onto that point, not just thinking about the point. I use the technique when power napping.
- chaoticmass 9y agoI've started using audiobooks to help me sleep. Listening to the book keeps my thoughts from wandering and I'm usually able to fall asleep within 30 minutes or so this way. Podcasts and even a spoken bible work well too. Without these my thoughts wander too much and it can take an hour or more to fall asleep.
- theshrike79 9y agoSleep hygiene worked for me. If I'm not sleeping or having sex, I'm not on my bed. This way my brain associates the bed with sleep and nothing else.