8 ms·
This is exactly the Zen moment that fixed my lifelong insomnia: lying in bed relaxed with my eyes closed, even if I'm not asleep, leaves me feeling worlds bette
by DrPhish 8y ago
This is exactly the Zen moment that fixed my lifelong insomnia: lying in bed relaxed with my eyes closed, even if I'm not asleep, leaves me feeling worlds better in the morning than fretting about not being able to sleep. It's something that happened when I forgot about it completely. Once I realized I could literally just lie in bed for 8 hours and be OK, I was able to let go.
It's like a trap that closes tighter about you the more you struggle, and releases if you allow yourself to relax
Once I really got that, sleep became regular and uninterrupted
- phire 8y agoMy mum always taught me this, and I've always found it works. Simply lying/relaxing in bed for an hour or two can leave you feeling surprisingly refreshed.
- anonytrary 8y ago> Lying in bed, relaxing and not focusing on not being able to sleep. That sounds a lot like meditation! Let your thoughts flow, do not grasp onto them, simply lay there and breathe. It really does help. I have been doing this for the past two weeks and it has helped me realize that my "sleeping problems" are mostly self-created. I found my biggest problem during bedtime was always rooted in thinking. In hindsight, it makes total sense that training myself to let go of my thoughts was the solution. The short term gratification of interesting thought is outweighed by the long term benefits of healthy sleep.
- collyw 8y agoI have started meditation with one of the aims being to improve my sleep. I still have problems sleeping, but it helps a lot when you are able to let thoughts go without ruminating on them.
- corobo 8y agoI like to think of meditation as garbage collection for the brain. If you don't do it at a specific time to suit you, your brain will do it at the only time it's idle (when you're trying to fall asleep)
- sien 8y agoYep. The book 'Quiet your mind and get to sleep' has this sort of advice. For me something that helped was a cheap fitness watch for $29 that showed me how much sleep I was getting according to the watch. This certainly isn't the case for everyone, but for people who have some trouble sleeping sometime, possibly exacerbated by disruptions to sleep due to small children or something it's very useful.
- fossuser 8y agoI can relate to this too - I also sometimes feel anxious when going to sleep, there's something strange about going away and coming back and continuity of self. I think the only reason people aren't afraid of it is that everyone is used to it. One thing that helped was recognizing that I've never failed at eventually going to sleep - which then relaxes me and makes it easier to actually fall asleep.
- vertexFarm 8y agoThat's utterly fascinating. What a bastard the human brain is. I'm going to try that.
- laumars 8y agoI discovered this recently too. Even in the instances when I still don't get to sleep (eg my 1 year old coming into bed and wriggling in her sleep waking me) I've still felt more refreshed when I've relaxed rather than laid in bed wound up. I'm not into new age / whatever stuff but I like to think of it as night time meditation as while it's still not as good as sleep it's still a great deal better than full blown insomnia! And best of all, sometimes it clears your mind enough to actually sleep. > It's like a trap that closes tighter about you the more you struggle, and releases if you allow yourself to relax That is a beautiful analogy. Both in terms of accuracy and imagery.
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- scoot 8y ago> 1 year old coming into bed and wriggling in her sleep waking me I respectfully suggest you put a stop to that before it becomes a habit, as your child needs to learn to go back to sleep in their own bed. Quietly & calmly return them to bed, tell them to go back to sleep, wait outside a few moments, then go back to bed. Repeat as necessary. It will take a few nights, but they'll soon realize bed-hopping is not accepted. (Not to mention, 1 sounds pretty young to have moved from a cot to a bed.)
- jacquesm 8y agoMind your own life & business.
- exergy 8y agoWhat's with the snark? At worst, OP can reject the suggestion and choose for himself. At best, he sees a different perspective. I didn't get any negativity from the parent's comment, just a suggestion.
- jacquesm 8y agoI think it is in pretty poor taste to start handing out free parenting advice without knowing anything about the situation. If someone asks 'should I let my one year old daughter sleep in my bed' you could make that suggestion but when someone mentions this anecdotally then you have no business sticking your oar in in that way. And most comments that start out with 'respectfully' aren't, this one is no exception.
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- freshhawk 8y agoFor me it was an unintended side effect from starting to meditate. It dawned on me one night that I could just quiet my mind long enough to fall asleep. I wish someone had told me that was a use for the skill, I would have learned it way sooner.
- SiVal 8y agoYears ago I noticed that when I used meditation techniques to quiet my mind, it made me sleepy. It's possible that it was just revealing a bit of underlying sleepiness that was usually masked by busy activity. So, I started using it when I was having trouble sleeping, and it worked like a charm. I've been doing it for years and taught my kids how to do it. My elementary school kid, who tended to be on the anxious side, really liked it. Only problem is that now I get even sleepier when I try to meditate. ;-) Oh, well, I'd rather sleep well than meditate if I can't have both.
- fredley 8y agoYup. I did a Sleepio course that had a good trick for this: Remember that you've got through every single day after a bad night's sleep before just fine. Even if you don't sleep a single moment, you'll get through the day. You've done it loads of times before and you'll do it again. For me a big source of panic was worrying about the impact on the next day a bad night's sleep would have. I still have nights where I don't sleep from time to time, but I've stopped caring about it.
- blueatlas 8y agoNice. "Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Install_Gentoo 8y agoWhat if that is the fear of death. That would be the death of everything now would it.
- sheauwn 8y agoSo if you fear death . . . ?
- YeOakAye 8y agoIf you fear death, dying will certainly cure you of that fear.
- notheguyouthink 8y agoMan, generally I don't have sleep troubles[1], but I hate not getting sleep. It destroys my next day. Like, objectively. I don't operate well without sleep, so the thought of "you'll get through the day" doesn't ring nice for me. The same is true if I stab my foot with a knife, but it doesn't mean I won't dread experiencing the recovery from the knife wound lol. [1]: I sleep well, I get plenty of it. The only downside I have is restless leg syndrome which, according to my wife, has me kicking and moving my legs a lot at night. I imagine that impacts my quality of sleep, so I try to get a bit more sleep due to that.
- yawgmoth 8y ago> It's like a trap that closes tighter about you the more you struggle, and releases if you allow yourself to relax So it's saidar, not saidin :)
- michaelneale 8y agoI find that works well for jet lag also (when your body really doesn’t want to be asleep).
- nickjj 8y agoI'm always able to fall asleep pretty well in familiar environments but in new environments I can rarely sleep. The whole "lay down with your eyes closed but not actually sleep" thing does work. I survived like this for 5 nights in a row with a maximum of 2 hours of REM sleep in the last few nights. I don't know how but I was quite functional during those days too.
- cdelsolar 8y agoYou probably slept more than you think. I have the same issue and for a while after changing cities I was sleeping awfully. Yet I was still functional, my gym performance barely suffered, and the problem has almost entirely gone away now, mostly through telling myself "whatever, I'll be fine".
- Nr7 8y agoThis would never work for me. The idea of lying awake in bed for 8 hours doing nothing sounds like torture.
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- r00fus 8y agoIt's a very zen realization: don't try. Just be. My wife meditates while sleeping (she figured it out because she only really takes the time when she's in bed and it always put her to sleep - so now if she wakes up in the middle of the night she just meditates and goes back to sleep).
- dominotw 8y agoYes the worst thing yon can do to fall asleep is to trying to fall asleep.
- wufufufu 8y ago> Once I realized I could literally just lie in bed for 8 hours and be OK, I was able to let go. I think you still need REM cycles to be OK. edit: Ok, I guess the purpose of this thread was to make everyone feel better, but technically I don't think it's possible to survive without REM sleep. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-in-anyway-possible-to-survive-without-REM-sleep https://www.quora.com/Is-it-in-anyway-possible-to-survive-wi... In the vain of feeling better: I find it easier to sleep once I realize I can just skip all obligations the next day and be fine if I don't get any sleep. Eventually I will sleep because it'll be impossible not to. That or I'll die, and I'm not particularly worried about sleep deprivation induced death.
- BurningFrog 8y agoYou need REM to feel great.
- kazagistar 8y agoYou will still be far more OK then if you stared at a computer or something.
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