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After decades of trouble falling asleep, I've found a simple technique that works for me. The goal of this technique is to replace words/monologue with images i
by 34679 6y ago
After decades of trouble falling asleep, I've found a simple technique that works for me. The goal of this technique is to replace words/monologue with images in your stream of consciousness. I do this by picturing three shapes, each engulfing the previous one. Start with a sphere. Just imagine a sphere and nothing else. Then picture a 5 sided pyramid that perfectly engulfs the sphere so that the sides are tangential. As this happens the sphere shrinks so the pyramid takes up the space of the sphere. Then repeat, but with a cube. So the cube encompasses the pyramid, with the bottom planes the same and the 4 upper edges intersecting with the 4 upper corners of the cube. Then shrink that and put it in a sphere, starting the process over.
I've found that when I'm really tired I have no trouble conjuring this imagery and sometimes within just a few cycles, vivid explosions of color will flood in and I go to sleep. Other times, I struggle to picture a sphere and start off with the 2d equivalents - circle, square, triangle. The whole thing is a bit like counting sheep, but that never worked for me.
- cafemachiavelli 6y agoI haven't tried this, but I could absolutely see this working for me as well. I've noticed that my visual imagination gets much more vivid just as I'm drifting off to sleep, so I have in the past tried to gently nudge that along by jumping between visual thoughts. It did work fairly well, but I also never had enough trouble sleeping to hone the technique or quantify its effectiveness.
- ReactiveJelly 6y agoSometimes I have hypnagogic hallucinations of people talking, sometimes I can't understand the words, but it's nice because then I know that I'm falling asleep.
- pmoriarty 6y agoI get the same thing, but I've found that I can understand the words if I focus on them and try to understand them, though the problem is that as soon as I do I become more awake and it takes time to get back in to the hypnagogic state again after that, so I usually don't bother.
- baby 6y agoI have a similar technique that I really need to document I think about random ideas in succession very quickly. For example: if I hammer an icecube I’ll get to the meeting on monday. But then that’s apple day. Better running away. There are dogs falling from the sky so I’ll take my fork. Etc. It works every single time. Takes around 10-15min of doing this
- sideshowb 6y agoI've recently been trying a podcast called sleep with me, it basically takes this approach, about an hour of deliberately not very coherent narration
- hnick 6y agoI've noticed words are the problem too. Thinking in words seems to engage something in my brain that just won't let me rest. Images are better. I'll have to try this trick. For whatever reason though, I sometimes notice myself falling asleep which jerks me wide awake (different to restless legs which I sometimes also get). I would love to drop that habit.
- lorthemar 6y agoI have a similar approach too. Not shapes or colors, simply I imagine a cat that is sleeping and try to see things from a cats perspective. It's weird but gets me to sleep almost instantly. Obviously it can be anything but I picked cats because they are the best sleepers I know of :P