Any 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.
What 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.
Mine does exactly the same thing. If she's on the couch watching a movie, she's a goner, but the moment she moves to bed, "it's too loud! Turn it down!" even when it's at 1/10th of the volume when she was drooling on the couch.
It was imperative for an ex girlfriend of mine to have a movie on; or she was unable to sleep. I prefer total darkness so that my body gains the maximum recuperative benefit.
Bob Ross videos on Hulu or YouTube are the most pleasant and soothing things I've ever watched. They usually knock me out in just a few minutes. And if you still can't fall asleep, you got to watch someone paint a pretty landscape.
I have been using audiobooks frequently to help me fall asleep. For me it has to be the right tone of voice and not a high pitched voicy or jerky style enunciation.
I start a random YouTube video and set SleepTimer [1] app to 15 minutes. The beauty of the app is that it softly fades the volume to 0 and turns the screen off by the end of 15 minutes. It has always helped me fall asleep!
Oh 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.
And 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.
I've noticed that too and I make it a point to stop programming or doing anything that requires stimulating brain activity for at least an hour before going to bed.
Try watching a good show that doesn't require too much attention an hour or two before your bedtime. Putting your brain into a passive mode helps a lot. (Do not watch Game of Thrones or any complex/stimulating show or it probably won't help!)
I have constant thoughts going through my head, similar to what you describe. No inspection/introspection/reflection on my conscious mind works for me (counting, drifting meditation), so I use audiobooks to fall asleep.
I have trouble sleeping but it's unpredictable. It's not always, and it usually goes that way for period of time, then I don't have trouble for a period.
I usually don't lose my focus and drift off, instead it's like I'm listening carefully, then I instantly wake up the next morning. It's like a hard stop and I lose a chunk of progress in the book. I'll do anything to fall asleep so I don't mind that.
I've tried it all, I can lay in bed and think about nothing for hours, I'm pretty good at it, and have been doing it for a long time. It's not enough to just 'not have thoughts'.
Also, I never remember my dreams. I can still remember 2-3 nightmares I have had over the years. They are very rare. Never dreams though.
Yup. Same thing happened to me. If i program really hard for many hours right before bed, it seriously prevents me from falling as sleep. The solution is to meditate for a little while before bed or read a light magazine.
And youtube is awesome with it's 6 hour meditation music: to help you do meditation.
I've tried this trick as well before, but it does not work all the time for me. Maybe I am just not disciplined enough in refocusing my attention to breathing. I discovered this trick when I was reading "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" where parts of the book teaches about proper meditation.
I already have sleeping problems before, as I like to be occupied with something before going to bed at 11 or 12 pm. Normally, I would either program, write a blog or a chapter, or read an interesting book that I have been putting off for a while. My problem then was sleeping for only 6 hours, and I wanted to sleep 7.5 ~ 8 hours.
So I decided to switch it, by sleeping earlier (8 am) and doing these other things after I wake up at 4 am. This only worsened, as now I am having issues falling asleep. Tricks that I tried that worked only initially were counting, listening to music, having a hot shower, meditation, etc.
The first time I tried counting, I fell asleep before the count of 10, but on the second night, I was still awake past 30 and getting worried as it getting higher and higher and I am not asleep yet. So I changed it on the third night by repeating "one" until I fall asleep. That worked, but the following night, it was not as effective, as my thoughts just drifted on what happened during the day.
I've tried listening to music. Norah Jones' songs really worked for me for a few nights, but afterwards, the songs became a distraction, as I am now just listening to them and waiting for sleep to fall for hours.
I've tried to clear my head of racing thoughts, but after the thoughts are gone, I hear something like bubbles popping inside my head, which carry on endlessly and keeps me awake. Same with taking hot showers.
Later on I learned that my sleep problems is due to timing, since starting sleep at 8pm is within the "forbidden zone". It also does not help that my gym time is from 5 PM to 7 PM and have dinner afterwards.
I've move my bed time to 9 ~ 10 PM but my sleeping problems persisted. I think it has now become akin to performance anxiety.
I've tried 4-7-8 technique last night, but I find myself gasping for breath trying to hold it for 7 counts, plus the swooshing sound on 8 counts is too distracting when I exhale.
I am still looking for a technique that will work every time. I think I should have a log of my sleeping habits and what worked and what didn't and what things I did preceding the sleep. I'm considering purchasing a sleep tracker like Dreem just to automate sleep quality logging, and see if I could come up with something that works for me.
I 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.
A quicker way to get cold is a really cold shower just before bed. It works really well for me, and I believe there are many other benefits to cold showers beyond just getting to sleep.
I find there are two ways you can go with a cold shower.
One is to really tense up and to fight the feelings of cold. I don't think this is too beneficial. The other is to really relax and embrace the cold. Taking deep breaths and focusing the mind inwards allows you to accept the cold for what it is. It takes a little practice, but once you are in that zone the shower becomes rejuvenating and relaxing at the same time and really helps shake off the day and get me in the zone for sleep.
I 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...
When 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
Probably less than you think. Heat loss or intrusion from the environment is linear in the difference between the environmental temperature and the interior temperature. Since it is cooler at night, it will generally be less expensive to turn down the temperature at night. Even in Florida, the average low in August is 72F. There's not much of a difference between this and 68F, so your AC will not have to work very hard to keep the house cool in the evening.
If you're concerned about energy usage, it's by far more important to tolerate higher temps during the day than during the night. Conversely, in the winter, you can afford to warm your house up a little more during the day, but if you want to sip energy, you need to set the lowest acceptable temperature at night.
You can optimize this further by putting a minisplit or a window unit in your bedroom. If your bedroom is small compared to your dwelling, you can save some serious energy this way. Generally speaking, the cost of climate control will scale in the surface area of the climate controlled volume, and obviously a single bedroom has much lower surface area with the environment than the whole house. This is also why it takes so much less energy to control the climate of a given apartment unit than a house of the same square footage.
I remember reading in A study that feet warming up was the factor best correlates to falling asleep (I remember it from only a few years ago, maybe it was a follow-up to this 1999 study? [1])
I can't fall asleep if the temperature is above 65-70°F, and my feet have to be sticking out from the covers. I have to sleep with a very thin blankets. I honestly have never been able to figure out how people get to sleep any other way.
As a supporting aside, sleep requires that blood vessels constrict a bit, and that's what cold does to a persons body, restrict blood flow to the surface. It may go deeper than that, but I lack the knowledge to assert as much.
The 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.
It'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.
Regarding 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.
Same for me. Sometimes on bad nights it can be hours but I need that time to "unwind".
The music is awesome. I sometimes get hypnogogia. I can imagine the music and then, as I get closer to sleep, I actually hear the music.
If I don't imagine music and I get hypnogogia, I'll hear people chatting next to me. That was quite scary before I understood what was going on.
If I don't get hypnogogia, I'll start imagining odd scenarios. Sometimes I'll recognise that it's a sign I'm about to drift off and then bang I'm awake.
From what I've read, this comes from straddling wakefulness and light sleep phase.
I believe Thomas Edison and others took advantage of the creative power. He drifted whilst holding a ball bearing above a plate so when he went, the ball would clatter on the plate. He'd wake up and note everything down.
Me, I just wanna sleep. I struggle as it is and I cannot nap. The idea of purposefully preventing sleep sounds like torture.
What on earth... I've never heard of hypnogogia. I just looked that up to discover hypnopompic... auditory hallucinations as you transition from sleep to waking up. I haven't constantly suffered this, but at periods in the last 5 years, I have often woken with a jump and an impending sense of dread to either the sound of a doorbell, or my ex yelling my name. In both cases, I know these were hallucinatory, the doorbell I have installed doesn't make the same sound as the doorbell I hear as I wake, nor has my ex been in my presence at the time I heard her calling my name. I had no idea this was a thing, I thought I was just going crazy, lol. So thanks for introducing me to these "conditions(?)" Perhaps I am still crazy, but at least there's a name for it :D
There's a word in the Sami language (a culture indigenous to parts of Scandinavia) that describe the state between being awake and asleep: "Adjágas".
It's been somewhat impotently translated as "slumber" - but it's more akin to what gp describe. I'm sure many native American languages have similar concept.
Yeah, a friend told me about that a while ago. He was pretty freaked out and worried it might be some kind of psychosis!
Don't think you have to worry. I haven't had any issues with my mental health for 8 years, beyond maybe periods of high work stress, and it's appeared at night often since then.
I used to hear the voices if I was very tired and in a silent room and just listened, not thinking. Since I got tinnitus I've never heard them. I think for me silence was essential, felt like my brain was trying to auto gain select, and if there was no signal crank up the gain until some feedback creeps in.
While I don't recognise the music/art part, I have this happening pretty regularly:
> If I don't get hypnogogia, I'll start imagining odd scenarios. Sometimes I'll recognise that it's a sign I'm about to drift off and then bang I'm awake.
Almost like lucid dreaming, but when I'm only half-asleep, and becoming lucid wakes me up.
Lucid dreaming itself woke me up, often in the middle of the night. I had to force myself to forget to ensured I stayed asleep and got a full nights rest, and eventually I stopped remembering dreams altogether.
Lol, reminds me of my first lucid dreaming experience after a long time of sowing the seeds. The moment I recognized I was dreaming ("I" "was" in my living room) I was very excited and thought "Great, it worked! That means I could try out flying!". So I took off - and bumped my head on the ceiling (1). Woke me right up... :-/
Only had one lucid dream and it was pretty disappointing.
I woke and my light was on. I remembered that I'd definitely turned my light off - hey, this must be a lucid dream! So I looked at my hand for a few seconds and everything turned to white. Then I woke up, pitch black with my arms under the covers. The excitement of lucid dreaming woke me up!
Sounds very similair to Dali's process.
Where he would meditate holding a kitchen utensil on top of a pan.
And when he would fall asleep it would fall making a sound and wake him up with i inspration for his next painting.
and Michel Houellebecq seems to use similar process:
INTERVIEWER
What is your writing schedule now?
HOUELLEBECQ
I wake up during the night around one a.m. I write half-awake in a semi-conscious state. Progressively, as I drink coffee, I become more conscious. And I write until I’m sick of it.
It sound interesting, but I never have heard it before and I can't find it in the link or in Google. Is it in the book? Is there other source? (Creativity advisors are sometime too creative.)
This is also mentioned in the Coursera course "Learning How to Learn" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn). Though I don't recall/know what their source is. "Dali Sleep Technique" turns up many hits in your favorite web browser, however.
it is in "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship" a bit after the "Three rules for controlling your dreams".
Edit: Search for the sentence "In this posture, you must hold a heavy key which you will keep suspended, delicately pressed between the extremities of the thumb and forefinger of your left hand." and look at the google book result, you can read the page 36.
If you're reclined (on your back) a bamboo chop stick (or light metal tube that's a bit bigger held with the tip a couple of inches above your forehead works. Make sure your thumb (and no fingers) are below the stick so it will fall.
This 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.
Check out Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce. Even if you think out of body experiences aren't real, well, they're experiences. That book explains how to enter the hypnogogic state (mind awake, body asleep) which I think can also lead to what you experienced.
>> I wish I could make it happen again, but I've never been successful with inducing this.
Same here. But there are some things that help me getting into this state: Dont be hungry, dont be thirsty, ensure to use the restroom beforehand -- basically, get rid of nagging distractions so you can focus on just mental state. Then work on getting to the edge of sleep. It happens to me sometimes on the subway if I'm coming home late or on a bus trip where i've starved myself of sleep beforehand (usually in the winter, cozy in a overcoat.)
We and all the matter around us is only energy. Mass is energy in a very low frequency.
Practice hypnotism or meditation and you'll change your life for the better.
From the description seems you have fully entered alpha brain frequency. It is not exactly hallucinations, just brain disconnects from body while retaining consciousness. I recommend looking up Silva method which developed various ways to achieve this healing mind state, such as countdown meditation or binaural sound.
There’s this book called “head trip: adventures on the wheel of consciousness” that puts forth the idea that there are many brain states, not just asleep and awake. The one just before falling asleep is a really wild one.
I was curious about this a few years ago and looked it up. It's called hypnagogia and people have been known to try to induce it deliberately for creative purposes.
Gave it a Google. Explains my other ranting post in this thread quite well. I apparently spend quite a lot of time in this state. Get lots of really good ideas (almost as many as when doodling on the condensation of a foggy shower window).
When I’m really tired and falling asleep, it sometimes feels like my creative brain becomes uncorked. I can focus on any vague idea and then immediately summon an image or multiple images on the theme of that idea, clear as day. I’ve also sometimes been able to keep a mental guitar jam going almost indefinitely. Wish I had this superpower while awake — making art would be a million times easier. (Maybe it’s trainable?)
You can trigger and even control this state. It's caused by deeply letting go and avoiding structured thoughts. I used to spend 2 hours per day on the train, for 5 years. I always kinda napped in the train, usually with ambient music in my headphones. At some point, I was able to go exactly between the waking and sleeping state, or lucid dreaming. It's an incredibly powerful experience, you can control anything, you are dreaming while your consciousness is fully awake. I also had one experience that could be described as spiritual or religious (though I'm none of that) that was very powerful.
I'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.
> 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.
Not sure if you meant for this to be funny, but I laughed out loud at this because i do the exact same thing. I too can fall asleep within two minutes anytime, anywhere, while "working" on my "novel".
The trick is to never go to sleep with the actual intent of going to sleep. You go to sleep with the mentality of finally, some time for myself to just lie here and work on this project in my head. I work on fleshing out my little fantasy/sci-fi world or solving problems related to my pet programming project. I drift off seamlessly within minutes.
Attempting too hard to sleep is self-defeating; ironically, the stress of actively trying to sleep will prevent you from doing just that.
But 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.
I 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.
Same 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...
I 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.)
Make sure they give you one of the newer machines that has an SD card in it. And it must be an APAP machine, not CPAP. The APAP continuously adjusts air pressure to match your current needs.
The SD card records details of every breath you take. You then plug that info into SleepyHead software and see what's happening to your body.
This is important, because in general the insurance companies only care that you use your machine 4+ hrs per night. They are happy if your AHI (a measure of how bad your apnea is) is below 5. But that still means you are having 5 serious events per hour. Which is bad, unless you're an insurance company.
Go to cpaptalk.com and apneaboard.com and learn how to interpret your SleepyHead data and fine tune your machine to get your AHI down to 0. Works for many younger people. Old folks tend to have other medical issues that keep them from getting full benefit from CPAP. Even they can still be helped; e.g. there are more sophisticated machines that will even help people breathe in and out if their body/brain can no longer do it automatically.
Went to my appointment, doctor wrote an order for an APAP machine, called the medical supply company who is working with the insurance and will call me later today (or will receive a call from me tomorrow morning when they open). Thanks for the advice.
Good luck with your CPAP. When I got mine it was like my brain firing on 8 cylinders instead of 3. Do beware that it can take a couple of weeks of use, during which your body and brain may be a little "bewildered" at getting all this oxygen during sleep!
Oh and your insurance (if you live in a country that has it) may require specific amounts of usage in the first month. Be very aware of that, it's easy to be "non-compliant" because you took it off in the middle of the night.
I'm on month 3 of CPAP use and I didn't get the "firing on 8 cylinders instead of 3" effect -- I can't say I've noticed any change (aside from "my spouse is willing to share a room with me" which isn't unsubstantial). How long did it take before this feeling kicked in?
I’ve been using a CPAP for a couple years, and remember everyone making it seem like there would be an instant change that supercharges everything. This never noticeably happened, but thinking back, things without a doubt improved over time. I mostly notice when I don’t have my CPAP for a night, and I wake up feeling like I didn’t get enough sleep with a sore throat.
The main things I notice now... I used to be able to sleep 12 hours a night easy and wake up tired, now I can hardly sleep more than 8 hours and function completely fine on 6 hours. I can drive for more than 2 hours without having to pull over and take a nap. I don’t feel like I’m about to doze off at work regularly. My productivity has overall increased, but it was a gradual change that I don’t notice unless I think back to my productivity in the past.
Before I started CPAP therapy, I was in a lot of pain. Car accident didn't help. I just dragged on wearing down little by little. My apnea got worse to the point that my partner was worried I wouldn't start breathing after stopping. The first day after I felt a lot less pain. I was still very groggy, but I hadn't felt that good in a long time. It took a while to get up to full speed and feeling normal. Months of barely sleeping took months to recoup from. I still like 9.5 hours of sleep. When I start to decline in performance or hit a wall, that's usually what I try to get back to first, because that's just hard to get squeezed in so I get less usually. Then checking if I'm getting enough exercise and calorie intake.
If I lapse on usage, I find myself unable to really feel like I'm working at 100% efficiency. It takes a few weeks of nightly use before I feel good again.
You may not feel a night and day difference. It can be subtle, but things like not needing multiple naps a day can really make a difference to your quality of life.
If your SO says you snore, or choke and stop breathing, PAY ATTENTION. Get a sleep study!
I’ve been using a CPAP consistently for a couple years now. Can still fall asleep in under 5 minutes. Only difference is now I can usually control when I fall asleep.
Just 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.
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.
I'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.
I 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.
Yes 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.
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.
I 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.
This 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)
I'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.
It 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.
i 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.
Occupying the mind with a mundane task seems to be really helpful for me.
Getting stressful thoughts off my mind is important. But just trying to stop thinking about whatever is worrying me doesn't work because my mind doesn't like to sit there doing nothing, so it looks for something to fill the time with. And the easy choice is whatever issues or problems I've been struggling with lately.
But if I do a mundane task, my brain has something to work on, and it doesn't go looking for things to occupying itself, which means the risk of thinking about something stressful is much less.
Personally I use a crossword puzzle app on my phone. It requires my full attention to think through different words, and the clues give sufficient fodder that I can have some harmless, non-stressful mental tangents. And the thought of leaving a crossword puzzle and coming back later doesn't bother me, unlike say quitting a game of chess in the middle would.
As 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
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.
Sounds 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.
After 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.
Anecdotal 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.
i 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.
Those 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.
There'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.
I 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.
I use this simple technique, which is a simple technology-assisted hybrid of mindfulness meditation and counting sheep: http://www.dirk-loss.de/calmyourmind/
The 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.
When 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.
I'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.
Historically, 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.
This 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
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”.
My 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.
I think tiredness and ability to sleep quickly are less binary and more of a spectrum. My wife, for example, is often tired and can fall asleep anywhere and relatively quickly. It affects our lives a bit, but it's not life dominating. She can push through it when needed.
My son, when not on meds, is always very tired, debilitating so. It's life dominating. He can sleep 12 hours, have breakfast, and sleep a few more hours, etc. It's not just a matter of being able to sleep or wanting to sleep, he feels exhausted roughly 20 of 24 hours a day. He would not wake up in 15 mins because a timer went off.
I, on the other hand, am rarely physically tired, even when I've not got a lot of sleep.
So, it may be that you are just more on the tired end of the spectrum. If your tiredness and ability to fall asleep quickly has more than a casual negative effect on your life, it may be something to talk to your doctor about.
Thanks for all the info! I’m generally not tired until nighttime. It started as a way to relax my thoughts when working. I’m going to bring it up at my next physical though!
People with narcolepsy frequently have trouble staying asleep at night. With narcolepsy, the brain jumps into REM sleep, so it can be very difficult to get enough of the slow wave sleep that is the most vital form of sleep.
It can sometimes get worse over time, but I don't know of major complications other than those directly caused by the sleep trouble and AFAIK treatment is entirely symptom based at this point. Medical treatments for sleep disorders are generally not that good (but in some cases better than nothing).
Ideopathic hypersomnia or other hypersomnias might cause your symptoms also (maybe more likely if you are a deep sleeper). Antihistamine use might also make that easier (even second generation antihistamines affect some people that way and some random medications are also antihistamine). Or it could just be luck as you say that you are able to do that :). Unless there is more than what you mention, it sounds like an entirely good thing at this point and hopefully if so it will stay that way. I've heard some people with that ability call it a superpower and as someone who has trouble getting to sleep it certainly sounds like one to me.
The rare diseases summary of narcolepsy notes:
"However, because narcolepsy often goes unrecognized or misdiagnosed, determining its true frequency in the general population is difficult.
The onset of narcolepsy can occur anytime between early childhood and 50 years of age. Two peak time periods have been identified; one around 15 years of age and another around 36 years of age. Some researchers believe that narcolepsy is under-diagnosed in children. Narcolepsy tends to remain a lifelong condition. Although the nature and severity of symptoms experienced by an affected person may varying over time, the disorder is not progressive."
I 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.
I'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.
A 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.
I 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!
I'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.
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.
I'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.
That'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.
Counting 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.
I 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”.
This 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.
If 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.
This 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.
This 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).
I 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.
5hz 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.
The 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.
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"
Easiest 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.
Disagree 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.
Speculation: 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."
This place is only as good as we all work to make it.
You started with a sarcastic comment that was irrelevant to the topic at hand, then complained abusively when just one person signalled their disapproval with a downvote, then when a helpful commenter politely explained why you were downvoted, your response was to abuse the entire community. In this instance at least, nobody's conduct has been close to being as destructive as your own.
Please, if we want this place to be better, the first step is to take responsibility for being good citizens ourselves.
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.