I got three, they all seem to work on me, but sometimes I prefer one over the other for no clear reason.
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Counting my breath duration. Breath in at normal speed, count how long it is, then breath out slower than that by two or three counts.
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Force my thoughts to become disorganised. I do something like free association between concepts and pictures of the inner eye. Common starting point for me is a free flight over a hilly landscape, then random things, woods, trees, rocks, water whatever, I don't try to control anything about the theme. If I start thinking coherently or about something concrete from my life, I just start again, with another nature scene.
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Imagine a calm scene. The suggested starting point I was told was floating on an air matteress in an alpine lake (helps that we know those around here, but I'm sure non-alpine lakes work too) and imagine the things you can see uphill as you drift around your axis.
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Complete darkness. Black out curtains on windows. Remove anything that has a light. I can see the tiny LED light on a charging cable through my eyelids. I fall asleep so much faster after getting rid of all light sources.
No alcohol. Drinking would make me fall asleep easily, but I would wake up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep for 1 to 2 hours every time.
Controlled breathing
Understand it's a skill you can practice. Close your eyes, get comfy, relax your body, find a happy thought.
For me it was a long process but eventually I got to the point where I fall asleep at the same time and I wake up at the same time. In other words I have a highly predictable sleep schedule. The downside is that I'm not able to sleep past my "wake time".
- Quit smoking and drinking. Nicotine elevates blood pressure and alcohol makes you pass out, not sleep.
- Don't eat anything heavy for few hours before bedtime.
- No screens at least one hour before sleeping. This might be controversial because there are different studies regarding the issue but cutting the screen time has another positive effect (see next point).
- Reduce or eliminate stimulus - reading polarizing articles, constant notifications, etc.
- This one is a personal one - play soft music at a almost hearable level. For reference, I'm a metalhead but I like soft piano/jazz/blues playing when I fall asleep. Set a time to stop the music so it won't wake you up.
- Instead of a standard alarm clock use a sunrise alarm clock. Long story short, it's a lamp that simulates sunrise by gradually increasing the brightness and the colour of the light.
- Use a sleep tracker, for example Apple Watch or any other "smart" watch which tacks your sleep patterns.
- This one is a personal one. Just before you fall asleep, e.g. when reading a book and your hand goes down, go to the bathroom before falling asleep, even if it makes you wake up/active for additional 10-15 minutes.
No caffeine after 2
Take magnesium glycinate and threonate and hour or so before bed (threonate helps me sleep but it can cause vivid dreams)
Make sure you're comfortable in the bed both in terms of bed firmness/softness and temperature
Use a fan to regulate temperature and create white noise
Create a regular bedtime ritual (brush, floss, skincare, etc) and stick to it
Chamomile tea can help relax
I've also found drinking some cool/cold water right before attempting to sleep can help, because your body temperature drops as you go to sleep. I'm also a hot sleeper, so that also helps to cool down my core.
Make a regular sleep schedule and stick to it as much as possible
Write down any persistent thoughts, journal emotions, or create a to-do list from whatever might be running through your mind. Getting that out of my head and onto paper helps to alleviate any anxiety and can help stop my brain from planning and running amok while I'm lying there.
I turn off all the lights and only use some color-changing LED lights an hour or so before bed. White lights are too bright and can keep me from sleeping. Red is darker, yet still bright enough to see where I'm walking. Red lights are also best for night vision, if you go stargazing, make sure you have red flashlights, because white light will destroy your night vision for 20 minutes or so.
I also use a screen dimming app on my phone to bring the brightness down lower than the brightness setting will allow. On Apple devices, this is a regular setting in accessibility called "Reduce White Point". Android still hasn't figured out how to mimic that well and the best app I've found is Screen Dimmer Plus. It basically puts a Grey layer over whatever images show up on your phone and will mess with screenshots taken and it doesn't change anything with the top 1/4" of the screen. The Reduce White Point setting on ios doesn't mess with screenshots and changes the brightness for the whole screen. It's one of the big disappointments I've had with android.
Get Blackout curtains to block light from the windows
Don't exercise too close to bed. I also can't take showers or baths too close to bed because they will disrupt my sleep.
Slow breathing and closing your eyes will lying in bed can help if you're restless. I've also found that if I'm having a particularly hard time falling asleep that getting out of bed and reading a book or fiction story before returning to bed can help.
Choose something light and calming to watch as the last thing before you turn off your TV. Nature documentaries like Planet Earth or a light comedy can help you unwind and be a little more calm than watching an action, horror, or drama movie/TV show.
Another thing I've read about if you're restless is to work your way uo your body squeezing your muscles for a few seconds. So start with your feet and flex them a couple times for a couple seconds, then go uo to your calves, all the way up to your eyes. The flex and release is supposed to help release any muscles that are still clenching from the day.
Spending time in nature during the day is supposed to help calm the mind and body, so finding 20-30 minutes to walk around a park could be helpful.
Don't stress out about not falling asleep. Lying there with your eyes closed with relaxing breaths is supposed to be restful for the body
Potassium might help you relax and I think it's also supposed to help with blood pressure if you've been consuming too much sodium. Not 100% sure on that, but I figure getting blood pressure under control can help you get better quality sleep.
Don't "try" to fall asleep (it is involuntary), just make the safe & comfortable feelings so your mind knows it is okay to fall asleep.
Don't think of anything real
My favorite trick is to think of myself in a movie and play it out. I commonly put myself in Harry Potter. I walk up to the hogwarts castle door...then I just have fun making stuff up and playing it out like a movie in my head. Next thing I know, I'm asleep.
If I get too far, I just pick a different movie and start over
The worst thing you can do while falling asleep is thinking about the real world. The present, past, or future. Nope, don't think about it.
Clear your mind and jump start a dream
- Sleep and wake at the same time every day.
- Wake early.
- Avoid caffeine after mid day.
- Cool temperature bedroom as you go to sleep.
- Avoid stimulation immediately prior to sleep e.g. screens, intense exercise, arguments.
- Make the bedroom a place of rest exclusively, no screens, noise, etc.
- If sleep is elusive don't stay in bed, go do something and come back later to try again.
- Worrying about sleep only makes sleep more difficult.
- Don't use alcohol or drugs to help sleep except very briefly to get over a hump. Of the benzodiazepine class, zopiclone is effective for short periods to re-establish a sleep pattern.
Oh boy.
First of all, form good "sleep hygiene" habits, read: https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Sleep Hygiene.pdf
A lot of it is obvious, like go to bed at the same time every night (set a timer to get yourself reliable at first!), and wake up at the same time every morning. Give yourself more "sleep opportunity" than the hours you want to sleep so you actually get enough sleep (e.g. if you want to sleep 8 hours, maybe give yourself 10 hours in bed with the lights out).
Don't use screens several hours before bed, don't do anything but sleep in your bed, and wind-down before bed with something like reading a book (again, in a chair in another room, not in your bed).
Now for more advanced tips I've learned from dealing with insomnia:
A problem I have sometimes had is that tasks like meditation can actually cause me to become more alert, and it turns out meditation actually does cause insomnia.
When struggling with meditation related insomnia, I got lots of practice navigating falling asleep.
What I found most helpful was rather than focusing on an object in a meditation like way, to instead allow mind-wandering and rumination and to try to cultivate a lack of metacognitive awareness about that rumination. Basically, the opposite of meditation. Meditators will hopefully know what I mean by this - but basically, don't pay too much attention to what you are thinking, just get absorbed into the mind-wandering.
Sometimes if the mind-wandering leads to thoughts or feelings that are "strong" or engaging enough it can prevent me from sleeping, like when I'm anxious or my mind is preparing or rehearsing for an important event or the next day. In that case, a little bit of meta-awareness can be helpful to alert you to the need to redirect your rumination to something actively boring or benign.
In the most extreme instances, I visualize myself working in a factory performing a repetitive motion like pulling a level to operate a press. I essentially constantly try to pay attention to that mundane task and ensure that it remains mundane / uninteresting - just keep pulling the lever and keep paying attention to that task. This is akin to the counting sheep method, but I always found counting sheep too interesting or engaging of a task.
After hours of boredom I usually lose consciousness.
Sometimes I threaten myself with getting out of bed, and often in response I feel a resistance and that makes me realize how tired I actually am, and I threaten myself with doing something boring like sitting in a chair and staring at a wall. Sometimes that is enough to kick me out of my energized thinking into a milder / more boring and repetitive mind-wandering that leads to dreams and unconsciousness.
Sometimes I actually do have to get out of bed and do something, often I will stretch and if I'm not feeling overwhelmed with sleep that way, I find it helpful to exhaust myself with forearm planks - just hold until you can't anymore (you can also use a timer for 30 seconds or 60 seconds, whatever pushes you past comfort but all the way to failure), maybe try this a couple times. You will sweat and it's miserable the whole time, and you will be tired and want to crawl back into bed. That has helped me fall asleep really well before, and sometimes I think it's because the blood also gets into my muscles and somehow this helps me relax.
Anyway, hope this helps!
I had insomnia for decades. I did everything under the sun: workout, hot shower, warm milk, counting, breathing techniques, melatonin (beware of side effects with continous use), no screens, etc etc. Nothing worked and then per my doctor's orders I take magnesium glycinate and it works like magic
This is what I tell my children, get comfy, relax your body, close your eyes, and think of something happy.
Close your eyes and lie very still
I had absolutely debilitating insomnia for my entire life. In the last couple of years I discovered something interesting. I’ve got a condition called aphantasia which means that I cannot see any images in my mind. For my whole life I heard the phrase counting sheep and thought it was a metaphor. Just like. Thinking about sheep since visualizing wasn’t something that I thought people could do.
Anyway, in researching about the condition I found an article online for an exercise where you can work on trying to visualize something. Basically you close your eyes and use the flashing remnants of vision to try to force a shape to exist. Sometimes you need to push on your closed eyes and a little pressure will cause some patterns to appear. You’re supposed to do this exercise while talking to someone outloud. Even if it’s just making a recording. The article I read said you must say it out loud or you will fall asleep. Me having never fallen asleep in my life without hours of concerted effort completely ignored this warning and much to my surprise it absolutely made me fall asleep within minutes.
Ever since then I’ve been able to use this technique to fall asleep every night. It’s like my mind finally learned how to do it. Most of the time I don’t even need to do these exercises any more.
That being said I was so pleased with this side effect I never even tried the say it out loud to try to improve mental images and I still can’t see anything in my minds eye. But being able to sleep every night without fail is a freaking miracle. So I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Here is the original instructions I found on it. https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photographers/
I'm just someone on the internet, take everything with a grain of salt.
Only go to sleep when you really intent to. No scrolling on your phone in the bed, no reading books,...
The moment you lay/sit down, you intent to sleep.
If it doesn't work: get up, do something else, try again later.
Isolate factors that could keep you awake like sugar, caffeine, alkohol,... Even a handfull of gummies could influence when you fall asleep.
Check on air-quality, room temperature and moisture, dryness of bedding, room -brightness, -light sources, noice levels.
Try out keeping a journal of these things, as well as your mental state and reflect on your sleep in the morning.
If available, ask your SO or room-mate about their sleep, that's a great way to identify external influences.
If your data stays inconsistent, ask a doctor, as there might be medical conditions influencing you falling asleep, ike high blood pressure or hormone imbalances.
routines routines routines. same bedtime, same wake up time. if you establish a routine, it should take 14 days to kick in
Same time every night. Consistency is key.
- Only lay in bed for sex and sleep, nothing else.
- Make sure your screens are off or have an orange filter for nighttime.
- Toke it up, if you want and it's legal, about 20 minutes before bed.
- Go to bed around the same time each night.
- and the most important... INVEST IN A GOOD MATTRESS!
Not affiliated at all, just a customer, but AmeriSleep beds have been the best beds I've ever laid in! They have just enough give in firmness to avoid hip pain while sleeping on my side, but support those pressure points evenly with your spine.
Have a 2 year old that falls asleep at 9, wakes up at 2:30ish Falls asleep at 4:30 after 2hrs of struggle and the wakes up at 0630.
Step 1: Acquire idiopathic hypersomnia
Step 2: Sleep and never stop
Something like counting sheep - but in reverse.
- Count down from 100 to 0
- Imagine each number ( like you are viewing in a calculator display or in any font you like )
- External thoughts may come and go , consistently come back to the last number you have seen.
I usually wander in external thoughts for .5 or 1 sec and come back to the last number. Then, sleep somewhere between 50-30
- For morning time / loud surroundings, use a White noise music. Low volume on a Noise cancellation earphone.
dont move at all. get comfy, then stop moving. dont even scratch a slight itch
Use your bed only for sleep. No screens for a few hours before bed. Milk before bed. Reading or audio books are a great way to settle your mind.
If you aren't asleep after 30 or so minutes get up and do something chilled for a little bit. Laying there getting pissed you aren't asleep doesn't help.
Stick to a sleep / wake schedule. I've found getting up early and consistently much more effective for sorting out my sleep.
Jack off first
Lately, I've been taking melatonin gummies about an hour before I want to go to bed. They don't really make me sleepy, but they make falling asleep easier (something I've always struggled with). I'll usually take another one when I actually go to bed (unless they're time time-release kind which I can't always find).
I close my eyes, take slow deep breaths, and with each breath slowly count up and down from 0 with the high number increasing by one on each cycle. Eg. 0 1 0 1 2 1 0 1 2 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 3 2 1 0... It requires just enough concentration to keep my brain from drifting off to other thoughts (usually), but is boring enough that I rarely get to 9 without falling asleep. If find my mind does wander, I just try again.
lying on my back, relaxing all my muscles, calmly, slowly "repeating" sleep in ny mind until i fall asleep
oh, and I resisted using eye masks for years, but blocking out as much light as possible helps so much.
blackout curtains are amazing and worth every penny.
One thing I heard from somewhere is to pick a random word. Then for each letter in it, think of a random animal. Then pick another random word and repeat.
Supposedly this mimics the brain activity during sleep and dreaming, which tricks your brain into actually sleeping. No idea if it's effective or not though.
Sleep got a lot better for me when I followed medical advice and avoided my bed for anything but sleep (and the other thing, lol). Your brain needs to not associate your bed with work, school, video games, etc., so it can work as a trigger. Ever since I did that, I sleep within minutes of laying down.
400mg theanine and/or 2g Magtein. Melatonin didn’t work for me and I dislike the effect of cannabis and its derivatives on my body.
Breathe in to a count of 4, hold to a count of 7, then exhale to a count of 8. Do it until you fall asleep.
** The added benefit of this method is you're also cleaning out the stagnant air from the bottom of your rib cage/lungs (from smoking, pollution, etc).
CBD-Melatonin gummies. They knock me out in 15m.
I like a podcast called Fall of Civilizations. It's very calming, quiet accounts of dark periods in history. Despite the juxtaposition, it's very chill and relaxing.
Massive physical exhaustion with time to "calm down" before sleep.
Do relaxing activities before bed.
Laying down and watching an old black and white movie puts me out quick. I've been watching the old Universal monster movies this month and it has been a struggle lol. Also started taking melatonin and that helps me sleep too. If I can't sleep due to stress/anxiety I imagine I'm dying and that seems to work.
Nothing. I’m cursed. I will lie awake until 2am at times. I’ll wake up at 3 am and not fall back asleep until 6.
How To Trick Your Brain Into Falling Asleep | Jim Donovan | TEDxYoungstown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5dE25ANU0k
Meditation works really well for me.
Don’t drink coffee or tea past 4:00PM
Warhammer 40K lore.
No phone, No light, no noise, slightly cold temperature, read a book, have vigorous sex.
Alternatively some strains of weed also work allegedly.
I haven't seen exercise mentioned nearly enough in this thread. Doing an hour of yoga before bed makes sleep soo much easier.
It's really simple: you stfu and listen.
Turn off the narrative, the inner monologue, the train of thought. You probably can't shut it down completely - that's okay, just let it go each time you notice it.
Meanwhile, the back of your mind is constantly generating chatter. Passively eavesdrop on that chatter. You won't be able to make much of it out, it's mumbling and disconnected scraps, like someone else's conversation across a cafe. That's okay. Just kind of tune in; if you get stuff, you get stuff.
Being still enough to listen relaxes your body, and the listening-state and the space you create for it soon fills up with dream-gibberish - and that segues smoothly into actually dreaming.
I'm able to sleep almost immediately basically wherever I lay my head, so I've never really had any problems sleeping. However the most important change I've ever made for sleep quality was how I consume caffeine. Yes, I believe you can fall asleep while totally wired, I can too. The problem is that the sleep quality will be terrible and definitely can contribute to insomnia.
So first, the FDA nailed the appropriate amount of caffeine in a day. Don't consume more than 400mg in a day, and keep track. Too much caffeine with overstimulate you and will contribute to any feelings of anxiety while awake or trying to sleep.
Second, stop consuming caffeine several hours before bed. The biological half life of caffeine is between 6-8 hours, so if you have 400mg at 2pm, you'll still have roughly 200mg in your system at 10pm. That's where your sleep quality will get impacted. My personal rule is that I should space out my consumption over the morning, and stop having any caffeine at all in the afternoon.
No screens for two hours before bedtime.
Read a book or listen to music.
Melatonin works for me.
Hot shower.
My go to is counting backwards from 100. I typically time the counting with my breathing, and I try to slow my breathing. Most nights I’m usually out by the time I hit 80. If you find your mind wandering, try to bring your thoughts back to your Breathing. I started doing this after I had been meditating for a while, so it felt fairly natural. If you’re new to meditation, do some basic meditation training to get the idea. Most meditation trainings start with learning how to focus on your breathing.
In addition to all the above, I found a weighed blanket really helped me. Make sure your room is very dark, pitch black. If it is not, upgrade your blinds or a sleep mask. I got one that's simple and cotton and it works wonders.
Now its winter I also have a heated blanket.
I heard the US military swears by a bodyscan meditation exercise. That works for me, or at the very least calms me way down. Sometimes I'll try and take a short walk through the night, because I love it, but thinking about leaving the bed an getting ready for outside makes me very sleepy :) . Good luck falling asleep, unwanted awakeness is super boring and gets old really quick.
Exercise. If you aren’t physically tired you’ll have a hard time falling asleep. Most people with physical jobs have no problem sleeping.
Progressive relaxation. Seriously.
- Partial tip: There's often the suggestion of concentrating on breathing, usually with some kind of regular pattern. This is an alternative to try.
You'll need to have been in bed for a while, mind racing. Take how extreme that racing is and then taking a similarly extreme, almost uncomfortably deep breath to match it. This requires having been in bed for a while.
Hold it for a bit. Don't count seconds - avoid numbers. As soon as you get the vaguest hint from your body that you need to let it out and breathe normally again, do so. Try to relax as much of yourself as possible as you do that. This is not a "hold your breath till you pass out" thing. You want to go back to breathing normally.
If the breath was too deep and that freaked you out a bit, try going a bit more shallow on the next one.
This has sometimes worked for me, especially if I've been asleep already and can't get back to sleep.
Sometimes I've tried a regular breathing exercise after that.
Other times I have got out of bed and done something mindless for a while until I felt tired again. No doomscrolling.
- More traditional tip: No caffeinated beverages for at least 6 hours before you go to bed. Yes, six. Nine's even better.
Smoke a lil weed before bed
Anesthesia
Hit your face with a frying pan 😆
