8 July, 2008
There's an experience I had around 1975 that made the problem of sometimes having trouble getting to sleep much less frustrating. I lived in an apartment, and the people upstairs had two cats, who around 5:30 every morning would start chasing each other around overhead like galloping horses. I finally decided, "Since I don't get any sleep from 5:30 AM on, why not just get up then, and use the time?" I did so -- and found myself groggy all day.
This showed that in the hour when I felt that Kitty and Rosie were keeping me awake, I was either getting on-and-off sleep that I wasn't aware of, or some kind of rest that had a lot of the same benefits as sleep. I went back to getting up at my usual 6:30; but now I knew that when I found myself awake at night and "couldn't get to sleep", I wasn't wasting the time in bed, but was getting some part of the value of sleep, so that I didn't have to get so upset about it -- which made it easier to get to sleep.
There are still times when I have difficulty sleeping. Some people attach great value to moving one's eyes from side to side (or in an X pattern) for a variety of psychological purposes, saying that it simulates the "rapid eye movements" of dreaming. I have sometimes tried doing this with my eyes shut as a way to get to sleep. It's hard to tell whether it helps; but I don't have many memories of lying awake after doing it.
A method I've come up with very recently that seems good is to mentally recite something, slowed down to one word per breath. I know some long poems, so I might start, say, Paul Revere's Ride : "Listen (breath), my (breath), children (breath), and (breath), you (breath), shall (breath), hear (breath), of (breath), ...". Other people might find the words to songs, or the alphabet, better for them than poems.
I mentally say the word during the in-breath, with silence during the out-breath. If I feel like repeating some word over several breaths before going on to the next, I let myself. If I find I've trailed off and am no longer reciting, I accept that it has probably brought me closer to sleep, and gotten whatever else was on my mind out of the way, and I can let the process of getting to sleep take its own course from there.
14 December, 2018
Well, methods of getting to sleep that work at the beginning don't always continue to work as well. Paul Revere's Ride no longer helps me much. This may be because I'm so accustomed to using it that I can recite it word-by-word and my mind can still wander while I do so. Switching to a different poem seems to help somewhat.
A different method that is sometimes effective is simply to think of sleep -- to think of my mind descending into a world of peace and silent tranquility.
Something else that sometimes works, when I've awakened from a dream that I can still remember, is to "put myself back" into the world of that dream. This strikes me as strange -- does the dream "live" in a different part of my brain from other things I am aware of, some "sleep-related" part, so that going there takes me back into sleep? Maybe. Or maybe it is simply that my dream is sufficiently unrelated to my life that immersing myself in it doesn't arouse trains of thought that would keep me awake.
19 January, 2020
As described above, "putting myself back into" a dream I have just awakened from is helpful. But I find that, even if I haven't just awakened from a dream, recalling a dream I had at some earlier time (whether pleasant or unpleasant), and immersing myself in the memory of it, helps me get to sleep. I still don't know why.
1 November, 2021
If some thoughts keep going through my mind, keeping me awake, I find that it helps to "step back" and "look at" my mind filled with these thoughts. The thoughts imediately turn from something active to a "still-life image" of themselves. Whether I can then quickly get to sleep varies. Sometimes I can let my mind and the image of what I was thinking about "sink down" toward sleep; but whether I can do that or not, it feels better than having the continual tumble of thought.
25 May, 2023
Last night, I was having a lot of trouble getting to sleep, and couldn't use the recalling-a-dream method described under 14 December, 2018 because I didn't remember any recent dreams. So instead, I tried recollecting what I'd done two days before, when I had shopped at Farmers' Market and Berkeley Bowl, remembering, as well as I could, the sequence of stalls I'd gone to at Farmers' Market, and what I'd gotten at each; and the route through Berkeley Bowl, and what I'd put in my cart at each spot. It worked! Thinking about coming days wouldn't work -- my mind would get caught up in decisions that I'd have to make, things I'd want to remember to do, etc.. But recalling the past is passive and relaxing. I hope to use this again.
It may be that the mysterious success of "putting myself back into" a dream works for the same reason -- i.e., not because it was a dream, but because it holds my attention but doesn't demand any active thinking.