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!
Do nothing but sleep in the bed?
Oh, 'cmon!
My wife won't be happy about that.
She really likes to cuddle and play with the cat in there
awww 🥹
THC and an orgasm.
CBD and abstinence to stay awake.
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.
For my whole life I heard the phrase counting sheep and thought it was a metaphor.
It ... isn't?
Waauw
Welcome to a whole new world where you can’t do some fundamental form of thinking most people can.
Theres also people apparently that don’t have an inner monologue and can’t hear words in their mind either. I truly can’t understand how that works. It’s way more foreign of a concept than not being able to visualize. But maybe that’s just because I’ve never been able to do it so I don’t know what I’m missing.
The people that can’t do either are truly frightening. What’s going on up there?
I've been practicing the rubbing thing today. The only things I think I've seen so far are faces, glimpses of and silouettes of.
It works better if I keep my palms slightly pressed over both eyes. As soon as there's a lightsource I just see that, light through my eyelids.
This is amazing and slightly scary.
How long since you've discovered this?
It’s been about a year or so. You shouldn’t have to constantly apply pressure. When I first started I just kind of took whatever was there and tried to pretend it was a specific thing then hold that thought then as it morphed and changed just quickly identified a new thing and held that thing as long as possible. I think the article calls it image streaming. Then when all the sparks fade from pressure maybe do it again.
Does this also work if you don’t have aphantasia?
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.
On the worrying point. If you find yourself worrying that you can't fall asleep, remind yourself that just laying there is giving yourself a chance to slowdown and relax. Giving yourself permission to relax is the first step to letting go of the worry.
Right. It's perfectly normal to have difficulty sleeping. We often don't know why and that's okay too. In time it will pass, as all things do.
I couldn't sleep for decades until I started listening to audiobooks. It's a bedtime story. Shut your mind off, let go of stress and just listen. It can still take a little while but now I fall asleep in minutes instead of 3 hours. It also helps me go back to sleep if I wake up from nightmares.
Same. Podcasts are also great, and some are even made specially for this purpose, like Nothing Much Happens.
For me, podcasts specifically about going to sleep to them trigger my contrariness too much to be actually relaxing. It's gotta be on a normal topic that is just the right balance of interesting, but not exiting/engaging.
History typically scratches that itch for me. Dan Carlin's hardcore history and the history of the English being the two goats that coke immediately to mind. Camp Monsters is also a great one; the rare fiction podcast that I can actually stand, much less relaxes me enough to sleep.
I know a lot of people for which this works great. Personally though, it has the opposite effect. I cannot shut my mind of by listing to audiobooks. Either I ignore them and it's just noise, or I listen to them and stay awake until the audiobook stops.
William S Burroughs rambling endlessly
Same time every night. Consistency is key.
Reading, absolutely. And exercise.
If I start reading before bed, I'll still be turning pages until the sun comes up. 😮💨
Try reading The Hobbit lol. For whatever reason I can’t get more than a few pages at a time before I start nodding. It seems exciting but something about the writing style puts me to sleep.
I read complicated and dry books as that helps me. I’m reading a Roman history book and an old philosophy book at the moment that I barely make it through a handful or two of pages of either before I’m drowsy. But if I pick up a brilliant piece of literature, I’ll read until dawn with zero issue.
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 try to go easy on those, as I vaguely recall reading that frequently taking melatonin for long periods of time can have some unpleasant effects, but yeah, I finally picked some up, and I've used them on rare occasions when I absolutely cannot get to sleep or when my sleep cycle is way out of whack, and they definitely do have an impact.
I try to keep the room dark. Don't drink caffine near bedtime. I have one of those blackout masks to really get rid of any light if necessary. Avoid thinking about anything interesting or with emotional impact. Get some exercise prior to going to sleep. I've rarely had problems with sounds keeping me awake, but I have some silicone ear plugs for the very rare times that that comes up.
Yeah, I try to only use them sparingly. If for no other reason than not wanting to build up tolerance or dependency on them. That said, I probably have been taking them more often that I should.
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.
I manually slow my breathing just a little bit evertime but not too much that my body will notice, and see how slow I can go
Breath in for 7s
Breath out for 7s
Repeat until you've stablized your breathing / pulse
Breath in for 8s
Breath out for 8s
Repeat until you've stablized your breathing / pulse
Breath in for 9s
Breath out for 9s
Repeat until you've stablized your breathing / pulse
...
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.
This person sleeps
Massive physical exhaustion with time to "calm down" before 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.
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.
Don't.
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.
I do something a bit like this. I'll pick a theme (animals, food, places, etc) and then go through the alphabet one letter at a time and something from the theme that starts with that letter. Alternatively, I'll pick a letter and just think of as many different words as I can that start with that letter. Those work for me most of the time!
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
I got three, they all seem to work on me, but sometimes I prefer one over the other for no clear reason.
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.
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.
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.
We are super similar, lake, mattress, inner eye, box breathing.
Sometimes can get too vivid, but least I'm disconnecting from the day.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How do you know how far you got? Do you remember the last number the next day?
I like counting my breathing as well, but I find that remembering what number I'm on keeps me awake. So I count my breaths from 10 to 0 and then back to 10 again.
I solved the remember what number I’m on thing by just jumping back to whatever number I thought I was on. “Iunno, fuck it 67…”
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.
"If you think about Big Sleep, then Tiny Sleep doesn't seem that scary 💕"
I take several breaths thinking about my pillow, bed, covers, and position; get comfortable and relaxed; and try to clear my mind. Then i start at my feet relaxing each body part for three breaths, feeling it sink into the bed and focusing hard so other thoughts can't creep in. If i get distracted and wander, i start over. I'm usually asleep within a couple of minutes. It took me awhile to learn to do this and to keep my brain blocked. What I've learned is that sometimes it's not 'can't fall asleep' it's 'won't fall asleep,' i have this great method that works almost every time, but sometimes I'm resistant and still staring at the clock. Then i think, "knock it off! You're self sabotaging!" and force myself to follow through.
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.
Let yourself get a little cold. You'll end up with the blanket, but keep it off as long as possible while you fall asleep.
No screens for two hours before bedtime.
Read a book or listen to music.
Melatonin works for me.
Hot shower.
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.
I haven't seen exercise mentioned nearly enough in this thread. Doing an hour of yoga before bed makes sleep soo much easier.
Do relaxing activities before bed.
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.
No phone, No light, no noise, slightly cold temperature, read a book, have vigorous sex.
Alternatively some strains of weed also work allegedly.
Jerkoff without porn
Is it possible to learn this power?
Not from a coomer
I read that in Palpatine's voice 😂
Don’t drink coffee or tea past 4:00PM
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.
Step 1: Acquire idiopathic hypersomnia
Step 2: Sleep and never stop
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.
That bit about mumbling background chatter. This is news to me. Does everyone else have that?
I mean, maybe not precisely as speech, but y'know, the undergrowth that your actual articulated thoughts stick out of.
You can't tell me that when you stop actively driving the process, it's a complete ghost town in there, because that's just too terrifying to contemplate.
When I quiet the verbal, what replaces it is visual. The undergrowth, wow, you really have a way with words.
Heh, fair enough :)
The point is you treat it as input, not output; something that's happening rather than you doing it.
dont move at all. get comfy, then stop moving. dont even scratch a slight itch
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.
Warhammer 40K lore.
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.
Working out helps a bunch.
Medication:
Diphenhydramine 50mg.
Then diphenhydramine + Melatonin (20mg) (if I want to be dead asleep but will be groggy in the morning. Only used as last resort).
Most people take 1 to 5 milligrams of melatonin 30 minutes before bed.
Experts recommend taking no more than 10 milligrams at a time.
Melatonin overdose is on the rise. Consult a doctor before giving melatonin to children.
Yeah, it works for me. That was after trial and error. I used to take it daily when I had really bad sleep issues. Now it's only if I want 100% sure thing to be dead asleep. Probably why I get groggy from it the next day.
Cut that down or you're going to fuck yourself up long term.
This is what I tell my children, get comfy, relax your body, close your eyes, and think of something happy.
Exercise. If you aren’t physically tired you’ll have a hard time falling asleep. Most people with physical jobs have no problem sleeping.
Take 1 g of niacin and 1 mg of melatonin right before bed.
I agree that niacin is great for sleep, but that’s quite a large dose of niacin. The average person is going to have a pretty significant flush effect just from a 50mg dose. 1g is gonna prickle and burn like nobody’s business.
That's strange. Most niacin doses that I have seen are in the 500 mg range and the suggestion I was told was to take one gram and I don't notice any weird issues from it at all.
the niacin is supposed to help reduce free fats in your bloodstream and prevent or reverse atherosclerosis and to help get your blood flowing.
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.
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.
routines routines routines. same bedtime, same wake up time. if you establish a routine, it should take 14 days to kick in
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).
Oh boy.
First of all, form good "sleep hygiene" habits, read: https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Sleep%20Hygiene.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!
Do nothing but sleep in the bed?
Oh, 'cmon!
My wife won't be happy about that.
She really likes to cuddle and play with the cat in there
awww 🥹
THC and an orgasm.
CBD and abstinence to stay awake.
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/
3rd Eye Blind crew represent
That is a long article that eventually links you to watch a video to learn how to do it. Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F2qjtwcMhA&t=161s&pp=2AGhAZACAQ%3D%3D
It ... isn't?
Waauw
Welcome to a whole new world where you can’t do some fundamental form of thinking most people can.
Theres also people apparently that don’t have an inner monologue and can’t hear words in their mind either. I truly can’t understand how that works. It’s way more foreign of a concept than not being able to visualize. But maybe that’s just because I’ve never been able to do it so I don’t know what I’m missing.
The people that can’t do either are truly frightening. What’s going on up there?
I've been practicing the rubbing thing today. The only things I think I've seen so far are faces, glimpses of and silouettes of.
It works better if I keep my palms slightly pressed over both eyes. As soon as there's a lightsource I just see that, light through my eyelids.
This is amazing and slightly scary.
How long since you've discovered this?
It’s been about a year or so. You shouldn’t have to constantly apply pressure. When I first started I just kind of took whatever was there and tried to pretend it was a specific thing then hold that thought then as it morphed and changed just quickly identified a new thing and held that thing as long as possible. I think the article calls it image streaming. Then when all the sparks fade from pressure maybe do it again.
Does this also work if you don’t have aphantasia?
On the worrying point. If you find yourself worrying that you can't fall asleep, remind yourself that just laying there is giving yourself a chance to slowdown and relax. Giving yourself permission to relax is the first step to letting go of the worry.
Right. It's perfectly normal to have difficulty sleeping. We often don't know why and that's okay too. In time it will pass, as all things do.
I couldn't sleep for decades until I started listening to audiobooks. It's a bedtime story. Shut your mind off, let go of stress and just listen. It can still take a little while but now I fall asleep in minutes instead of 3 hours. It also helps me go back to sleep if I wake up from nightmares.
Same. Podcasts are also great, and some are even made specially for this purpose, like Nothing Much Happens.
For me, podcasts specifically about going to sleep to them trigger my contrariness too much to be actually relaxing. It's gotta be on a normal topic that is just the right balance of interesting, but not exiting/engaging.
History typically scratches that itch for me. Dan Carlin's hardcore history and the history of the English being the two goats that coke immediately to mind. Camp Monsters is also a great one; the rare fiction podcast that I can actually stand, much less relaxes me enough to sleep.
I know a lot of people for which this works great. Personally though, it has the opposite effect. I cannot shut my mind of by listing to audiobooks. Either I ignore them and it's just noise, or I listen to them and stay awake until the audiobook stops.
William S Burroughs rambling endlessly
Same time every night. Consistency is key.
Reading, absolutely. And exercise.
If I start reading before bed, I'll still be turning pages until the sun comes up. 😮💨
Try reading The Hobbit lol. For whatever reason I can’t get more than a few pages at a time before I start nodding. It seems exciting but something about the writing style puts me to sleep.
I read complicated and dry books as that helps me. I’m reading a Roman history book and an old philosophy book at the moment that I barely make it through a handful or two of pages of either before I’m drowsy. But if I pick up a brilliant piece of literature, I’ll read until dawn with zero issue.
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 try to go easy on those, as I vaguely recall reading that frequently taking melatonin for long periods of time can have some unpleasant effects, but yeah, I finally picked some up, and I've used them on rare occasions when I absolutely cannot get to sleep or when my sleep cycle is way out of whack, and they definitely do have an impact.
I try to keep the room dark. Don't drink caffine near bedtime. I have one of those blackout masks to really get rid of any light if necessary. Avoid thinking about anything interesting or with emotional impact. Get some exercise prior to going to sleep. I've rarely had problems with sounds keeping me awake, but I have some silicone ear plugs for the very rare times that that comes up.
Yeah, I try to only use them sparingly. If for no other reason than not wanting to build up tolerance or dependency on them. That said, I probably have been taking them more often that I should.
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.
I manually slow my breathing just a little bit evertime but not too much that my body will notice, and see how slow I can go
Breath in for 7s
Breath out for 7s
Repeat until you've stablized your breathing / pulse
Breath in for 8s
Breath out for 8s
Repeat until you've stablized your breathing / pulse
Breath in for 9s
Breath out for 9s
Repeat until you've stablized your breathing / pulse
...
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.
This person sleeps
Massive physical exhaustion with time to "calm down" before 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.
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".
Don't.
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.
I do something a bit like this. I'll pick a theme (animals, food, places, etc) and then go through the alphabet one letter at a time and something from the theme that starts with that letter. Alternatively, I'll pick a letter and just think of as many different words as I can that start with that letter. Those work for me most of the time!
Something like counting sheep - but in reverse.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
CBD-Melatonin gummies. They knock me out in 15m.
These guys
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.
I got three, they all seem to work on me, but sometimes I prefer one over the other for no clear reason.
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.
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.
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.
We are super similar, lake, mattress, inner eye, box breathing.
Sometimes can get too vivid, but least I'm disconnecting from the day.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How do you know how far you got? Do you remember the last number the next day?
I like counting my breathing as well, but I find that remembering what number I'm on keeps me awake. So I count my breaths from 10 to 0 and then back to 10 again.
I solved the remember what number I’m on thing by just jumping back to whatever number I thought I was on. “Iunno, fuck it 67…”
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.
"If you think about Big Sleep, then Tiny Sleep doesn't seem that scary 💕"
I take several breaths thinking about my pillow, bed, covers, and position; get comfortable and relaxed; and try to clear my mind. Then i start at my feet relaxing each body part for three breaths, feeling it sink into the bed and focusing hard so other thoughts can't creep in. If i get distracted and wander, i start over. I'm usually asleep within a couple of minutes. It took me awhile to learn to do this and to keep my brain blocked. What I've learned is that sometimes it's not 'can't fall asleep' it's 'won't fall asleep,' i have this great method that works almost every time, but sometimes I'm resistant and still staring at the clock. Then i think, "knock it off! You're self sabotaging!" and force myself to follow through.
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.
Let yourself get a little cold. You'll end up with the blanket, but keep it off as long as possible while you fall asleep.
No screens for two hours before bedtime.
Read a book or listen to music.
Melatonin works for me.
Hot shower.
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.
I haven't seen exercise mentioned nearly enough in this thread. Doing an hour of yoga before bed makes sleep soo much easier.
Do relaxing activities before bed.
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.
No phone, No light, no noise, slightly cold temperature, read a book, have vigorous sex.
Alternatively some strains of weed also work allegedly.
Jerkoff without porn
Is it possible to learn this power?
Not from a coomer
I read that in Palpatine's voice 😂
Don’t drink coffee or tea past 4:00PM
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.
Step 1: Acquire idiopathic hypersomnia
Step 2: Sleep and never stop
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.
That bit about mumbling background chatter. This is news to me. Does everyone else have that?
I mean, maybe not precisely as speech, but y'know, the undergrowth that your actual articulated thoughts stick out of.
You can't tell me that when you stop actively driving the process, it's a complete ghost town in there, because that's just too terrifying to contemplate.
When I quiet the verbal, what replaces it is visual. The undergrowth, wow, you really have a way with words.
Heh, fair enough :)
The point is you treat it as input, not output; something that's happening rather than you doing it.
dont move at all. get comfy, then stop moving. dont even scratch a slight itch
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.
Warhammer 40K lore.
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.
Working out helps a bunch.
Medication:
Diphenhydramine 50mg.
Then diphenhydramine + Melatonin (20mg) (if I want to be dead asleep but will be groggy in the morning. Only used as last resort).
That's a lot of melatonin for one dose.
kagis
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/melatonin/melatonin-dosage-how-much-should-you-take
Yeah, it works for me. That was after trial and error. I used to take it daily when I had really bad sleep issues. Now it's only if I want 100% sure thing to be dead asleep. Probably why I get groggy from it the next day.
Cut that down or you're going to fuck yourself up long term.
Progressive relaxation. Seriously.
How To Trick Your Brain Into Falling Asleep | Jim Donovan | TEDxYoungstown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5dE25ANU0k
Meditation works really well for me.
This is what I tell my children, get comfy, relax your body, close your eyes, and think of something happy.
Exercise. If you aren’t physically tired you’ll have a hard time falling asleep. Most people with physical jobs have no problem sleeping.
Take 1 g of niacin and 1 mg of melatonin right before bed.
I agree that niacin is great for sleep, but that’s quite a large dose of niacin. The average person is going to have a pretty significant flush effect just from a 50mg dose. 1g is gonna prickle and burn like nobody’s business.
That's strange. Most niacin doses that I have seen are in the 500 mg range and the suggestion I was told was to take one gram and I don't notice any weird issues from it at all.
the niacin is supposed to help reduce free fats in your bloodstream and prevent or reverse atherosclerosis and to help get your blood flowing.
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.
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.
routines routines routines. same bedtime, same wake up time. if you establish a routine, it should take 14 days to kick in
Jack off first
Close your eyes and lie very still
Anesthesia
/c/futuramasleepers
Controlled breathing
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).
Hit your face with a frying pan 😆