No pharmaceutical aids preferably
Loading up a nice 2 hour video essay from a soft-spoken British YouTuber usually works for me lol.
I attempt to calculate the amount of energy needed to levitate a gram of liquid mercury while reading manga.
I relax every muscle that I can and then allow my mind to just wander randomly. Usually puts me out.
Sometimes I design starships in my head.
Punch the clown. 60% of the time it works every time.
If you’re feeling restless, get up and do something for a bit. Preferably something analog (no screens) like light reading or make yourself a snack or do some sewing, whatever activities you have around. Don’t do this activity in bed, either! Go in the living room or wherever isn’t your bedroom.
And if you’ve already done that, the next thing that helps me is knowing that “lying in bed awake” is still resting your body and is almost as good as falling asleep. It relieves the anxiety around needing to fall asleep which then makes sleeping easier.
And as long as you get the rest you need, it’s actually not as big a deal if you don’t “fall asleep.” You might feel like you’re awake but often you’re actually just in a really light sleep. So don’t stress about it! Just lie down and rest and everything will be ok 😊
I have a very long list of heuristics for this, as I’m a nerd with this topic, and also tend to be the de-facto expert in my wider family for sleep help. I need to clean up the raw notes before I could list them.
But I’m going to give you an inconvenient truth: Good rest begins 48-hours before.
Most of the major factors in sleep originate from your body’s 48-hour cycle, which includes digestive tract, your sleep and wake the day before, your exercise on both days, sun exposure, your 48-hour hydration consistency (yes hydration correction takes this long or more), what you ate yesterday, and what you ate within 4-6 hours before bedtime.
If you’re trying to fix sleep while already in bed with insomnia, then you already did something wrong and cannot really correct course in a healthy way. Whether it’s alcohol or benadryl —These sleep aids to force you through the night will have you pay a price later. Your REM will be worse. Your deep sleep will be worse. You will be more irritable the next day and peter out faster. You’ll compensate with more caffeine or something stronger, your cortisol levels will be higher and you’ll be more prone to snack cravings and quick dopamine hits, and those things will lead to a downward-spiral for your next night of sleep.
But hey, Life happens. People have crying babies, etc. Disruption to the best routines is bound to happen. Tricks near or especially at bedtime can only increase your sleep inertia so much. Most have been listed, but if you just need a nudge, then (1) Turn off the phone and read a book, or at least read articles and stay away from videos. Turn on night mode and dim completely. (2) Keep room as cold as possible. (3) Get a white-noise generator or fan. (4) Practice deep breathing techniques to preoccupy your mind and move your ANS from sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. (5) Don’t be afraid to let your mind wander. Make up a story in your head. Find your happy place in your thoughts so you set yourself up for a “win-win” while just lying there. (6) Magnesium Glycinate tends to be a safe sleep aid that actually improves REM, but take with meal otherwise it can have laxative properties to the sensitive. Just some stuff off the top of my head.
Easily falling asleep but waking up in the middle of the night with insomnia “tired but wired” is a different albeit related beast…
Box breathing
And if you don’t like this, try cyclical or resonant breathing techniques. They’re proven to be equally if not more effective. Cyclical is more for panic-attacks and high anxiety during the day though, as I understand.
Instructions unclear; inhaled a fart
Just eat a loaf of banana bread and a pint of ice cream. It works, but it’ll cost you a toe each time because of the sugar-blood. But that’s still 10 free nights of sleep paralysis and diarrhea.
Easy. I keep a copy of “Medicare & You” to read before going to sleep on my nightstand. Not even 5 pages in so far this year.
I do some slow breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth, which helps lower my heart rate a little.
Then I have some go to scenes to imagine. Usually it’s imagining myself on a beach, lying comfortably on the sand (maybe with a book and a cocktail), focusing on the sounds of the waves lapping on the shore. That tends to relax me
I try to practice the Bengston Healing Method. I still can’t even come up with 20 things to visualize in the cycle and fall asleep before I think of them.
I get up, make coffee and have breakfast. Sounds strange maybe, but it works.
Progressive muscle relaxation. I’m not sure if it’s the actions I take or that it’s enough to keep my mind on but kind of boring.
Relax each muscle one by one, slow breathing.
Eating something potato related. It has to be real potato though. Mashed potatoes or baked potatoes seem to make me pretty sleepy.
