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Sleeping is my super power - I fall asleep within two or three minutes every night. Here's how I do it.
To add to this. If you can't sleep after about 15-20 minutes get out of bed and do something to relax your brain. Reading or meditating works well. Definitely no phone or TV, don't read anything captivating. Read something boring you aren't into. After you feel 'sleep pressure' go back to bed.
Over time this helps your body associate the bed with just sleeping. But it takes time and dedication. Find a routine.
Also highly recommend always going to bed and getting up at the same time, even weekends.
Do you suffer from hot sleeping? I do. I sleep best with a big pile of blankets on me. I sleep with a weighted blanket among others. But that combined with a prediliction for hot sleeping, and I have trouble waking up in the night in a sweat.
I got so desperate, I actually almost bought one of those expensive cool water circulation systems. But then I realized a low tech solution. It takes a lot of heat to melt water. The amount of energy required to melt two liters of water is of the same magnitude as the amount of body heat given off by a human over the course of a night.
Specifically, I learned that those old timey rubber water bottles for bed use? They works just as well as cold packs as hot packs. So I got a few of those and tried it. And it's helped immensely at improving my sleep.
I have two cheap Amazon special rubber water bottles with felt covers on them. I keep them in the freezer. Each night I grab the bottles, which freeze solid through the day. I simply sleep with them under the covers, and it immensely improved my sleep. The felt covers on the bottle act as insulators to ameliorate the temperature of the bottles. You can sleep with one against you and it just feels mildly cooling. It doesn't feel like sleeping on a block of ice.
I would say this method is about 90% as effective as one of those expensive bed water cooling systems. I researched those, and they cost $500 and up. Plus they required regular maintenance and had all sorts of problems with leaks and mold. This? This system cost me about $20 and requires no more work than taking something in and out of the freezer.
If you have problems with hot sleeping, try the stupid solution first. Buy some big rubber water bottles and freeze them, or try other cold pack solutions or similar total heat capacity.
Doesn't this leave you with wet patches in your bed though?
I think the bottles are sealed.
Water condensates on cool things and the body loses water vapor through pores.
I think the covers on the bottles should mostly prevent that though.
The covers do mostly prevent it. They sometimes do get a little bit of condensation, but it's not significant. The cover mostly takes care of it. You can get a little condensation near the sealed end of the bottle. It's less than the amount of moisture you would generate via sweating.
It doesn't leave wet patches. If you used the bottle without the cover, it would. But the cover makes it so that heat energy only slowly leaches into it. In other words, the surface of the covered bottle is probably around 60F/16C. And the surface is fluffy, not smooth.
timey rubber water bottles for bed use
So in the UK we just call these "hot water bottles"
Which I'm just now really thinking about as a term and on reflection it's a pretty rubbish name for them
It's doubtless an artifact of history. Rubber water bottles like that go way back. Before the days of electric blankets, space heaters, boiler heating, gas furnaces, etc, heating was often provided by wood- or coal-burning stoves. With a rubber bladder like that, you could boil some water on the stove and take it to bed with you. If all you have is a fire to keep you warm, it's hard to use that fire to directly heat your bed. For someone sleeping in a cold bedroom in an old drafty house, a hot water bottle and a pile of blankets was how you often got through the cold winter nights. And stoneware versions of the same concept go back at least half a millennium.
But ice available in the home? Some homes in the late 19th century and earlier sometimes had ice boxes - literally just insulated boxes that you could put ice in to keep food cold. The ice had to be cut off of frozen lakes in the winter and stored in big insulated ice houses for the rest of the year. But such ice would be too expensive and precious to fill a water bottle with. Maybe someone really wealthy could afford to do that. Maybe you could do it if someone was severely ill and needed a fever cooled. But pre-WW2, even if you had access to ice, it was too precious for most people to be able to justify using it just as a sleep aid.
To make something like this practical, you really need a modern freezer. Even in the days of ice boxes, you wouldn't be able to pull something like this off unless you were willing to use up two liters of expensive bought ice every night. That's just not something most people could afford.
The first domestic freezers as we know them now didn't appear until the 1940s. And it took decades for them to become ubiquitous in the homes of people in wealthy countries. It's only in the last 50 years or so that you could just assume a random person in a developed country has access to a freezer. And there are certainly still people who don't have such access.
So yeah, we've had hot water bottles for many centuries, but the concept of a cold bottle or cold pack is only something that's been feasible for less than a single human lifetime. We were doubtlessly calling these things "hot water bottles" generations before the freezer was invented. It turns out they can also be used as ice packs, but the name was already established.
Thank you. Just ordered one and I’m very excited to try this. I’ve been researching the cooling loops but they seem impractical and too expensive..
Feel free to reply to this after you give it a try. It worked for me, but I'm curious if it works for anyone else.
Work out. It helps reduce stress and just makes you more tired
Cheap version: listen to the sounds of your breathing. Relax all your muscles from head to toe, then just try and isolate the sounds of air coming and going as you breathe. Focus on it long enough and hopefully you pass out.
Expensive version: https://www.moonbird.life/products/moonbird - set it for 4 seconds in, 6 seconds out and just bring it under the covers and get cozy.
Your cheap version is my top recommendation. Basically, learn to practice mindfulness and use that when you go to bed. Focus on your body sinking into the bed, feeling cozy.
Look up Progressive muscle relaxation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation
There are plenty of videos on YouTube, try a few and pick one you like.
Concentrating on breathing also helps.
People have said to relax your face and jaw. Take it a step further and relax your tongue from the roof of your mouth. It sounds silly, but I found it works for me.
That was a tip from the other site I saw years ago, and now if I'm tired and have 15 minutes I can usually grab a power nap by keeping this in mind.
This sounds very much like what I read about how pilots on the front line rest. They would spend a lot of time in the air, and anytime there was downtime you took it. Some kind of research went into it and they came up with an entire process that would involve relaxing your body from head to toe, and then visualizing yourself somewhere else, like a boat in a lake or relaxing on a hillside. If you fail, you do the whole thing over. With enough training your mind becomes very adaptive and you can fall asleep faster and in highly disruptive environments. I believe it also had roots in meditation, where the more you do it the easier it gets.
Sleeping hygiene is a good point. No phone in bed.
But also try to make it cozy
Have a nice duvet cover, I like cotton. No synthetics. Change it more often.
Temperature in your bed room should be lower, open your window before going to bed.
Have good curtains. But not too dark. Whenever I have a window shutter and I close it completely, I just don’t wake up and sleep over 8-10 h.
Here are my things I do when I can’t sleep
If my feed are cold, wear socks, or cloth but don’t heat the room too much.
Try to sleep in a different room (if you can). When I am just too active I move to my sofa for a change. It really helps me.
Important question. Are you alone or is someone next to you. If your sleeping schedule or preferences don’t mix with your partners, try separate beds. Cuddling sounds cute until you cannot sleep because of a snoring person next to you. And don’t be angry when your partner prefers to be separate.
I’m gonna chime in here. My wife asks me this a lot because she too has trouble going to and staying asleep. I however have some kind of sleep superpower. I can be asleep within 2 minutes after going horizontal.
I’ve always done this: start building a scene in your head. Any scene. Action, nature, whatever. Now picture yourself there in first person. Focus on the details. Make sure the trees have leaves. The pavement has lines and cracks and texture. Imagine feeling the wind on your body. From grass to cars to sky paint as detailed a picture as you can. Begin to form a story. Walk around and interact with things, people, animals. Maybe you have a storyline. As a boy I had an action sequence I would play out every night. Cuz you know. Boys. But as I got older those turned into hikes in fun places. Or keeping company with my current crush. Or a fun road trip…You get the idea.
I promise not long after you begin you will naturally begin to drift off. At least this is what has always come naturally to me.
Good luck and sweet dreams!!!
For me I need some background noise. Something to keep my mind from wandering.
I used to have a playlist of more relaxing songs I'd listen to when trying to fall asleep. But lately I honestly just put on a youtube video I've seen before. In particular videos where it's mostly just someone talking about something. Being the computer nerd I am vwestlife of cathode ray dude are my go tos
Don't use blue lights. That includes most lights. Use red or orange lights after dark. Blue light wakes you up. (I mean do this in addition to some of the other suggestions.)
wear yourself out during the day. easier to fall asleep if you're exhausted
First your bed is for sleep and sexy times and nothing else. That way your body is conditioned to go to bed whenever you lay down. Doing other actions in your bed reduces this impulse.
Second, monitor your stimulant usage which includes tea, soda or coffee. Caffeine impacts your sleep more than many realize.
Finally stop lolking at screens an hour or so before bed.
If you have the "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" like me, get a fan.
Relax all the muscles in your face.
Specifically the jaw.
I found that I was unconsciously clenching my jaw and would lie awake for hours. Once I started consciously unclenching I would fall asleep really quickly.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0VMUYmhGI3Oqfb0V7X5R2EXoFkrJXOIj
Scientifically composed to put you to sleep. I’ve been listening to it for a few weeks now both with headphones and with the phone on the pillow.
NGL that type of music gives me more anxiety
I was curious too.
After listening to a bit of the first and then randomly a few seconds of a few more songs, I agree. I don't like my night time music to build up or go from calm to a sudden full orchestra.
That being said, I did find one I liked, called Ricter:Aria (pt1).
Personally I have a playlists of music that works for me. Some nights it helps, others I end up shutting it off. Everyone's different.
Beside music, there's a lot of other external factors that could be affecting your sleep (ignoring internal factors, see a therapists or something for those).
Been using asmr for years. Probably not for everyone, but works well enough for me. Also, I sleep infinitely better with background white noise of some sort, but that's due to tinnitus :/
My (probably not very healthy) hack is to watch YouTube. My brain focuses on one thing and all the thoughts keeping me up just stay quiet.
If you have persistent sleep problems even after applying all the advice, if you can afford it, consider taking a sleep test/study to learn what's the core issue
No.
By which I mean... I've tried many tips/tricks and none have consistently worked.
Imagine a place where you are most cozy and visit it every night when you try to sleep. And then maybe sound machines. And finally, deep breathing. Slowing your heart down through this will physically make your body want to go to sleep (so basically meditiation).
I do all of these in tandem, I have the sound machine going and I settle into my cozy part of my brain and then imagine my lungs as a cup filling up with water to the top while inhaling and then draining out as I exhale. The trick with this is to not stress yourself thinking about if you're doing your breathing right, just try and relax and focus.
Also melatonin. But that isn't effective for every situation.
Good luck.
When I had trouble sleeping, I would have even more trouble sleeping because I was upset I wasn’t sleeping. Then I read somewhere that just lying there with your eyes closed and not moving was like 80-90% as effective as actual sleep.
I didn’t bother to check if that was true, but it did allow me to let go of worrying whether I was sleeping. And that allowed me to actually fall asleep.
I was searching for the same thing recently, and found someone who suggested choosing a category, e.g. city names, and going through the alphabet thinking of one for each letter. I find it works pretty well to sort of occupy my mind and help me drift off.
This, but I personally find it important to emphasize that you should incorporate slow methodical breathing (box breathing). On the inhale, I focus on the next letter (just the letter, e.g.: "A"). Then on the exhale, I think of the thing (e.g.: "Artichoke").
If I can't think of anything I try again on the same letter a few times and eventually skip if I can't. I'm trying to sleep, not stress myself out 😅
Seriously though, this is a fantastic method if you struggle with racing thoughts at night.
I listen to video game retrospectives. I don't game anymore but these guys yapping on and on about morrow wind or whatever for 3 hours puts me to sleep immediately. I never played these games which is why I choose them. If I choose games I'm familiar with I'll watch it instead of zoning out.
Check out down the rabbit hole's 6 hour video about Eve for pure audio Xanax.
Write about the things that worry you the most.
Yellow zzzquil. The regular one works too but the yellow one is better.
Stop thinking about falling asleep. With your inner voice tell yourself you're going to stay up all night. Close your eyes, relax, lie still, and tell yourself that you're going to stay up all night; you'll pass out after a while.
Also invest in a high quality white noise generator or weighted blanket.
