To suffer from insomnia or just to have problems falling asleep can be very frustrating. First, it´s not very pleasant to lie awake staring at the ceiling, then you start thinking, I really need to sleep now not to be too tired tomorrow. This creates stress and makes it even harder to fall sleep. And when this has been going on for a while you go to bed with a feeling that you will not be able to sleep, creating stress hormones that will keep you awake. After a time with insomnia you are always tired, there is a risk that school, work or social life will be negatively affected. And so on, I´m not going to focus anymore on the effects of insomnia. In this blog post I will focus on an effective method to go to sleep.
To sleep you need to be relaxed, both in your body and in your brain.
This method is created from lots of different sources and testing. It will take about 10 minutes. I have listened to relaxation, go to sleep- and mindfullness streams, reading a number of books about everything from yoga to Taoism. Finally based on all this and lots of nights staring at the ceiling and iterating, I have put together a method that really works for me, hopefully for you too.
I suggest you lie in your bed doing this.
Stage 1 - Breathe, stop your wandering thoughts.
It’s much easier to fall asleep if your thoughts are not wandering all over the place, or if you are dwelling one or more subjects over and over again.
It’s impossible to think more than one thought at the time, and you can control what you are thinking.
To focus on your breathing is an effective way to not think about anything else. I fokus by slowly counting, in my head.
Breathe in through your nose while you slowly count to seven or eight in your head, then hold breath for a count of three and breath out counting to seven or eight again and wait for a count to three before you start all over again.
I usually do this for a few cycles before i move on to stage two.
Stage 2 - Relax the body.
During this whole stage, stay with the breathing cycle and keep counting if there is a risk that your thoughts starts to wander, and if this happens it´s nothing to worry about, just bring them back to counting.
While breathing you start tightening and relax muscles and go through the whole body in this order. Tighten when you breath in and relax while you breathe out, one movement per breathing cycle.
- Stretch your feet as far as possible down, tightening your calves and relax when breathing out.
- Lift your feet as far as possible, tighten the muscles on the front side of the lower legs and relax when breathing out
- Tighten your thighs breathing in and relax breathing out
- Tighten your ass breathing in and relax breathing out
- Tighten your stomach, either by breathing in to the stomach stretching it or just tighten the muscles.
- Tighten your chest, i find it easier to breath in to your chest, holding it and then release.
- Tighten your hands by clenching hard
- Tightening the hands again by stretching the fingers as wide as possible
- Tightening the muscles in your forearm and upper arm
- Pulling your shoulders up towards the head
- Pulling your shoulders down towards the blanket
- Pushing your head against the pillow
- Bite together your teeth as hard as you can
- Open your mouth maximally
- Frown as hard as you can
- Shut your eyes as hard as you can
- Shut your eyes as hard as you can, this is the most important muscles so do it twice.
When this is done, feel how relaxed you are in your whole body. Time for relaxation of the mind.
Stage 3 - relax the mind and fall asleep.
In this stage, try to keep the breathing cycle from the two earlier stages going. But stop counting. Its time to visualize.
Start by visualizing a tower with six normal dices, with the number six on the top dice, number five on the one below and so on to number one on the one in the bottom.
For every breathing cycle as you breath out you visualize yourself blowing away one dice at a time starting with the one on top, number six. For every breath you visualize and say a short sentence to your self:
- Blow away the number six dice, at the same time say to yourself "blow away all my tensions"
- Blow away the number five dice, at the same time say to yourself "blow away all my stress"
- Blow away the number four dice, at the same time say to yourself "blow away all my worries"
- Blow away the number three dice, at the same time say to yourself "blow away all my thoughts"
- Blow away the number two dice, at the same time say to yourself "I am now fully relaxed body and mind"
- Blow away the number on dice, at the same time say to yourself "time to fall asleep"
Now it won’t take many minutes before you are asleep, you can repeat to yourself "don´t think" if your thoughts start wandering or dwelling, but it shouldn’t be necessary.
Good luck.
/J