Some of you are probably asking, “Why does this guy keep suggesting sleep remedies?” Well, you’re right; I have written about it many times. It’s not that I have a problem with sleep, but so many people around me seem to.
I do have a slight problem come to think of it; sometimes I wake up around 3:00 A.M. and have trouble falling back to sleep. Could it be that my body is reminding me that “Two-Shift Sleep” is how we were meant to rest? (Look at the sleep post of October 4, 2018). The thing that prevents me from getting up in the middle of the night is that Melatonin and Human Growth Hormone production stops when one is exposed to light. What should one do? I don’t have the answer.
Anyway, let’s get back to today’s post.
Apparently 35 % of adults get less than 7 hours of sleep per night. So, it’s worth adding a two-minute technique to your going to bed routine, courtesy of the U.S. Army.
The speedy method – which was originally found to work on 96 % of U.S. Navy pilots after six weeks of practice – first appeared in the 1981 book Relax and Win: Championship Performance.
Here’s how to try the approach – which is very similar to yoga nidra.
Step 1. Start by relaxing every muscle in your face, one-by-one, moving down from your forehead to your jaw.
Step 2. Drop your shoulders one at a time, relaxing each as much as possible. Then do the same with your upper and lower arms.
Step 3. Move through your lower body, consciously relaxing each muscle as you inhale and exhale deeply; abs, quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, ankles and toes.
Step 4. Once you’ve reached your toes, spend 10 seconds trying to empty your mind before visualizing one of the following scenes:
- Lying in a canoe on a lake staring up at a blue sky, or
- Lying on a black, velvet hammock in a dark room.
If you have trouble doing the above, just repeat, “don’t think, don’t think, don’t think” to yourself for about 10 seconds.
Step 5. (Hopefully) fall peacefully asleep.
One writer who tried the pre-bed ritual said it took about a week before he began to see a decrease in how much time he spent tossing and turning before falling asleep.
That’s it for now; see you all next time.
