How the Brain's Activity, Energy Use and Blood Flow Change as People Fall Asleep

Here's his technique: pick a letter of the alphabet, and find as much words that start with this letter as you can. Once you can't find words anymore, pick the next letter. Doesn't work for me, my brain won't ever stop.

I noticed I have to visualize stuff in my head to fall asleep so my adaptation is to pick a single letter and a single word, and visualize it in my head, using it, manipulating it, experiencing it, whatever. For example: letter P, word Pineapple, imagine you're holding a pineapple, you feel the roughness of it's skin in your hands, you throw it in the air and catch it again, you take a knife and slice it on a wooden table on the beach, etc.. The dream kicks in seconds. Without external interruptions, after a few minutes I'm asleep (instead of rummaging for hours).

If you notice you're stuck in a loop/pattern (for me anything about text, like reading or writing, and voice, like listening and speaking, or stressful scenarios), just pick a new letter, pick a new word, visualize it.

One thing I've done for years is focus on breathing. Get in a comfortable position and totally relax your body. Slowly take a deep breath. Then exhale until you can't no more. Repeat this 10 or 15 times.

For whatever reason, this works for me probably 75% of the time. The other 25%, forget it.

On a side note, I'm sure most of us here can relate to this song. https://youtu.be/vaG4vGsIFMQ

If I lie in bed and just think stuff, it takes much longer.

May sound like a lot, but I sleep now.

Huh, mine is a plane in level flight. (From outside.) Preferably smaller. Depending on my mood it’s retro or like a fighter jet.

- think of past enjoyable moments (for me it's hiking, I usually don't go very far until I fall to sleep)

- box breathing

- hold breath for N sec then release, then N+10, then ...

- try to relax your body from top to bottom (forehead, eyes, cheeks, mouth, ...)

- imagine your body is very light, like your floating in the air

- imagine your body is very heavy, like a block of concrete sinking into your bed

- pick TAOCP and try to solve the exercises ;)

The routine is basically a game to see if you can "flow" between mental images by envisioning scenes in your mind and then allowing some object in the scene to "pull" you into a different scene. For example, envision the power cable of your lamp, you fly along the power cable up to the light bulb, and then you envision the bulb glass exploding into a million pieces, which becomes snow falling on a ski lodge, you see the warm glow of fire in the fireplace, and a fireball blasts out the chimney into the sky, somehow becomes a perfect flaming sphere, that becomes a meatball and falls into a plate of spaghetti, you are eating it down, you see yourself at a ratty diner table, under the table you see your shoes, and then your shoes are running through rain puddles, you zoom into a single droplet which is actually a massive aquarium tank, fish are swimming in it except we are in the ocean, not a tank, and the fish is so colorful but those colors are actually an explosion of rainbow paint colors dripping down an apartment wall, etc. etc.

It might sound ridiculous when written in words, but that is the gist of it. The game is to lay there and consciously morph and fly between mental images, letting your mind conjure imagery that comes next.

It's crazy because I start doing this with a conscious struggle to envision the next chain-of-events but suddenly my brain catches on and starts unconsciously playing the game and images just kinda flow and BAM asleep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v64-DpcLEvI

1. Too much deep sleep might not be desirable.

2. Sleep staging by activity trackers is generally pretty inaccurate. Garmin is no exception.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STR.0000000000000453

From one insomniac to another... In the past I've been lucky if I get 3 hours total of sleep in a night due to physical pain disorders. I have deep trouble getting into NREM. I lucid dream often and my brain is active even when I'm supposed to be sleeping. In my dreams, I have to be careful not to be too energetic or overstimulated, or I will wake up.

I've had insomnia and night terrors since before I was regularly forming memories. An abusive childhood intensified that. I'm in my early 30s now and the damage is clear, both physically and to my life in general.

As much as I fear them, sleeping medication seems like the only way to save myself from early onset dementia or not accomplishing certain goals due to a perpetually low energy budget. It also has prevented me from losing weight. Sleep studies have shown that people who get frequently woken up while sleeping can burn around 50% less fat.. In my case, that's my entire calorie deficit which means in order to lose weight I have to basically starve myself. Melatonin, etc. have never worked for me.

All this to say... Don't wait for the damage to build up even more. Sleeping medication might change your life. I'm hoping it restores mine.