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How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

artofmanliness.com

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Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#181

Post by somenewacc »

bsaul wrote: post #13
tvanantwerp wrote: post #2

Sounds like meditation techniques. I often practice mindfulness meditation in a dark room for ~10 minutes in the mid-afternoon when I get tired. It usually gives me new energy and focus similar to if I'd napped.

After having one course of zen meditation, it seems to me meditation is pretty much the complete opposite of falling asleep. You want to stop thinking about anything, but only to feel perfectly aware of the current time and place. And your mind becomes completely focused and concentrated on.. nothing. In particular, the part in the OP where you "picture yourself being on lake, etc" looks to me as completely anti-medi…

there are many meditative techniques, and some of them promote sleep

see http://marc.ucla.edu/mindful-meditations "Body Scan for Sleep" for example

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#182

Post by dvtv75 »

robocat wrote: post #128
ams6110 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works for me is to just put on a documentary and something about the monotone narration voice just shuts my brain down. I don't even pay attention to the words. I'm generally asleep within minutes. I assume audio books might have the same effect. I guess it might be related to my young childhood as I had parents who would almost always read to my brother and me at bedtime. So possibly there's a part of my brain…

My girlfriend trained herself to sleep with movies. Now she can't watch movies without falling asleep.

Mine does exactly the same thing. If she's on the couch watching a movie, she's a goner, but the moment she moves to bed, "it's too loud! Turn it down!" even when it's at 1/10th of the volume when she was drooling on the couch.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#183

Post by PhantomGremlin »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #20
bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

I'm one of those that can fall asleep anytime, anywhere. The technique I use is to work on my "novel". I guess my mind knows I've been "working" on it for over twenty years, it's not important. At this point it's just a fantasy environment in my head I can drop into where the stresses of the real world don't exist.

I can do this too! I was born with a superpower, one that ensures I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime - untreated obstructive sleep apnea! With obstructive sleep apnea, you too can fall asleep in those stressful situations like driving, in the middle of a fire drill at your desk, and while attending an important work presentation! (On the serious, I have an appointment to get a CPAP tomorrow and in the meantime I sle…

I have an appointment to get a CPAP tomorrow

Make sure they give you one of the newer machines that has an SD card in it. And it must be an APAP machine, not CPAP. The APAP continuously adjusts air pressure to match your current needs.

The SD card records details of every breath you take. You then plug that info into SleepyHead software and see what's happening to your body.

This is important, because in general the insurance companies only care that you use your machine 4+ hrs per night. They are happy if your AHI (a measure of how bad your apnea is) is below 5. But that still means you are having 5 serious events per hour. Which is bad, unless you're an insurance company.

Go to cpaptalk.com and apneaboard.com and learn how to interpret your SleepyHead data and fine tune your machine to get your AHI down to 0. Works for many younger people. Old folks tend to have other medical issues that keep them from getting full benefit from CPAP. Even they can still be helped; e.g. there are more sophisticated machines that will even help people breathe in and out if their body/brain can no longer do it automatically.

Here is a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_airway_pressure

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#184

Post by midgetjones »

gilbetron wrote: post #71

I have had weird sleeping issues all my life, and the key for me to falling asleep was when I found out that our body gets tired not when it is warm, but when it warms up. So next time you can't fall asleep, take off the blankets, make sure your room is cold, and then get really, uncomfortably cold, and stay that way for at least 15 minutes. Then, and this is key, cover your whole body only with your sheet, and then…

Have you tried just putting one leg out? Never fails for me.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#185

Post by JoshMnem »

This might sound strange, but if I focus on a point about a foot in front of my eyes and hold it there while breathing slowly, I'll often fall asleep quickly. I don't know exactly how to describe it. It's something like projecting your thoughts onto that point, not just thinking about the point. I use the technique when power napping.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#186

Post by jason_slack »

weavie wrote: post #102
gilbetron wrote: post #71

I have had weird sleeping issues all my life, and the key for me to falling asleep was when I found out that our body gets tired not when it is warm, but when it warms up. So next time you can't fall asleep, take off the blankets, make sure your room is cold, and then get really, uncomfortably cold, and stay that way for at least 15 minutes. Then, and this is key, cover your whole body only with your sheet, and then…

A quicker way to get cold is a really cold shower just before bed. It works really well for me, and I believe there are many other benefits to cold showers beyond just getting to sleep.

I also sleep with my windows open. It is 10 degrees right now and they are still open.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#187

Post by tomhoward »

benmarks wrote: post #130
grzm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculation: I suspect your initial comment drew downvotes because it's pretty insubstantial. Yeah, requests for notifications are a annoyance. Commenting on it isn't likely to promote any kind of worthwhile discussion, and whatever discussion it does engender is likely to be off-topic as well. While not always successful in practice, HN members do tend to value substantive, on-topic discussion. Your second likely dr…

Learned something from your response. But, in the end, I gotta say, fuck this place.

This place is only as good as we all work to make it.

You started with a sarcastic comment that was irrelevant to the topic at hand, then complained abusively when just one person signalled their disapproval with a downvote, then when a helpful commenter politely explained why you were downvoted, your response was to abuse the entire community. In this instance at least, nobody's conduct has been close to being as destructive as your own.

Please, if we want this place to be better, the first step is to take responsibility for being good citizens ourselves.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#188

Post by harshulpandav »

ams6110 wrote: post #114
yacse wrote: post #87

Any steady stream of thoughts can stop me from falling asleep, even for hours. I have noticed that long hours of programming or programming late in the day causes this state of constant hard thinking that keeps me awake. It can be really exhausting and even end in nightmares. I think that the article is right that you need to stop this cycle before falling asleep. Meditation practice helps to stop your thought cycle…

What works for me is to just put on a documentary and something about the monotone narration voice just shuts my brain down. I don't even pay attention to the words. I'm generally asleep within minutes. I assume audio books might have the same effect. I guess it might be related to my young childhood as I had parents who would almost always read to my brother and me at bedtime. So possibly there's a part of my brain…

I start a random YouTube video and set SleepTimer [1] app to 15 minutes. The beauty of the app is that it softly fades the volume to 0 and turns the screen off by the end of 15 minutes. It has always helped me fall asleep!

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pboos.andro...

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#189

Post by pascalxus »

yacse wrote: post #87

Any steady stream of thoughts can stop me from falling asleep, even for hours. I have noticed that long hours of programming or programming late in the day causes this state of constant hard thinking that keeps me awake. It can be really exhausting and even end in nightmares. I think that the article is right that you need to stop this cycle before falling asleep. Meditation practice helps to stop your thought cycle…

Yup. Same thing happened to me. If i program really hard for many hours right before bed, it seriously prevents me from falling as sleep. The solution is to meditate for a little while before bed or read a light magazine.

And youtube is awesome with it's 6 hour meditation music: to help you do meditation.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#190

Post by chaoticmass »

I've started using audiobooks to help me sleep. Listening to the book keeps my thoughts from wandering and I'm usually able to fall asleep within 30 minutes or so this way. Podcasts and even a spoken bible work well too. Without these my thoughts wander too much and it can take an hour or more to fall asleep.
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