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A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

independent.co.uk

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Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#191

Post by jachee »

armandososa wrote: post #171
dataflow wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5. Start removing thoughts from your brain. As you start thinking about something, just stop. Another thought comes in. Kill it. Just kill thoughts. You can think only about your breathing. Nothing else. If only it was this easy!! It almost feels like a variation of "start outlining the owl... now when you have the outline, just draw the rest of the owl". :-)

Here's a technique that works for me: So, when I close my eyes I can "see" things. I don't know if it's light coming trough my lids or blood vessels or just my mind's eye. I don't know. But what I'll do as a last resource when I have trouble sleeping is to pay full attention to those things and find patterns in them. I even say out loud in my mind like: "oh there's a dog", "a canoe", "a cigarrette". Then I'm dreaming…

For years growing up, I'd notice that sometimes when I had my eyes closed, there were sometimes glowing circles in the darkness. Sometimes they'd be colorful and others they were like the typical photo of an eclipse. It was usually just as I was drifting off, I'd notice them.

Years later I realized that I could make them appear at-will by wiggling my eyes around (a la REM), and that lead me to conclude that it's likely my overly-long (i'm severely myopic) eyeballs physically stimulating my optic nerves.

I don't notice it as much lately, and I avoid doing it on purpose, in case it's not healthy.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#193

Post by mitchty »

darkerside wrote: post #149
dataflow wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5. Start removing thoughts from your brain. As you start thinking about something, just stop. Another thought comes in. Kill it. Just kill thoughts. You can think only about your breathing. Nothing else. If only it was this easy!! It almost feels like a variation of "start outlining the owl... now when you have the outline, just draw the rest of the owl". :-)

It's more like taking steps that eventually equate to running a marathon. Drawing an owl has many different actions that you can fail to adequately describe. Here the task itself is very simple. You just need to repeat it many more times than seems reasonable to you in your untrained state.

I phrase it as its no different than exercise. You'll never get good at it if you never try. And it gets easier with time and practice, just like running a mile.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#194

Post by gowld »

independent.co.uk article is a reblog (+ video/ad junk) of https://www.joe.co.uk/news/sleeping-tricks-197402 (who copied it from a book)

Mods might change the link, for better reader experience and respect for the more-original bloggers.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Relax_and_Win.html?id=Y...

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#195

Post by gowld »

southerndrift wrote: post #114
W4ldi wrote: post #103

I read about a method years ago. I usually don't have problems falling asleep. But when I do, I do the following: Try to breath in through one nose hole and breath out through the other. This may sound stupid, but there are two reasons why this works: 1. You focus on doing something else than thinking about stuff that worries you. 2. While doing this your eyes move from left to right. You might remember what hypnotis…

I have heard about that method, too. If I remember it correctly then that exercise can be used to both calm you down and energize you. It all depends on the direction, if you breath in with your left or your right hole. Unfortunately I don't remember which direction is aligned with the calming effect. This can be an advantage: on different days, try out either way and observe what happens. If this method is more than…

That seems quite at odds with how nostrils work. Your nostrils alternate opening and closing autonomically.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/30363/why-does-your-nose-get-...

" Throughout the day, they each take breaks in a process of alternating congestion and decongestion called the nasal cycle. At a given moment, if you're breathing through your nose, the lion’s share of the air is going in and out of one nostril, with a much smaller amount passing through the other. Every few hours, your autonomic nervous system, which takes care of your heart rate, digestion and other things you don’t consciously control, switches things up and your other nostril does all the heavy lifting for a little while. The opening and closing of the two passages is done by swelling and deflating erectile tissue - the same stuff that’s at work when your reproductive organs are aroused - up in your nose."

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#196

Post by onychomys »

mattmanser wrote: post #142
killjoywashere wrote: post #2

Military for 24 years, never heard of this, but I learned to take naps in crazy situations: next to a hot landing zone, under an aircraft catapult, in cargo planes, etc. Only common denominators I can think of: exhaustion, a clear conscience, and trust in those around me.

It's a UK website, they're talking about the UK military.

Does the UK military not do PT? I'm sure their soldiers are just as exhausted at any given moment as ours are.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#197

Post by CyberDildonics »

fzeroracer wrote: post #76

Usually when I suffer from an inability to sleep it's because my mind ends up focusing too hard on things that ground me to reality. Existential dread, worrying about work, thinking about technical problems etc. So often my technique to fall asleep has been to focus my mind on the fantastical. Stimulate my imagination a bit, like what if I was a dwarf in a fantasy universe. This tends to focus my thoughts inwards and…

I've had a lot of problems in my life, but most of them never happened.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#200

Post by shrimp_emoji »

bokononon wrote: post #143
fzeroracer wrote: post #76

Usually when I suffer from an inability to sleep it's because my mind ends up focusing too hard on things that ground me to reality. Existential dread, worrying about work, thinking about technical problems etc. So often my technique to fall asleep has been to focus my mind on the fantastical. Stimulate my imagination a bit, like what if I was a dwarf in a fantasy universe. This tends to focus my thoughts inwards and…

I also do this. Time-travel to Ancient Rome, winning the lottery, pandemic survival, going to Mars. I find I just start the scenario, and the imagination takes its own turns. It's like daydreaming and it's an enjoyable way of falling asleep quickly.

I just do abstract absurdism, like: what if a space ship was propelled by teddy bears? Bright lances of ionized teddy bears cleaving the sky in twain from distant torchships pulling out of parking orbit. Power armor visor stress test. Hammer. .50 cal. RPG. Someone just spilled neutronium. It eats through to the Earth's core. An algorithm iterates over all the atoms in the Universe, replacing every other with its antiparticle.

And then noises wake me up all night, and I get bad sleep. :3

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