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A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

independent.co.uk

151–160 of 238 posts

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#151
my wife complains that I am able to fall asleep immediately whereas it always takes her a long time and if she gets woken up too close to morning that's it. maybe this will help her.

anyway my secret is just to close my eyes and not think about anything but looking deeper into the darkness and breathing slowly.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#152

I nap for 20 minutes every day at work (at my previous company, for 4 years or so and now since I'm working remotely). Here are my steps for taking a nap: 1. Find a good place to nap. Use the same place every day. I used to nap under my desk on a lazy bag at my last job. 2. Quickly find a comfortable position. Quickly fix everything that bothers you (like watch on your wrist or anything else that's making you uncomfo…

> 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". :-)

The key here is that this becomes easier as you do it. It's hard fighting off those few first thoughts, but I personally find that once I do, my brain is put into slow gear and fewer thoughts come up. This has an accumulating effect and I'm asleep before I know it.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#153

This article is very poorly written regardless of how accurate its contents are. It seems to be based on suggestions, rumors (or rumour since it's UK based), and a 1981 book that very few have read. No actual sources and repeated use of the word secret. Trash.

I thought this article was pretty poorly written too, and the website is a clear example of the "Bullshit Web." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17655089

However, the number of people who have read a book published in 1981 has no bearing on the validity of the book as a source.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#154

I can actually vouch for this, but I discovered it independently for myself. I realized that the nights I couldn't fall asleep were nights my brain kept racing and thinking about different things. Kind of like a wikipedia rabbit hole where my mind keeps racing onto the next tangential thought. So I found a foolproof solution: Relax all my facial muscles and imagine an empty, black (literally #000) void in my mind's e…

I have a somewhat limited ability for visual hallucinations, apparently called Aphantasia, discussed before on hn [Aphantasia]. As such, when meditating I tend to simply look at the "blackness" of my eyes closed. What I mostly see is a very dark pulsating tunnel pattern. A quick search suggests this is called phosphenes [phosphenes]. I find it interesting that as I fall asleep the pattern abruptly stops; somewhat like having a LCD screen set to black and the having the backlight turned off.

It works for me, particularly when trying to nap. In the evening I prefer to listen to podcasts. As dzhiurgis mentioned, finding the right podcast makes a big difference. I look for podcasts where are interesting enough to keep listing, but not interesting enough to keep me awake. Usually podcasts with 5-15 minute segments are best. I like The History of English podcast [podcast 1] and The Naked Scientists [podcast 2].

[Aphantasia 176 comments on a fb hosted article] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 [Aphantasia comment by blakeross to a BBC link ] http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34039054 [phosphenes] http://scienceline.org/2014/12/why-do-we-see-colors-with-our... [podcast 1] http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/ [podcast 2]https://www.thenakedscientists.com/

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#156
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…

What if only one nostril is "open" at any given time? That is usually the case for me.

As i said. It's not the breathing that's affecting you. It's the eye movement. You don't even have to try breathing like this. I usually just move my eyes left right.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#157

I nap for 20 minutes every day at work (at my previous company, for 4 years or so and now since I'm working remotely). Here are my steps for taking a nap: 1. Find a good place to nap. Use the same place every day. I used to nap under my desk on a lazy bag at my last job. 2. Quickly find a comfortable position. Quickly fix everything that bothers you (like watch on your wrist or anything else that's making you uncomfo…

> Start removing thoughts from your brain. As you start thinking about something, just stop.

I had a hard time sleeping just last night. I couldn't stop thinking about things - I even had to eventually google the chemical composition of Sodium Bicarbonate, and of course what exactly Bicarbonate was...then of course that led to questions on Sodium Bicarbonate vs Sodium Chloride...it's a never ending process for me sometimes at night.

I will certainly try this though.

Re: A military technique for falling asleep in two minutes

#160
post #157

I nap for 20 minutes every day at work (at my previous company, for 4 years or so and now since I'm working remotely). Here are my steps for taking a nap: 1. Find a good place to nap. Use the same place every day. I used to nap under my desk on a lazy bag at my last job. 2. Quickly find a comfortable position. Quickly fix everything that bothers you (like watch on your wrist or anything else that's making you uncomfo…

> Start removing thoughts from your brain. As you start thinking about something, just stop. I had a hard time sleeping just last night. I couldn't stop thinking about things - I even had to eventually google the chemical composition of Sodium Bicarbonate, and of course what exactly Bicarbonate was...then of course that led to questions on Sodium Bicarbonate vs Sodium Chloride...it's a never ending process for me som…

I can relate to this! Letting go of these thought trains is so very hard and keeps me up, my partner hates it when she sees my phone screen light up at night...i don’t blame her but ironically it’s a faster path to sleep for us both.
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