Sleep

I'm one of those people you hate - that person who hits the pillow and within the span of two minutes, I'm out.

There's a reason for that... it didn't used to be that way. I trained myself. It was once the case that I would lie in bed at night and waste a couple of hours trying to sleep. Frustrating, which of course only made it worse.

Then I happened on the thing that helped...

What I learned about myself is that I couldn't sleep because I thought too much. Or rather, that I couldn't ignore my thoughts. At any given moment, thoughts would drift through my head. And at night, in the quiet of it all, thoughts were these noisy attention-getters waving for my attention. So I'd grab one and think about it for a while. Then another would hearken, and so on, and soon it's too late for me to get a reasonable sleep.

Sound familiar?

This came up at a discussion I had in a chance meeting during a brief stop at Panera with Angela Maiers and Mike Sansone. So I told them how I overcame this predicament.

At that time when I was plagued with a perpetual lack of sleep, I used to like to listen to music in the dark. The sounds were more vivid, I think, for the lack of distraction. Kind of like listening to music with headphones, if you know what I mean. So late at night and in the dark, you'd find me on the apartment living floor lit in the LED glow of my roommate Larry's Marantz stereo.

Well, I bought a boom box. And when I took a shower, the boom box started to accompany me. Fun to sing in the shower. One day, I accidentally bumped the light switch while plugging it in, and so I decided to just take my shower in the dark. Was pretty cool. But that later progressed to turning on the shower as hot as I could stand it and sitting in tub with the water raining over me in the absolute dark for 15 minutes. Which became habit. And what I found was that if I removed the music, it was kind of like sleep. Thoughts were there, but instead of grabbing them, I would just watch them float by. And that too became habit. As did immediate sleep, because instead of thinking, I would focus on letting my body sink into the bed. By the time that every muscle was relaxed into the mattress, I was, miraculously, out.

by Brett Rogers, 5/15/2008 9:26:33 PM
Permalink

I too am an instant sleeper by training. I never really had that tough a time with sleep..but in college, my roommates and I began listening to self-hypnosis tapes (yes tapes), meditations, inductions, etc. It all taught me to very rapdily go from the totally business minded conscious...to the land of sleepypoo.

Although I don't need the inductions to fall asleep today, anytime I hear one begin, within 5 seconds, I feel measurable change in my state of being. It's as though I'm the guy at the hypno show that goes under when fingers are snapped. That took me years of casual training....and worth every minute.

Hope all is well Brett.

Posted by doug mitchell (http://www.mitchgroup.com), 5/16/2008 8:12:23 AM

Brett-I tried this last night, and I really think this will make a huge difference in my sleep patterns. As we talked, nighttime is the hardest for me. it seems like my brain kicks into full gear the second my head hits the pillow. It really is going to take a "retraining", and our conversations was perfect timing.

As always, it was great to see you, and my brain thanks you for the advice! Sleep tight, friend!

Posted by Angela Maiers (http://angelamaiers.com), 5/16/2008 9:12:35 AM

That's so cool, Doug. I think it does take training. Self-hypnosis, eh? Next time I see you, I want to ask you about that.

And Angela, try it for 30 days and let me know how you're sleeping :)

Posted by Brett Rogers (http://www.beatcanvas.com), 5/16/2008 6:27:18 PM

I too go to sleep as soon as I alight the bed. All these years I figured it was because I had no conscience, so I'm really glad to hear I did some kind of self-hypnosis.

Posted by Robin Johnson, 5/24/2008 6:47:36 PM