I had serious sleep issues. I used this book and got decent results. The first few chapters have a hucksterish tone. Hold your nose and read it anyway. The book is from good research and expertise and if you stick with the program in it you will get improvement
That is where Kindle Paperwhites shines for me. It is backlit, so I can turn the lights off. I can then read until I get groggy, then just roll over and put it down on the far end of my bed. No need to worry about even powering it down. No need to turn the lights off.
Iāve also covered my kindle screen with some orange transparent foil.
Other general things that came to my mind is caffeine.
Some people ādigestā caffeine differently. There are some people that even if they drink something containing caffeine in the morning, they will have troubles falling asleep night.
There are dozens of natural herbs and also scents that might help in some ways. Google it and test for yourself, because those things could be very individual and some might even worsen sleep, falling asleep.
Additionally to that itās good to know that everyone have different biological clocks and there is small chance that yours might be naturally even upside down(meaning your body could benefit the best if sleeping daytime, working night time. There are such rare extreme cases)
Also there are many illnesses, problems that might affect sleep, biological clocks, etc. One example is depression.
I sleep better at night if I have a nap in the middle of the day. Before the Industrial Revolution and the advent of assembly line production it was common in many cultures around the world for people to have a period of sleep in the middle of the day. Other animals do it. The notion that humans do best with a single period of uninterrupted sleep during dark hours is a relatively recent innovation spurred on in part by the rationalization of labor.
Thatās true, napping seems to be much beneficial for most people, Iāve forgotten to mention that.
There is also something called power napping - in short, napping no longer than 15-30 mins, waking just before falling asleep.
Huh?
Right - ā¦finishing the nap when one is fading away into in the arms of Morpheus.
For example one is napping with a keys holding in hand and they will probably fall when falling asleep, alarming one about the situation.
Not sure if someone posted this already, but one of the benefits of mettÄ (brahmavihÄra) meditation is that one sleeps soundly (thereās a reference in the suttas).
Regarding non-Buddhist techniques; thereās the blue-light problem for which there are features in current mobile OSās or apps ā but, I think that is just a band-aid/crutch. The real problem is getting the mind wound up and going near bedtime (could be using a device or any activity), you need to just slow down and stop your activities about an hour before. (Iām much better at giving advice than living it). A few times in the suttas the Buddha gives the analogy of a person walking quickly, realizing they are, and asking āwhy am I walking so quickly?ā, so they slow down their walking and ask again, so they stop and stand, then sit down, then lie down. Itās a bodily analogy for winding down the mind gradually.
Thereās also taking a hot bath. Despite common understanding, itās actually the rapid cooling of the body upon emerging from the bath that does the trick. Our bodies need to be about 2-3 degrees cooler to sleep well. One can also put on warm socks (and/or something on the hands I guess) to draw the body heat away from the core. This is why you have sounder sleep in a cool room than a hot one. It makes sense ancestrally/anthropologically since a major physical signal to nighttime outdoors is the drop in temperature.
Yes, Iāve found kindle with its backlight great too.
Sticking to a regular routine, if at all possible, and rising and going to sleep at the same time helps a lot, and making sure to have some time at night before bed to wind down and relax a bit. An audiobook or mp3 playing is probably even better (assuming thereās not someone next to you who thatās going to annoy ). When Iām travelling for work, I usually put an audiobook playing on my tablet/laptop; itās easy to set up a command to get the tablet/laptop to automatically shut down after a predetermined period in windows (good to get to sleep in an unfamiliar hotel/environment).
How bad was those issues? How good was results?
About 4-7-8 method:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/3er9x8/478_breathing_technique_how_to_fall_asleep_faster/cthyy5p/
4-7-8 method is similar to the mindfulness of breath.
https://suttacentral.net/mn10/en/sujato
Some really fantastic revjet and revcontent ads all over that page.
Yeahā¦
This is the core of whatās in that link:
This is followed by the five-step procedure listed below:
Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
Hold your breath for a count of seven.
Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.
Weil emphasizes the most important part of this process is holding your breath for eight seconds. This is because keeping the breath in will allow oxygen to fill your lungs and then circulate throughout the body. It is this that produces a relaxing effect in the body.
basically slow hyper-ventilation
Doesnāt, to me, @SCMatt, sound at all like mindfulness of breath, in which the breath is watched rather than controlled. That said, Iāve had too much screen time tonight and my pink glasses lenses have not yet arrived, so Iām off to bed to try out these five steps.
What I donāt get is the maths: exhale+inhale+hold+exhale = 4 steps; the sequence done 4 times = 16 steps. Oh: is closing the mouth a separate step? ā¦ Maybe Iām just overtired ā¦ I shall report on how it goes tomorrow. Thank you.
Anytime numbers are mentioned in some kind of special ātechniqueā; makes me wary, skeptical.
Hi gnlaera, a thought struck me while reading your post and just thought I would chime in with a not very important aside - that when breathing in O2 transfer occurs in a fraction of a second. Holding breath in the lungs any longer than that does not increase O2 circulation in the body, it actually depletes the body of oxygen instead. Thatās why you can pass out from holding the breath if you hold it long enough, the longer you hold your breath the less oxygen there is in your body.
Itās more likely that the effort of holding the breath for 8 seconds places the body under strain and when that strain is released or let go of one feels relief i.e. relaxation comes from letting go of the effort to hold the breath in this particular instance.
Likewise breath meditation relaxes me and if I choose to allow it I can let go of consciousness and go to sleep or alternatively if I wish to develop samadhi I can stay awake and allow my mind to become quite still and I will become wide awake and energised.
I see some people above saying meditating at night makes them to wakeful and alert but you donāt become alert and wide awake unless you actually cultivate samadhi, just being mindful of breath without going too deep on the other hand allows one to go to sleep rapidly. Or at least thatās the way it works for me.
cheers
Note that those words are not mine!
I was just quoting what was found in the ad-infested page.
I donāt make use of this technique and I cannot say how effective it is.
I do the same thing sometimes with Thanissaroās 15 min or less Dhamma talks on youtube. Maybe miss some of the talk when I fall asleep but I see it as being tucked in my the Dhamma and programming my mind with wholesome thoughts and wisdom.