After an exhausting day when you go to your bed and are unable to sleep. Literally a few minutes back you were dying to get into your bed and now You’re perfectly awake.
So now you try alternate ways to sleep & are increasingly more conscious of every waking second of sleep time that you’re losing and a bad day tomorrow as you are going to be feeling sleepy at college or work.
Oh my god, it 3 am now and you still can’t sleep!!
If this sounds familiar to you then this article is for you. We have compiled a number of the easy to implement advice and practices to increase your odds of falling asleep in minutes.
We will even discuss a way employed by the United States Navy to nod off in just 2 minutes!
Here are a few things that you should do before you sleep:
1. Sleep in a colder environment
Your thermal environment, surrounding your head and body is probably the most unappreciated factor determining not only the convenience with which you’ll sleep but also your sleep quality. Whether you’re overheating due to heavy blankets or simply a hot room it has been shown to deteriorate the sleep pattern.
Just to initiate sleep your body has to drop 2- 3 deg F or 1.5 deg C. Being colder helps bring this temperature down faster. It’d shock you but the recommended temperature is around 65 deg. F or 18.3 deg C for your room. Going too cold isn’t good either but it doesn’t have an equivalent disruptive effect on falling asleep or your sleep quality as a hot room does.
2. Take a hot shower or bath before bed for better sleep
You would possibly think, being all warm and fuzzy is what causes you to sleep but its quite the other way. When you’re exposed to a temperature the body can’t hold on to, the heart sends blood to the surface of your skin giving you that red appearance. Once you exit the warm water, the dilated blood vessels radiate out the inner heat to your environment and your core blood heat plummets. This triggers the body and brain to think it’s time to sleep.
3. Put away the clock
Simply having the power to see the time and determine what proportion you haven’t slept isn’t helpful and can honestly only stress you out. Time monitoring is strongly linked to worry and waking arousal for you.
4. Minimize or avoid caffeine and nicotine
Coffee, colas, tea, or even chocolate can take hours to wear out fully and nicotine may be a stimulant. So avoid them too late within the day. It is also worth avoiding eating next to your bed. While some studies show, avoiding diets that are excessively biased towards carbs will help. It’s better to avoid being too hungry or too full before bed.
5. Exercise effect on Sleep
Being physically tired can assist you to nod off faster but exercising just 2- 3 hours before bed can keep you up longer. So, earlier within the day is the best time to exercise. On a similar basis, naps are great but don’t take them after 3 p.m. or it’ll be harder to sleep in the night.
6. Confirm you’re relaxing before bed
If you are trying to sleep, your brain just won’t be ready. A soothing activity within the hour before bed like reading is that the perfect ritual to place you within the right mindset.
7. Confirm you’re getting enough sun exposure
Minimizing your light exposure during the evening i.e not using your smartphones before bed is important. However, it’s equally important to have some natural sunlight for a minimum of half-hour each day. If you’ve got problems falling asleep, this helps to condition your body’s schedule and trigger tiredness at the proper times.
Now that we’ve found out some conditions for optimizing your experience of falling asleep are you still unable to sleep?
Maybe you’ve already done those things & you’re lying in bed immediately desperately looking up the way to nod off faster which led you to this very article.
In that case, you’ve already broken rule seven of not watching your smartphone.
However, if you’re still laying in the bed, there is a way that the U.S. Navy used, that if practiced can have you fall asleep in just a few minutes regardless of where you are.
These studies aren’t publicly available but they claim that they were used on fighter pilots who would often make avoidable mistakes as a result of stress and ultimately sleeplessness. They were designed to permit them to sleep even while sitting up.
After 6 weeks they claim that majority of the pilots could nod off in two minutes.
The 2 min Process for a quick sleep
The process is systematically relaxing each part of your body while taking a deep breath to shut your eyes,
Start focussing on your face, picture every muscle slowly relaxing, if it helps squish and squint your face first then let it relax. Exhale as you are feeling your cheeks, tongue, mouth, and jaw relaxed. Even imagine your eyes sinking into their sockets.
Then slowly make your way down your body and do an equivalent thing to every muscle group. Tighten then relax your shoulders, then arms from forearms to fingers, chest, legs, and eventually your feet. All while breathing deeply and focussing on the entire body.
Then focus on clearing your mind into a meditative state. As thoughts about your day or images pop into your mind, try to not linger over them and allow them to pass. Simply thinking through motions can stimulate your muscles to involuntarily contract very similar to meditation. Keep taking deep breaths, inhaling in and out.
If you cannot stop your thoughts they suggest repeating “don’t think” for 10 seconds. It sounds silly or fairly simple but anecdotally it has worked for people. All it takes is to be consistent & practice each night. Though it won’t be an easy solution on your first night, within weeks it will be far more likely to sleep instantly assuming you do not have a disorder or other condition.
Bonus Suggestion
One more suggestion that’s considered the only most vital tip to falling asleep immediately. If you cannot follow any others follow this, go to bed and wake up at the same time of day regardless of anything. Even the weekends, we do know it sucks, but we’re creatures of habit. If you would like to be ready to sleep immediately, getting into an honest routine will make your body figure like clockwork.
Studies show that not falling asleep for an extended period causes anxiety. It only makes things worse so just get up and do a soothing or slightly boring activity until you are feeling sleepy.
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