Fall Asleep Faster!
Yesterday the topic of having trouble napping came up in the uberman Yahoo group (link here). I wrote a method of falling asleep faster here. After rereading it and seeing how it could be quite helpful to others (such as Chris Beams) I’ve decided to restate it here in my blog. Hopefully this can help you too.
Surprisingly I haven’t had any trouble falling asleep for my naps. Only when I was at a friend’s house did I stay awake through two attempted naps in a row. One of the reasons for my success is the method I’ve developed to speed up falling asleep. It doesn’t always work if I have something gnawing at my mind but 95% of the time it does the job and does it well.
The method is a combination of hypnosis, medatation, and directed thought. I developed it over the past 2 weeks, after I had started polyphasic sleep. I always took 10-30 min to fall asleep during my monophasic life. When you nap for 25 minutes at a time you can’t afford 10-30 min to fall asleep. I needed a way to get into a nap quickly in order to save time.
First I get myself into a position where I am as comfortable as possible. Prior to polyphasic sleep I would almost always fall asleep on my stomach. For some reason I just couldn’t do it on my back. Now that I’ve gotten into the rythme I almost always sleep on my back. I have no trouble doing that anymore. I think part of it is this system. By getting comfortable I mean position yourself so that you aren’t using any of your muscles to hold a body part in position. You don’t want any muscle tension. I’ve been sleeping on my back with my arms about 6″ off either side or crossed on my chest or stomach without touching each other.
Next I begin relaxing all of my muscles. This section is taken from hypnosis. Picture a white light at the top of your head and slowly working its way down your body. As it touches a muscle that muscle relaxes deeper and deeper. It spreads down your arms and to your fingers, down your torso, along your legs and out to the toes resulting in total muscle relaxation. I don’t usually visualize the light anymore since I can relax fine without it, but it may help when you first start. The purpose is to get your body completely relaxed with no muscle tension whatsoever.
Breathing is important. This is taken from medatation. Use long, slow, deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This type of breathing has a very relaxing effect on the body.
Now that you are relaxed and breathing well your wandering thoughs will have begun shifting inward and you may start feeling more tired already. At this point start thinking about and visualising something that would make a relaxing dream. It has to be something relaxing and not stimulating. Think about sitting reading a book, watching the sky, walking down the street, etc. Anything that you can concentrate on, visualize, and relax to. You don’t want to think about something that will raise your adrenaline so nothing intense. Visualization is key here. Dreams are extremely visual. I try to visualize something so well that I can look around the visualization by moving my eyes, just like REM sleep. Project your thoughts to your eyes.
That’s it! Let me know if you attempt this technique, if it works for you, and if you think of ways to improve it.
