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I was thinking about this recently, I have always, as long as I can remember, fallen asleep by essentally daydreaming. I make up some story in my head about really anything. From me playing centerfield for the yankees, to some imaginary character fighting crime, or something even more ramdom. It recently occured to me that not eveyone else does this. So what do you do to fall asleep?

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I used to try to fall asleep while daydreaming. I don't think it helped me to sleep, but I do think it helped me become a lucid dreamer. Sometimes I have dreams where I realize that I am still asleep. These types of dreams are wonderful, but I digress.

When I go to sleep I employ meditation techniques. Counting backward while picturing the numbers, sometimes two sets of numbers. Other times I picture a steel ball orbiting my head, then add more on different orbital paths.

After a minute or two, this process makes it easier to quell errant thoughts. Once my mind is relatively calm, I simply focus on not focusing. In other words, I monitor my thoughts and shut down any that try to enter my conscious mind.

Its getting late. Good night.

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So what do you do to fall asleep?

Well, I've noticed that since I have been working so much the last few years, well over 40hrs. a week, I can only fall asleep when I'm very exhausted. Through those years the sleep deprivation was intense at times, because of the number of jobs I had had, or taking care of my daughter and working everyday at the hospital. Sometimes I would hold my little cutie until she would fall fast asleep on her Daddy, and I would just watch her sleep sometimes, because I didn't want to put her down, for she might wake up, and doing that would take away my chance to take a quick nap...but she was okay so I didn't mind.

Right now, I usually fall asleep in my sleeping bag on the floor of my apartment, after my back adjusts, and I shift around the clothes I have underneath my pillow to prop it up, I shut my eyes, and the sandman wisks me off to Slumberland. So, I guess I "daydream" with my eyes closed, in a way, but I definately don't make up anything as you had mentioned doing, at best I might reflect or think about something. For months I didn't even have a pillow to sleep on, just those said clothes, or towels overtop of weights I had worked out with. I was comfortable with just those, for I had to watch my budget, to make sure I could pay my landlord, who was my roomate also, who had rented a room out to me in a house she had just bought. When I moved out I left the weights there to balance a bookcase she had bought for me, because the carpet was thick and it just wouldn't sit right. That's why I actually had to get a pillow. One thing I also noticed was that I was always the one who was up later than the others there. Even when her and I would worked the same shift, I think out of the months I had lived there, 3 times I think one stayed up later than I. I would always check the doors to make sure no one had left one open, and I'd check the appliances to make sure that they were off before I went to bed there also. I also slept under my window so that I could hear anything going on outside, since the neighborhood was "bad" and I was the only handgun owner, and my roomate/landlord was absolutely gorgeous physically and attracted all kinds and varieties of brutes. When I was married I also could not sleep unless my ex-wife was asleep. When baby Kaity was born, she was always in the room with us, and I got up often to look at her in her crib to see if she was okay, and could only sleep knowing she was sleeping soundly and not on her tummy or whatnot.

Well, it's around the time to take a trip to Slumberland...

Edited by intellectualammo
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So what do you do to fall asleep?

Take off my cloths. Turn off the light. Lie down on my bed. Relax all my muscles. Think about what happened in the last day -- what have I learned from the events and what do I need to do tomorrow?

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I was thinking about this recently, I have always, as long as I can remember, fallen asleep by essentally daydreaming. I make up some story in my head about really anything. From me playing centerfield for the yankees, to some imaginary character fighting crime, or something even more ramdom. It recently occured to me that not eveyone else does this. So what do you do to fall asleep?

I do that very often. Only I think up science fiction stories (lately some alternative history, too). I need something to do while I fall asleep. Otherwise I get bored and irritated, which is not conducive to sleep.

There are time when I'm very tired. After an 18-hour workday, say (or longer), or a long day with much activity. On such occassions, I fall alseep simply by lying down and closing my eyes.

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Does anyone here NOT use a specific method for falling asleep, and just do it "naturally" ? I suppose I could analyse my method: I wait until I get tired, go to bed, then let my mind and body do the rest. Now that I reflect upon it, I used to have semi-frequent nights where I would have great difficulty falling asleep. Now I'm going out on a limb here and might be wrong, but I have a theory that it's because I had a neglected mind: I wasn't "expending" my brain-power during the day when I should have been. When you don't think about your problems and use your reason to tackle them promptly, it leads to pent up frustration. and when it comes to the time of unwinding and falling asleep, your relaxed consciousness becomes more acutely aware of the things it was ignoring and says "I'm not ready! I have things to think about!" but then you're too tired to do that thinking, so you get torn between the goals of falling asleep and thinking about things.

Regardless, I haven't had problems with falling asleep for a very long time.

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Does anyone here NOT use a specific method for falling asleep, and just do it "naturally"?
My method is to shut my eyes, and poof, we're there (well, after 5 minutes). I don't think about what I did today, or what I'll do tomorrow. However, sometimes I do, and then is when I have problems sleeping. Generally I am 1000% skeptical of homeopathic solutions, but I've found that scarfing a melatonin will put me to sleep when necessary, which is pretty much after any flight to Europe, and 2 days following.
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My method is to shut my eyes, and poof, we're there (well, after 5 minutes). I don't think about what I did today, or what I'll do tomorrow. However, sometimes I do, and then is when I have problems sleeping. Generally I am 1000% skeptical of homeopathic solutions, but I've found that scarfing a melatonin will put me to sleep when necessary, which is pretty much after any flight to Europe, and 2 days following.

Verb: scarf

1. Masturbate while strangling oneself

2. Unite by a scarf joint

3. Wrap in or adorn with a scarf

(peers at [EDIT: DavidOdden] curiously)

Edited by iouswuoibev
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(peers at you [METAEDIT: Oh, if you're gonna go change the text when I'm quoting you, I should make sure our versions match] [EDIT: DavidOdden] curiously)
Huh! Well, I won't ask how you know about meaning 1, nor do I care to conjecture about what "sock" might mean as a verb. Anyhow, there's a 4th meaning, probably quite old-fashioned and catalogued in the dusty Old English dictionaries with "pig out", meaning "to swallow ravenously". See also "scarf up" and "scarf down": it's interesting that while "up" is the opposite of "down", "scarf up" and "scarf down" aren't antonyms. And the preposition is optional. It's funny how so many of the online dictionaries miss that 4th meaning. Edited by DavidOdden
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Yeah, ignore me. I just looked it up on dictionary.com and got devour as a valid meaning. The definition I just gave was from wordweb (an offline software dictionary). It also gives the sole definition of egoism as "Attempting to get personal recognition for yourself (especially by unacceptable means)". Guess I shouldn't rely on it so much.

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I'd like to say that I do almost exactly what Dan9999999 does. I usually fabricate a situation or world that I play out in my mind as a means to sleeping. It has increased my incidental rate of lucid-like dreams and I find it very effective. It's pretty much become my norm and I am a very heavy and restful sleeper.

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If I dream to the extent that I remember it, I don't sleep deeply and I wake up feeling like I never went to bed. The only time I have trouble falling asleep is when I'm preoccupied with considering something; then I can't

"shut off" properly and I spend hours alternately dozing and glaring at the clock.

It usually takes me 15 minutes or so to get really comfortable and get my mind relaxed enough to where I can sleep, but no special effort is required.

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I pretend that I am in a train laying down inside a little sleeping compartment, something like I have seen in some of the movies from the 50's. Just a peaceful trip relaxing, knowing I am going off to some destination though I don't know where. It's always dark and snowing outside...

That always does the trick, 5 minutes and I'm out

Edited by fatdogs12
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I've never really had any problem with sleep (in fact, my friends and family say I could sleep on a clothesline). I tend to just shut my eyes when I am tired and within minutes I am in a deep sleep, whether I am laid in bed, sat in a chair (stationary at home or in a car/train) and even once or twice whilst stood up. it doesn't even have to be quiet. I admit it can be a handy trick as I work shifts :confused:

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  • 4 weeks later...
I was thinking about this recently, I have always, as long as I can remember, fallen asleep by essentally daydreaming. I make up some story in my head about really anything. From me playing centerfield for the yankees, to some imaginary character fighting crime, or something even more ramdom. It recently occured to me that not eveyone else does this. So what do you do to fall asleep?

That used to be my method, back in the day when I still had the luxury of going to sleep when I wasn't really tired, but now I'm up until 1 in the morning every night studying for school, and I know I have to be up at 5:00 AM, so I guess my body has already gotten accustomed to falling asleep immediately after I hit the pillow or very shortly after in order to get a maximum amount of rest.

Aside from this, sometimes I like going to sleep while listening to music because it helps me to relax.

One of the main problems in sleeping disorders is that a person has difficulty in releasing the tensions of their day in order to just rest. When I was little, I liked to oppose this in the most dramatic ways I possibly could: I'd extend my body like that Da Vinci sketch of man and I'd remain utterly motionless, focusing only on the pull of gravity and allowing my body to give into the pressure of the atmosphere above me. I remember that I could get to a point where all my limbs felt so heavy (yet soothed), that I felt it would be better not to move again.

Legs also tend to be a problem because for the longest time, I couldn't fall asleep if my legs weren't comfortable. I am 6'1'', thus, for most of the day, my legs are constantly in some form of discomfort.

My body is face down, head turned to one side. Sometimes I ditch the pillow and just lay on the sheets.

But it has to be face down at night. Oddly enough, if I nap, it's face up.

It's funny/disturbing, growing up, I would say up until I was 8 years old, my stepmother would tell me that if I went to sleep face down, that I would inevitably suffocate and die. So until the age of about 13 or 14, I had a psychological phobia of ever sleeping face down. Somehow I came to accept that she was wrong and may have been referring to babies who still don't have the strength to turn their bodies over onto their back if they fall asleep on their bellies.

Another thing is that growing up I used to LOVE going to sleep without a pillow. I could fall asleep anywhere for this reason. I guess that from a young agae I was adapted to having to sleep in any environment, so there were times when I was very little that my mother would find me sleeping on the carpet, tiled floor, wooden floors, pretty much anywhere. It isn't until recently (in the past month) that it has begun to bother me not having a pillow to support my head.

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Does anyone else have trouble sleeping? Does anyone know any natural way to cope with mild insomnia (for a lack of a better word)?

My problem seems to be this:

I have to wake up at 6AM in order to go to the gym, shower and be at work on time, so I try and be in bed by 10pm. However, even if I'm in bed with my eyes closed by 10, it's usually 12:30-1:30 AM before I ever fall asleep. If I could hone in on the problem, I would point to an inability to switch from conscious thought to subconscious thought. I literally stay up at night thinking about whether or not we're volitional, whether or not I should go to grad school, whether or not a deterministic universe requires a prime mover, etc. It's getting a little rediculous and all I want to do is sleep, but I don't want to have to take medication for it (and then medication to get back in the swing of things the next morning). Anyone have this problem? Anyone solved this problem? Anyone have advice? I've literally tried to count sheep but that didn't work. The only thing that has worked so far has been taking Benadryl, which I only do during pollen season.

Thanks,

Casey

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Ever tried drinking some Nyquil (it's a cough medicine) - I use it mostly when I need to go to sleep during the day, in order to wake up in the middle of the night.

I don't have any trouble falling asleep, and especially during workout days (and I live next to a very busy highway). I go to gym 3 times a week, but after work, in the evening. By the time I get back, I'm tired enough to fall asleep at will. Perhaps you could try gym in the evening, instead of mornings?

Also - from what you're saying, you'd end up getting less than 5 hours of sleep a night. I see how you can do it once or twice, but after a while of doing it, aren't you sleep deprived enough, to just fall asleep earlier in the evening?

By the way - if you're going to gym for bodybuilding, sleep is crucial for muscle regeneration, and unless you're getting at least 7.5-8 hours, you can forget about getting big.

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Maybe I can relate in a way.I have had a similar problem only that I used to dose off instantly due to tiredness,but would wake up and there would be so many thoughts that it would be hard to fall asleep, though half of me is stuggling to shut down the thoughts and go to sleep again.Of course I would feel tired duting the day.I have found that keeping aside even 15 minutes before sleeping to jot down issues in my "Issues Catalogue" helped.I try actually to spend more time actually thinking each issue through ,but first pen down what all constitue my"think work" for the day.It tends to take away the urgency of thought and allows me to sleep and the questions are more defined to think about during any free time in the day.

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Hm. I think this thread really begs for a definition for what sleep is. My opinion? Its kind of like defragmentation for the mind. When I close my eyes after a day of whatever (especially a busy day) its like a torrent of images and things that happened that day (or the past week, whatever) or just plain imagination creating for me a problem my unconscious mind needs to look at and go through. When I drift to sleep that torrent slows down until I can pick something out of it and comprehend it... understand it... enter the strain of thought I was looking at when I branched off there. I find always that my dreams are a direct relation to my life, no matter how bizzare. The dream is just a way of symbolizing some problem you had in life, and letting you relive it. Letting you think over what you did and perhaps gain some insight as to what else you could've done. After a good nights' sleep you'll notice a decision that stumped you or just didn't feel right may have a new angle or approach you didn't see before that feels right and new.

And of course, accpeting sleep as an eventuality you must deal with is an important part of good sleep. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Typically I "daydream" in the sense there are about three or four common stories that I've thought about for the last five or six years. Thinking about "work" or school or anything else in my life at that moment never puts me to sleep. Also I've been working on a sleep schedule where I fall asleep and wake at the same time. That helps too. Usually I can fall asleep within a couple minutes and I simply "start" the same story the next night.

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