How to fall asleep, without fail;

I never had trouble sleeping until I started college. Maybe it was sharing a room, or the new location, or the stress of lectures, but for whatever reason I started to struggle to sleep. Luckily for me, someone told me the antidote. I recorded my lectures, primarily organic chemistry. It was good that I recorded those lectures, because Monday morning, my professor could put me straight to sleep.

Well one night, while I was staring at the backs of my eyelids but unable to fall asleep, I had a thought. If those recordings could put me to sleep on Monday morning, certainly they would do the same thing at night! So I got my tape recorder, played the lecture and sure enough, I went straight to sleep.

If you are having trouble with sleep, try this very boring exercise. It’s supposed to be boring, because that will help you to sleep.

Get comfortable in your bed with all the lights off and everything for the day done. Open your eyes and inhale. Now close you eyes and exhale. Count in your mind, starting with 30. Open your eyes and inhale, close your eyes and exhale. 29. Open your eyes and inhale, close your eyes and exhale. 28. Keep this up all the way down to 0.

You may find that this very boring exercise is too boring. Maybe you will get to 25 and decide that it’ too much bother to continue to open and close your eyes with each breath. Then don’t. You may find that it’s too much to keep track of your specific rhythmic inhalation and exhalation. Then don’t. Maybe by 10 you have decided that you don’t want to count anymore at all. Then don’t. You will find that you floated off.

Remember that like every other exercise we learned through our relaxation seminar, don’t make it happen, let it happen. Let the air breath you. Let the sleep find you, and it will. For good sleep, try the technique we learned on day 2 just before getting into bed. You will find the relaxation it provides leads to excellent sleep!