• Sleep and wake at the same time every day.
• Wake early.
• Avoid caffeine after mid day.
• Cool temperature bedroom as you go to sleep.
• Avoid stimulation immediately prior to sleep e.g. screens, intense exercise, arguments.
• Make the bedroom a place of rest exclusively, no screens, noise, etc.
• If sleep is elusive don’t stay in bed, go do something and come back later to try again.
• Worrying about sleep only makes sleep more difficult.
• Don’t use alcohol or drugs to help sleep except very briefly to get over a hump. Of the benzodiazepine class, zopiclone is effective for short periods to re-establish a sleep pattern.

I’m just someone on the internet, take everything with a grain of salt.

Only go to sleep when you really intent to. No scrolling on your phone in the bed, no reading books,…

The moment you lay/sit down, you intent to sleep.

If it doesn’t work: get up, do something else, try again later.

Isolate factors that could keep you awake like sugar, caffeine, alkohol,… Even a handfull of gummies could influence when you fall asleep.

Check on air-quality, room temperature and moisture, dryness of bedding, room -brightness, -light sources, noice levels.

Try out keeping a journal of these things, as well as your mental state and reflect on your sleep in the morning.

If available, ask your SO or room-mate about their sleep, that’s a great way to identify external influences.

If your data stays inconsistent, ask a doctor, as there might be medical conditions influencing you falling asleep, ike high blood pressure or hormone imbalances.

Lately, I’ve been taking melatonin gummies about an hour before I want to go to bed. They don’t really make me sleepy, but they make falling asleep easier (something I’ve always struggled with). I’ll usually take another one when I actually go to bed (unless they’re time time-release kind which I can’t always find).

Reading, absolutely. And exercise.

Massive physical exhaustion with time to “calm down” before sleep.

Oh boy.

First of all, form good “sleep hygiene” habits, read: https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Sleep Hygiene.pdf

A lot of it is obvious, like go to bed at the same time every night (set a timer to get yourself reliable at first!), and wake up at the same time every morning. Give yourself more “sleep opportunity” than the hours you want to sleep so you actually get enough sleep (e.g. if you want to sleep 8 hours, maybe give yourself 10 hours in bed with the lights out).

Don’t use screens several hours before bed, don’t do anything but sleep in your bed, and wind-down before bed with something like reading a book (again, in a chair in another room, not in your bed).

Now for more advanced tips I’ve learned from dealing with insomnia:

A problem I have sometimes had is that tasks like meditation can actually cause me to become more alert, and it turns out meditation actually does cause insomnia.

When struggling with meditation related insomnia, I got lots of practice navigating falling asleep.

What I found most helpful was rather than focusing on an object in a meditation like way, to instead allow mind-wandering and rumination and to try to cultivate a lack of metacognitive awareness about that rumination. Basically, the opposite of meditation. Meditators will hopefully know what I mean by this - but basically, don’t pay too much attention to what you are thinking, just get absorbed into the mind-wandering.

Sometimes if the mind-wandering leads to thoughts or feelings that are “strong” or engaging enough it can prevent me from sleeping, like when I’m anxious or my mind is preparing or rehearsing for an important event or the next day. In that case, a little bit of meta-awareness can be helpful to alert you to the need to redirect your rumination to something actively boring or benign.

In the most extreme instances, I visualize myself working in a factory performing a repetitive motion like pulling a level to operate a press. I essentially constantly try to pay attention to that mundane task and ensure that it remains mundane / uninteresting - just keep pulling the lever and keep paying attention to that task. This is akin to the counting sheep method, but I always found counting sheep too interesting or engaging of a task.

After hours of boredom I usually lose consciousness.

Sometimes I threaten myself with getting out of bed, and often in response I feel a resistance and that makes me realize how tired I actually am, and I threaten myself with doing something boring like sitting in a chair and staring at a wall. Sometimes that is enough to kick me out of my energized thinking into a milder / more boring and repetitive mind-wandering that leads to dreams and unconsciousness.

Sometimes I actually do have to get out of bed and do something, often I will stretch and if I’m not feeling overwhelmed with sleep that way, I find it helpful to exhaust myself with forearm planks - just hold until you can’t anymore (you can also use a timer for 30 seconds or 60 seconds, whatever pushes you past comfort but all the way to failure), maybe try this a couple times. You will sweat and it’s miserable the whole time, and you will be tired and want to crawl back into bed. That has helped me fall asleep really well before, and sometimes I think it’s because the blood also gets into my muscles and somehow this helps me relax.

Anyway, hope this helps!

Don’t.

I got three, they all seem to work on me, but sometimes I prefer one over the other for no clear reason.

1. Counting my breath duration. Breath in at normal speed, count how long it is, then breath out slower than that by two or three counts.

2. Force my thoughts to become disorganised. I do something like free association between concepts and pictures of the inner eye. Common starting point for me is a free flight over a hilly landscape, then random things, woods, trees, rocks, water whatever, I don’t try to control anything about the theme. If I start thinking coherently or about something concrete from my life, I just start again, with another nature scene.

3. Imagine a calm scene. The suggested starting point I was told was floating on an air matteress in an alpine lake (helps that we know those around here, but I’m sure non-alpine lakes work too) and imagine the things you can see uphill as you drift around your axis.

Complete darkness. Black out curtains on windows. Remove anything that has a light. I can see the tiny LED light on a charging cable through my eyelids. I fall asleep so much faster after getting rid of all light sources.

No alcohol. Drinking would make me fall asleep easily, but I would wake up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep for 1 to 2 hours every time.

Smoke a lil weed before bed

My go to is counting backwards from 100. I typically time the counting with my breathing, and I try to slow my breathing. Most nights I’m usually out by the time I hit 80. If you find your mind wandering, try to bring your thoughts back to your Breathing. I started doing this after I had been meditating for a while, so it felt fairly natural. If you’re new to meditation, do some basic meditation training to get the idea. Most meditation trainings start with learning how to focus on your breathing.

No screens for two hours before bedtime.

Read a book or listen to music.

Melatonin works for me.

Hot shower.

Exercise. If you aren’t physically tired you’ll have a hard time falling asleep. Most people with physical jobs have no problem sleeping.

Understand it’s a skill you can practice. Close your eyes, get comfy, relax your body, find a happy thought.

Take 1 g of niacin and 1 mg of melatonin right before bed.