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The common suggestions for inducing sleep include minimising light and noise, being cool (but not cold), being physically comfortable, dealing with aches & pains and limiting possible interruptions from things such as mobile phones & pets. You should also avoid, before bedtime, such things as strenuous exercise (at least 3 hours before bed), bright light (including that associated with TV), heavy meals, caffeine (from coffee, tea & cola), nicotine (from smoking), alcohol and other stimulant drugs. When in bed you can improve your chances of sleeping by relaxing all of your muscles, starting from your toes up, by breathing slowly and gently and by yawning, if possible.
To lessen any feelings of anxiety that might otherwise keep you awake, you can maintain a bedside ‘worry book’ to record those things you must remember for tomorrow; check that your bedside clock alarm has been set correctly and then cover up or move the clock to where it can’t be easily seen; and take appropriate steps to be confident about your personal security while sleeping.
Having followed all those recommendations, you would normally expect to fall asleep fairly quickly. However, when the expected sleep hasn’t occurred after some reasonable period of time, it’s common to start becoming anxious about the situation. Perhaps your mind started out being over-stimulated as a consequence of some of the day’s events or because of the thoughts you were having prior to, or just after going to bed. In general, once excessive mental stimulation or anxiety cycles take hold, the chance of your just ‘drifting off to sleep’ becomes even more remote.
Typically, the more time you lie in bed awake, often just worrying about how bad you will feel in the morning, the less likely you are to fall asleep. This ‘vicious circle’ is generally even more pronounced if you have had the same sleepless experience on preceding nights.
The common advice, once this situation occurs and sleep has eluded you for 15 to 30 minutes, is to get up and do something boring - like ironing; or reading an unstimulating book; or having a light snack; or drinking some warm milk; or taking a warm bath; or repeating your normal pre-sleep ritual; or counting sheep; or thinking of some pleasant place you’d like to be; or thinking of a happy memory from the past etc.
Some of these techniques mean that you must waste valuable time out of bed doing these things and, often, it becomes difficult to select the right moment to return to bed and attempt to sleep again. In fact, your sleeping arrangements and those of others in your immediate vicinity, particularly when you’re not in your normal bed, may actually make it very difficult or impossible for you to even follow some of these suggested techniques.
Besides these personal-action, sleep-assisting techniques, there are also many and varied sleep ‘aids’ on sale, such as alcohol, drugs and herbal remedies. You can obtain specialist training in meditation or in CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) as well as purchase purpose-written, relaxation music or dialogue and ‘bio-rhythmic’ sound CD’s. These can all be quite expensive, or require a significant learning commitment on your part, or require special equipment (such as a CD player) or they require on-going purchases (such as herbal remedies, alcohol and sleeping tablets).
In summary, while these various personal-action or sleep-aid methods probably have differing degrees of success, the best long-term strategy is to have a very easy, quick-acting, and INTERESTING ‘mind-only’ method that will, after frequent use, become a method you know you can rely on. Once you have gained confidence in such a method, you can eliminate for good those worrying thoughts about not sleeping that start to infiltrate the ‘back of your mind’ as you ready yourself for bed each night.
You may have encountered recommendations regarding ‘sleep hygiene’, which include advice aimed at ‘preparing’ your mind & body for bed through following some standard sequence of activities or ‘ritual’ as you prepare for bed. Sleep hygiene also encompasses the need to just use the bedroom for sleep (and sex) – that is, don’t watch TV in bed, eat in bed or use the bedroom for other business or entertainment activities.
While this ‘sleep hygiene’ advice may be helpful, there are always people who cannot follow these recommendations because of their particular living arrangements at the time or those who choose to ignore this advice for a variety of other reasons.
Another common suggestion is that you should avoid over-sleeping, as this may make you less sleepy at bedtime. Therefore, if you wish to follow this advice, you should resist the temptation to sleep-in on weekends and avoid taking naps during the day or evening. Again, this advice may be hard to follow, particularly if, like many people, you enjoy these little pleasures.
The TNT Sleep ‘mind-only’ method, explained in full by the e-book to be available from this website, doesn’t require that you practise any form of ‘sleep hygiene’ nor avoid over-sleeping, nor does it require that you don’t think or worry about issues when you are in your bed. Once the technique is learned and found to be effective, you may even have the flexibility to allow yourself, once in bed, to contemplate almost any subject matter, for as long as desired, then use this method to ‘switch off’ your mind when you finally consider that it’s time for you to go to sleep.