Photo Courtesy of phitar

Have you ever found it difficult to fall asleep? I began to have sleep problems after relocating to US. I couldn’t sleep normal hours. My mind was way too alert, fresh and full of ideas to go to sleep. Either I slept as late as 2 or 4 in the night or I stayed awake for straight 24 to 30 hours before falling asleep. Initially jetlag got all the blame. However, over a period of time when the problem persisted, I knew I had to formulate someway to sleep regularly between 10-11 pm.

I set on to find out what are the possible methods to fall asleep (early). And after lot of trials and errors, this combination of multiple methods has worked for me:

1. Wake up early

Wake up early in the morning at a fixed hour – 5am in my case. How to wake up early? Some pointers which helped:
a. Get out of bed immediately as alarm buzzes.
b. Don’t think anything before getting out of bed.
c. Wake up consistently every day no matter how bad it seems. It takes 30 days to form a habit, hence continue doing so for atleast 30 days.

Ideas for this were taken from Steve Pavlina’s How to Become an Early Riser

2. Link waking up early to a pleasure

Choose your morning activity wisely.
Initially I tried shifting exercise time to morning since that seemed the ideal thing to do. I simply hated it. Waking up early – still sleepy and moving so much did not work. This became a cause for pain and waking up early got all the blame for it. As I started associating pain with waking up early, things started to get even more difficult.

I struck jackpot with reading – one of my passions. Now, I read with a morning cup of tea and some light music in the background. I look forward to waking early for my own time in morning for personal growth.

TIP: Find out something you would love to do for the first hour in the morning. (And do that ofcourse!)

3. Don’t take more than 15 mins for afternoon nap

An hour long nap in afternoon can possibly make up for the sleep lost in morning in the initial days. Mind/Body gets the required rest and hence finds it difficult to fall asleep at night. A 15 min refreshing nap is all right but not more than that.

4. Have dinner atleast 2-3 hours before desired sleeping time

Effects of late dinner (Less than 2 hours period between dinner and sleep):
a. A late dinner means your metabolic rate and body temperature will increase when they should be decreasing. This means spending lot of time in bed tossing and turning. It takes quite a while to get sleep after a heavy meal.
b. There are 5 phases of sleep – drowsiness, light sleep, deep sleep, deep sleep and REM. Deep sleep is when the body rests and repairs itself for another day. A late dinner would mean missing out on deep sleep in the early part of the night. And hence feel less rested the next morning.

Effects of early dinner(More than 3 hours period between dinner and sleep):
Being hungry is as disruptive to sleep as being too full. A light snack before going to bed in this case is effective.

I usually have dinner between 6-7 in the evening.

5. Choose your dinner/supper wisely

Always keep your dinner/supper light. Avoid foods which help staying awake and have food items which promote sleep.

Some Food Items which keep you awake (Caffeine, Nicotine products):
a. Tea
b. Coffee
c. Soda
d. Cigarette

Some Food items which help you sleep (High carbohydrate with some fat):
a. Cereals
b. Milk
c. Chocolate
d. Banana
e. Potatoes

6. Stop television, laptop, work atleast 2 hours before your desired sleeping time.

Inorder to go to sleep, your mind needs to have settled down. A mind full of thoughts, worries and to dos will not be able to sleep. Hence avoid everything thats highly stimulating, distracting and cause of lot of thoughts.

It is said that we carry on in our sleep and dreams whatever activity we do before going to sleep. The reason being that even though our conscious mind is asleep, sub conscious mind is still working on the last input. Imagine your subconscious mind working entire night on your worries or imaginary violence/fights picked up from television. Be very selective in what you wish to think about and expose your mind to in the last few hours before sleep (ideally entire day) since it will affect the quality of your sleep.

The last few hours have become family time for me. I spend time with hubby, play games, talk about the day, read something inspiring, listen to some soothing music … whatever catches my fancy for that day. But – no television, no novels, no laptop and no work in any form at all.

7. Develop sleep rituals before going to bed

Create an evening routine right before going to sleep. Do the same thing in the same order to cue your body to slow down and relax. As your form a habit for this, your body will start getting signals that it is time to go to sleep the moment you start with your routine.

I love taking a hot water bath and play soft instrumental music in background.

8. Go to bed

Don’t stay up all the time and wait till your eyes get all droopy before going to bed. Go to bed at your sleeping time. Lie down, relax. Sleep will automatically come.

If you feel too fresh and alert, stop trying to go to sleep and pick something else. But stick to point 6 – no television, laptop or work.

Some other tips I found for sleeping early:
1. Read something at night – preferrably some subject you don’t like.
2. Drink a warm glass of milk
3. Take a hot water bath
4. Meditate
5. Listen to music
6. Count numbers
7. Pray
8. Do some monotonous household activities like washing utensils, cleaning house etc

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