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Comment by jerrygoyal | Hacker News Reader

Here's a method that worked for me and i am able to consistently fall asleep within 15 minutes or less:

Direct your attention to sleep. Whenever you go to bed and notice yourself actively thinking about something just direct that attention back to sleep. Think about it, it's the attention that keeps you awake. Note that 'actively thinking' is different than mind-wandering which is passive and actually helps in falling asleep. This will be difficult initially but you will get better over time at controlling attention. This is because attention is like a muscle so you need to train over time.

I have been doing this for months and it works.

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I think for a lot of us that directs us to actively think about sleep instead of actually directing our attention toward sleep.

My strategy is to try to jumpstart the memory reconciliation process, which is kind of a passive way of directing my attention toward sleep. It basically just recounting the day from the beginning when I woke up and tracing back to the current moment. It does cause my mind to wander and sometimes be too active, but if I notice that, I will just start restart the recounting process. I think this might also be what makes journaling so useful - memory and thought reconciliation.

My personal tip is to slow your breathing, slow it down enough that you breath too slow and feel a bit deprived from oxygen. Then slowly breath faster but try to keep it as low as possible.

I think (but I am not an expert in this) it slows down the heart and with that, allows you to fall asleep easier.

> slow it down enough that you breath too slow and feel a bit deprived from oxygen

A resource that I've been using lately that has some details regarding this particular part of the breathing process: https://midlmeditation.com/meditation-for-anxiety

You probably can't really "feel" oxygen deprivation from that breath work. More likely you're feeling hypercapnia.

I used to try and stare at the inside of my eyelids, as if looking at a TV screen. It seemed like once images started to appear, while my eyes were closed, my brain began to think it was dreaming and just gave up on being awake :-)

This is exactly what I do and it seems to be the most effective method I have found. It helps to get me out of whatever rumination I am having and into a more mindful state.

Hallucinationes hypnopompicae. I've had them too, and they do help falling asleep. I've had them for years, and then I got treated for anixiety and changed jobs, and – poof! – they were gone. Now I only experience them if I'm very tired or stressed. I had two friends that also saw them, but they only saw them when they were very-very stressed and didn't get enough sleep. I don't know if they are always a sign of stress, or if some people do see them naturally. My friend group is certainly screwed towards "it's a stress thing" category.

Whenever I have trouble sleeping, I like to imagine myself floating in the air with clouds underneath and I slowly drift into the clouds. Just keeping this in my head crowds out the other stuff and I drift off pretty consistently.

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