How To Sleep Well without Medication

Do you (or someone you know) have trouble falling asleep, or wake up too early and have trouble falling back to sleep? Or maybe you just don't sleep deeply enough. Good sleep can help you: • Feel better emotionally, reducing stress, anxiety, irritability, depression • Think more clearly, improving you concentration and memory • Improve your physical health • Feel stronger, more energetic, and be more productive • Sleeping well can also have a positive effect on your relationships with other people.

If you are taking sleep medication, you may want to be able to sleep well without it. You may have also previously tried relaxing your muscles, relaxation breathing, visualization, hypnosis, meditation, “natural” remedies, or sleep hygiene tips like having your room be quiet, slowing down before bed, etc.

Those approaches are useful, but are rarely enough. People often say, “I wish I could just turn off the switch and go to sleep.” Below are simple steps that give you a way to turn off the switch in your mind and actually cross over the threshold into sleep, or back to sleep, and to sleep more deeply. These introductory steps come from the Sleep Easily method developed by Richard Shane, Ph.D.

The steps

You don’t have to initially quiet your mind, because that often just creates struggle. Just use the steps described below. There are physical sensations that are “switches” to deeply calm your nervous system, relax your body, and quiet your mind. 

• Let your tongue, jaw, and perhaps your throat begin to relax.  

• As you breathe, gently feel he rise and fall of your chest or abdomen, and the movement that happens naturally inside your chest and abdomen as you breathe. Even if your breath feels uncomfortable, gently feel breath without trying to change it, and your breath will begin to become comfortable by itself. The gentle movement of breath feeling in your body begins to soften and loosen body tensions. Your mind can begin to rest in the inner feeling of body comfort, anywhere from your tongue, down through your throat, and in your chest and abdomen. Your mind can begin to rest in that inner feeling of comfort, much like when your head rests in a pillow. When your mind rests in that feeling of body comfort, mind begins to become quieter without effort because it’s resting. Your body relaxes deeply in the center, and you begin to ease toward sleep.  

Have your initial goal be not to get all the way to sleep, but rather to create this body feeling of comfort and safety and have your mind rest in that comfort. This has the feeling of “opening your inner pathway to sleep,” kind of “leaning into sleep inside yourself,” which feels very good, far better than tossing and turning. These are the body sensations that occur as you are falling asleep. As you rest in that inner feeling of body comfort, your body recognizes this feeling and carries you the rest of the way into sleep.

If you awaken too early, as soon as you are aware that you are beginning to wake up, use the simple steps described above. This makes it so you don’t awaken as much as you otherwise would have; it’s like keeping part of yourself asleep. You can do this even while you walk to the bathroom. Then, when you get back into bed, use the steps and remember that your goal is to create the particular body feeling of comfort and safety, and have your mind rest in that feeling. Your body recognizes this feeling and carries you the rest of the way into sleep. Even if you don’t fall back to sleep as quickly as you’d like, resting in this inner feeling of comfort and safety has the feeling of opening your inner pathway to sleep.

Even if these introductory steps help only slightly at first, appreciate any small improvement. Continue to use the steps and you will be gently training your nervous system, gradually moving in the direction of better sleep.

Richard Shane, Ph.D., developed the Sleep Easily method as a result of curing his own insomnia. He was successfully treated insomniacs for over 15 years, and now teaches this method on a CD set so people nationwide can sleep well. For more information, including a series of special reports about sleep that you can download for free, click on the link below.

Sleep Easily.com