How to get to sleep

I used to have a bunch of hacks I’d throw together and hope for the best. This method I’m about to describe has never failed me once in two months of using it. That’s pretty helpful, because I average two bathroom trips per night and that makes three times I have to use it most nights.

It’s adapted from a Brian Tracy exercise:

In its simplest form, you can get most of the benefits of autogenic conditioning by assuming a comfortable position, either sitting in a comfortable chair or lying on a bed. You close your eyes, breathe deeply and begin talking to the six parts of your body—your left arm, your right arm, your left leg, your right leg, your chest and your head.

These are the words that seem to work the best. Begin by repeating six times, one breath to one repetition, “My left arm is becoming heavy and warm.” Then repeat six times, “My left arm is now heavy and warm.” Finally, say six times, “My left arm is completely heavy and warm.”

Each time you inhale and exhale, you speak one command. Repeat this process with each of the other five parts of your body, going from your left arm to your right arm, then from your left leg to your right leg, then to your chest and finally to your head and neck. In less than ten minutes, you will have talked your body down into a deep state of relaxation. Your mind will be in the alpha state.

Here are the changes I made:

1. After getting comfortable, deliberately count out five deep breaths: count slowly to at least five for the inhale and slowly to at least eight for the exhale.

2. Change the emphasized word with each repetition:

My left arm is becoming heavy and warm.
My left arm is becoming heavy and warm.
My left arm is becoming heavy and warm.
My left arm is becoming heavy and warm.
My left arm is becoming heavy and warm.
My left arm is becoming heavy and warm.

3. For each emphasis, I do an accompanying visualization:

My: I think of the limb as being distinctly mine and imagine the neuromuscular connections between my brain and any points of tension.
Left: I think about the limb being a part of that whole side of my body, and try to put the other side out of my body out of mind completely.
Arm: I think about the arm as being distinctly an arm, and the sorts of things my arm can do like throwing a punch, throwing a ball, grasping, hugging, etc.
Becoming: This is a silly one. I imagine the arm glowing with light and heating the air around it, as well as the neuromuscular connections from before (which in turn heats my brain).
Heavy: Even sillier. I imagine the limb wearing something so heavy that it would feel really inconvenient to move it even a little bit. For whatever reason (maybe because of becoming Super Saiyan before), I’ve settled on gold plate armor.
Warm: I imagine hot water being poured along the limb, slowly moving up and down. More often nowadays, I just imagine it being immersed in a really hot hot tub. I imagine the water being so hot that my muscles can’t help reacting to it, so that they relax under the onslaught of heat whether I want them to or not. This is the most relaxing one and I spend as much time on it as I want to.

4. I do a couple of extra areas of focus:

Left arm
Right arm
Left leg
Right leg
Pelvis and chest (together)
Back and shoulders
Head and neck

After doing this a couple of nights in a row, my brain learned not to fight back and just gives in to sleep immediately, so I’m usually asleep before I finish the first round with the first limb (I always do the left arm first). I’ve never finished it at night, but my circadian rhythm has been set indelibly in stone for at least five years now so YMMV. (Ask anyone who’s met me and they’ll confirm AP is a morning person.) When I’ve finished this exercise during the day it always left me in a very parietal state of mind.