Learn to fall into a deep sleep every night with a strategy I have used to beat chronic insomnia successfully. Based on the latest science and research, I am living proof it works

 

Whether you’re having trouble sleeping or suffering from chronic insomnia, a lack of sleep can cause sleep deprivation, anxiety and make you unhappy. But you can learn how to fall asleep quickly every night without fail.

I can teach you how to go to sleep instantly and have a deep and good’s night sleep every time guarantee.

How?

Because I suffered for years from acute insomnia.

It made me anxious, unhappy and not great company. I resorted to sleeping pills and tried every piece of advice until I hit on a remedy and approach that worked.

The solution wasn’t to take pills. Read this guide and you’ll never have to take a sleeping pill again.

I have tried-and-tested every sleeping technique – I know which ones work and which ones don’t. And there’s a lot written about how to sleep on the web that doesn’t work.

And I’ve investigated the latest science. The result:

You’ll only find in this guide solutions and ideas that genuinely work. And believe me, I was a chronic insomnia for years and I was desperate for a solution.

Instead of taking hours to get to sleep, not sleeping at all, or waking up early and not getting back to sleep, with this guide you’ll learn to fall asleep quickly.

Guess how long I took to get to sleep last night?

I don’t know. My head hit the pillow and I slept until my alarm clock went off this morning.

Sounds like a dream?

It’s isn’t.

Spend a few moments of every day implementing my advice below and you’ll sleep just as soundly every night for the rest of your life.

 

1. Make sleep a priority

 

A consistent lack of sleep does not just make us irritable and exhausted, but something far worse than that:

An increasing body of research has found that getting less than six hours sleep a night can damage your health, increase the risk of disease and weaken your immune system, making us less able to fight off infection.

You are more at risk of cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and becoming overweight.

There’s a serious reason why I’m telling you this:

It’s not to make you feel stressed that you’re insomnia is slowly make you unwell.

Knowing the full consequences of not getting enough sleep can improve your motivation and commitment to making the changes that will make you sleep again, fast.

I undertook significant research and learnt how to sleep again after a long bout of insomnia. I had three bad colds within a few months of each other, once where I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t get well and started putting on weight.

It made me act fast and you can read what I found and how I beat my insomnia for good in the rest of this guide.

The body has an amazing capacity for self-healing so any effects of insomnia can be corrected by regular healthy sleep.

2. Sleep enhances your performance

A lack of sleep can also takes its toil on your mental performance, decreasing your concentration, affecting your working memory and generally making you bad company and perform badly at work.

Yet conversely, if you’re looking to enhance your mental agility and performance, make yourself smarter and have a better memory, then look no further than your bed.

Not getting enough sleep decreases your brain power, but getting enough sleep actually makes your smarter because you’ll have the energy, concentration to improve your mind.

Sleep makes you smarter, guaranteed.

Having a good night’s sleep also improves your ability to learn, remember and acquire new skills.

Again when I was trying to beat my insomnia, understanding the impact of insomnia and learning about why sleep was so important made me focus more on curing my insomnia.

Why was understanding this so important to my cure:

I thought wrongly that I should just try to get through the day:

If I did well on less sleep that proved how remarkable I was. That’s right isn’t it:

No.

We might praise people who can cope with a few hours sleep, while some people believe they can train themselves to cope on less sleep – but research has found that this is a myth.

 

I realised soon enough that the only way to improve my performance and get myself well again was to sleep.

 

3. Sleep is natural – believe it

If you want to learn how to sleep again you need to remember one important piece of information:
Sleep is a natural process.

That is an important because….

Your mind and body are naturally programmed to sleep. That’s all they want to do when your head hits the pillow.

But there’s something and someone stopping them from going to sleep:

And that’s you.

You are the problem:

Insomnia is a learned behavior. You have programed your mind, made it anxious and worried to the point that you can’t sleep.

But just like you learned how not to sleep, you can learn very quickly, even more quickly how to sleep again.

Remember you are on your own side.

Believe that sleep is a natural process because it is and you are brilliant at sleeping.

 

4. Stop that internal voice

Most insomniacs will have anxious and negative thoughts going through their minds before bed and while they are in bed.

Stopping these will help you get back to sleep again.

And there’s one, unusual way to do this:

You need to embrace your anxiety.

Don’t fight your negative thoughts, they are a natural consequence of your insomnia. But don’t react to them. Let them just be as though you are observing a mad dog on a hot day tearing a stick to pieces.

A powerful technique to use to distance yourself from these thoughts is called welcoming or diffusing:

Preface your thoughts with “I am have the thought that” and maybe say the negative thought to a happy tune, such as your favourite song.

This method teaches you to observe your thoughts and control them rather than them controlling you.

Another way to deal with any negative thoughts is to accept them and acknowledge they are part of the problem.

I used to get anxious and angry when I couldn’t sleep, making myself tense and my inability to sleep worse, but then I did something powerful:

I accepted my anxiety and told myself that as they were a symptom of my insomnia I didn’t need them any more.

Guess what happened next:

They disappeared.

Instead of getting anxious, I thought about how sleep was a natural process. Sure it might take me a while to learn how to sleep again, but accepting it was more helpful and relaxing.

I realised that my feelings and anxiety about not being able to sleep were causing my insomnia. So I  let them go. I breathed deeply in and on the out breath, I let them disappear from my mind.

I became more relaxed in bed then I had for weeks.

 

5. Mindful meditation

Mindful meditation is the art of letting go of stressful and anxious thoughts and taking back control of your mind.

This will help remove the anxiety and stress that you have learned and is a cause of your insomnia.

But again rather than fighting your insomnia and anxiety, you accept it through meditation.

This is very powerful:

Associating the emotion that causes anxiety and insomnia with relaxation defeats its power and makes sleep more likely.

You should meditate for 20 minutes a day or for 3 minutes three times a day.

Try this meditation just before you go to sleep:

Sitting in a chair or lying on your bed.

Breathe deeply and slowly, in for 5 count and hold for 6 and let go for 7.

Imagine your body and slowly trace it and the room you are in with your mind.

Be aware of the pressure your body is making on the bed or chair. Is your head heavy or light? If you are feeling anxious, observe it and what how it makes you feel and let it go.

Are your legs heavy against the chair or bed? Move to your back, arms and legs, feeling them and observing their texture and weight.

If you’re mind begins to wander, just observe it doing so and bring it back to the meditation.

Don’t judge yourself or criticise yourself. Anxiety is a natural response to insomnia and everyone has a wandering mind when they use mediation – the point and skill lies in noticing when your mind has wandered and brining it back on trace.

Take about five to ten minutes to do this exercise.

 

6. Value yourself

Another reason why some people stay awake at night is that they feel they aren’t achieving anything with their lives, often as a result of the insomnia.

But there’s a quick and simple cure for this:

Make a list.

Make a list each day, either mentally or write down of three things that you have achieved that day.

And then make a plan of three things you want to achieve.

It could be going for a walk at lunchtime, making a new recipe when you get home from work, calling a friend, reading a book for 30 minutes, tidying your bedroom.

Doing and thinking about things you value, relaxes you and increases levels of the hormone serotonin, which aids quality sleep.

 

7. Embrace your mistakes

Another big cause of anxiety and stress that keeps people awake is thinking about the mistakes have made during the previous few days.

It’s important to remember that making mistakes is natural and an important part of who we are as humans. We got to where we are today because of our mistakes – but it’s how we react to them that’s is crucial.

 

8. Set a bedtime

Setting a bedtime is an essential, I would say critical, step.

It does two things:

It creates a marker for you to help you to wind down for sleep.

And it creates regular sleeping patterns, using the natural circadian rhythm.

Setting regular sleep times is crucial and it is one of the most powerful steps you can take.

It helps you program your body to fall asleep faster by creating a healthy sleep habit.

Sleeping at the same time every night means you are aiding your sleep by being naturally tried at the same time each night.

This is one of the key steps to take but it is also one of the hardest if you aren’t used to creating a regular bedtime. But you must do this. It is vitally important.

And ensure that your bedtime is a reasonable time too. Don’t go to bed at midnight if you need to be up at 6am.

And remember your bedtime isn’t when you started getting ready for bed. It is when you are in bed and have switch off the light, so give yourself enough time to get to bed.You can also plan a winding down routine around your bedtime, which is another essential step I explore below. This is impossible if you just go to bed when you are tried.

This again was an important step for me to take as before I was going to bed at different times each night, sometimes at 10.45pm up to 1am.

9. Don’t binge on TV before bed

Research has found that binge TV reduces the amount we sleep because we go to bed later.

I was guilty of this too. I mean it doesn’t matter right that it’s 11.20pm and I’m desperate to watch the next episode of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Mad Men even thought I set my bedtime for 10.45pm.

Yet it is.

Very bad.

You’ve just written down on your planner that you are going to go to bed at a certain time so you need to cut down your TV.

So have TV nights start earlier and if you need to watch a couple of hours do so and finish an hour before you need to go to bed.

 

10. Bedtime routine

Now that you have a bedtime you can start ‘darkening down’ in the two hours before you go to bed.

This is important as you are creating the conditions to help your mind and body have a relaxing night’s sleep.

The next five steps should be added to your bedtime routine.

 

11. No blue light

Any light can prevent you from sleeping, but blue light from smartphones and computers increases wakefulness.

Research has discovered that blue light suppresses the production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin.

This is not just smartphones, but computer screens, tablets, flat-screen TVs and LED lighting all produce a lot of blue light.

A recent survey found that 80% of people use these devices two hours before going to bed.

Try to avoid using any of these devise 30 minutes to an hour before going to bed. Also try dimming the screen on these the close it gets to your bedtime

If you watch movies and TV, try to avoid watching them on your computer or laptop. Try to watch TV instead as the blue light is less damaging, although you should still try to give yourself at least half an hour between switching off the TV and going to bed.

 

12. Put your phones into a different room

 

It’s one thing knowing that you shouldn’t be looking at your phone while in bed, but quite another to prevent you from going that when it is lying right next to you.

Putting your phone into another room when you go to bed ensures you won’t be tempted to look at it, even to check the time.

So buy yourself a non-ticking alarm clock instead.

Also if you don’t sleep alone ask your partner to put their phone in a different room too.

This is important too:

Just when I learnt how to sleep again I was woken up by my wife’s phone receiving a text message – it was on vibrate and I still heard it.

I was also woken up by her reading her phone when she woke up early and couldn’t sleep.

So make a pledge to help each other to sleep.

 

13. Don’t drink liquid two hours before you go to bed

This is a must if you are waking up in the night to go to the toilet and then can’t get back to sleep.

This doesn’t mean you go to bed dehydrated. Just drink more water in the first half of the day and the afternoon. This will then work its way through your bladder before you go to bed.

If you want to drink later, have small sips of a class of water or bedtime drink.

Don’t drink it all, but just sipping water can help quench your thirst.

Avoid caffeine drinks as well.

This technique was essential for helping me to sleep.

I used to drink water and a number of relaxing bedtime drinks right up until I went to bed. Then I’d wake up about twice during the night to go to the toilet and struggle to get back to sleep.

When I didn’t drink anything two hours before and drank much more liquid in the first half of the day:

I stopped waking up to go to the toilet and I slept better.

 

14. Ear plugs and a face mask

If you are trying to sleep you can become anxious about noise and light keeping you awake.

I used to lie awake stressing about the noises I could hear – someone breathing next to me, a car outside, the creak of a floorboard.

While mindfulness meditation can help prevent you from worrying about this, helping you to let them go and not worry.

In the short term at least I used powerful earplugs and a face mask. Although I was particular about which eye mask I used – a good quality one with holes for eyes so you don’t have pressure on your eyes. And if you use ear plugs, try to get some with a high DB reading and ensure you put them in correctly by lifting the ear up with the other hand and placing them into your ear canal.

 

15. A bedtime plan

Now that we’re over half way through the guide it might be an idea to write a plan of what you need to do.

I did this in order to remind myself of some of the steps I needed to take. It can be hard to remember to meditate three times a day for a few minutes with a busy job.

It’s also relaxing to know that you have written your own personal plan of steps you need to follow. Writing down a plan means you are more likely to achieve your goal of sleeping.

 

16. Exercise

Taking up regularly exercise should also be included into your new sleep regime.

Not only is exercise one of the most important activities to increase stress and anxiety, it’s also critically important for warding off illness – so you can stop worrying about that as well.

Even just walking 20 to 30 minutes a day can be highly beneficially.

But you have to stick at it. Research has found that you will sleep better after three months of exercise than you will after just a few days.

Those who participated in a 16-week exercise intervention slept longer and woke up less often than those who remained inactive. But researchers also noticed that participants’ insomnia only improved after the 16 weeks of exercising were up, and didn’t get better immediately.

While an in-depth study of those with chronic insomnia found that “acute moderate-intensity aerobic exercise appears to reduce pre-sleep anxiety and improve sleep in patients with chronic primary insomnia.”

You could also try this yoga poses for a better night’s sleep:

 

Get regular exercise. Try not to exercise close to bedtime, because it may stimulate you and make it hard to fall asleep. Experts suggest not exercising for at least three to four hours before the time you go to sleep.

 

17. Don’t drink alcohol before bed

While alcohol can to some degree aid sleep – you feel you’ve often fall asleep after drinking a lot – remember you’ve also probably stayed out later than usual.

Alcohol is also a stimulant.

If we drink alcohol close to bedtime you are more likely to wake up earlier in the night.

If you want a glass of wine with dinner, have dinner three hours before you go to bed. But don’t over do it.

You’re new sleep regime until you beat insomnia should include a pledge to cut down on drinking alcohol.

 

18. 4-7-8 breathing method

The 4-7-8 method has a lot of coverage because of the claim that it can get you to sleep in about a minute.

I tried the 4-7-8 technique and while I didn’t fall asleep in less than a minute I did start falling a sleep sooner each night.

Like many of the techniques here it is about training your mind to respond differently. As you continue to use the 4-7-8 techniques, you fall asleep quicker and quicker, sometimes dramatically so.

I used it as a key part of my insomnia-beating toolkit, but I have a few refinements that can help too.

One of the tricks of this technique is that, like mindfulness meditation, you are being asked to focus on something. In this case, counting and breathing.

The 4-7-8 technique relaxing you by increasing the amount of oxygen in your mind and promoting calm and relaxation throughout out your body

Here’s how to do it, according to Dr Weil, founder of the Arizona Centre for Intergrative Medicine at the University of Arizona:

Place the tip of your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth, and keep it there through the entire exercise.

Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.

Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.

Hold your breath for a count of seven.

Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.

Repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

I mix this technique up a little. Sometimes I use the technique as described above. Other nights I don’t do the whooshing sound. Some nights I just focus on my breathing, breathing in deeply, holding and breathing out.

Mixing it up gives me variety and I believe trains my mind to sleep in a variety of ways. Some nights I just tried to sleep by closing my eyes and some nights that worked too. When I didn’t after five minutes, I tried these technique again.

I was keen not to become too reliant on one technique. But initially I used this technique almost every night for two week to three weeks before I started mixing it up a bit.

 

19. Read before bedtime

I included reading in my bedtime routine as it ticked a number of important boxes.

In my list of value and goals for the day, I added reading. Reading books is something that is important to me and I don’t always find the time. So ensuring I read before bed ensured I achieved something that made me very happy.

Also reading before you sleep from a book not an e-reader, means you are avoiding blue-light emitting devices – ensure you phone you’re phone is already in another room before you read so you aren’t tempted to check it.

And it also calms the mind, as what you are reading replaces any worries that you may have.

 

20. Sleep like a Dane

The Danes are happiest people in the world. They suffer less stress and have the best sleep in the world.

One reason for this is because they have a pastime called hygge, which means comforting cosiness. In other words embracing open fires and candle light.

You could eat dinner by candlelight and if you are watching TV, turn off the lights and put some candles on. Alternatively, have a conversation or read a book to candelight, just remember not to set yourself on fire.

You’ll reduce the amount of less blue light you’re exposeing yourself to as well.

 

21. Tense and relax those muscles

 I used this technique alongside breathing deeply. Doing two things at once worked well for me.

Progressive muscle relaxation involves slowly tensing and then relaxing each muscle in your body to help your body relax.

Start by tensing and relaxing the muscles in your toes and progressively working your way up to your neck and head.

 

23. Avoid napping

If I was really tired I tried to get a nap in the afternoon or earlier evening so I could at least function a little later on.

However I stopped this as research has found that this can reduce your ability to beat your insomnia.

I did once or twice have a powernap of no more than 20 minutes. That’s when I really didn’t have a good nights sleep.

But napping is not a long-term solution. If you are using the techniques in this guide you’ll never have to nap again.

 

24. Eat earlier

Like alcohol, eating too close to bedtime can keep you awake, but don’t go to bed hungry either.

Try to eat your dinner three hours before you go to bed to aid a good night’s sleep.

 

25. Don’t make the bedroom too hot

One reason I discovered I was staying awake was that the heating would stay on until we went to bed.

This meant the bedroom was very warm, which research has found can keep you awake.

You need cool fresh air to help you sleep.

In winter, turn off the heating an hour before you go to bed, and ensure there is some fresh air coming into the room.

That doesn’t mean you have to open the window fully, but just a crack or open a vent.

 

26. Buy a new pillow

Pillows can become flat, lumpy and uncomfortable.

Just after I had started on my new sleep regime, I didn’t sleep. I realized that my pillows were literally as flat as pancakes. I had owned them for three years without changing them.

We’re all different sleepers and some pillows will suit back sleepers more than side sleepers. But consider investing in a new pillow – one with good reviews.

 

27. Keep a note book by your bed.

If you find yourself lying awake worrying about things, try making a to-do list before you go to bed. This may help you to not focus on those worries overnight.

 

28. It’s a process

Remember learning how to sleep again is a process.

You’ll see some immediate and some gradual improvements. You may have three good nights’ sleep and then two bad again.

What’s important is the overall improvement.

When I started using these techniques I looked for an overall improvement over a week to two weeks. My sleeping was till a little up and down, but I was getting more sleep as time went on.

Understanding this is important because it will prevent you from getting stressed and worrying that it isn’t working. Even the best sleepers have bad nights’ sleep occassaionally

When I had a set back sometimes it was because I’d drunk too late, hadn’t kep to my bedtime routine or done something to break the rules in this list.

 

 

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