Thread: Tips on getting back to sleep?

Cross-posted from my newbie thread. Hi folks!

So this morning I tried a WBTB, accompanied by some audio aids DL'd from this site, and a mantra ("Realize This Dream"). This was about 45 minutes after awakening in the morning, after having slept for about 6 hours. I spent most of the time reading this site, and envisioning what I would do when I became lucid. But as has happened before, I was unable to get back to sleep, and after an hour of restlessness, gave up. ):

Any tips on getting back to sleep after my short awakening? Was I awake too long? Should I not look at the computer screen? Try meditating for all or some of that time? Any and all feedback is much appreciated. Thanks!

Really the length of time you are up depends on you. You just have to experiment to see what works best in your personal case. For me, when I was still actively LDing (been extremely busy with life and now college, unfortunately no time or energy for it), more often than not I wouldn't even get up or do anything. If I did, it was to go to the bathroom. Doing anything else or staying up any longer would keep me awake for another ~2 hours. What I would do is wake up, and then just lie there in the same position I was in when I woke up for about 3 to 5 minutes. Sometimes I would just fall back to sleep, but since I had the ability to wake up 3-4 times a night using autosuggestion, I always had more tries. Perhaps you should look into waking up naturally if you can't do it already, it definitely comes in handy.

What I used to do on my WBTB, was to either go back to sleep immediatelly or stay up until I started to yawn.
But a good advice to fall asleep quickly is to avoid lights on the WBTB, you can sit at your computer, but turn the light down, so it's not so bright.

Wow... 45 minutes is too long, IMHO.

Yea I agree with mars. Even if I'm up for like 15 minutes I won't be able to go back to sleep I stick with single digit numbers.

The thing is you want to become awake enough so that your awareness will carry into the dream world, but you also want to be tired enough so that you can actually fall asleep. This is a fine line that varies from person to person. My advice would be to experiment with different lengths of time during your WBTB's. For some people, this is 1 minute; others maybe 10 minutes; and some stay awake for an hour or two.

A while back I posted a thread on how to fall asleep faster. Have it a look for it might be useful.

Good luck!

What i do to sleep at anytime is just empty my mind. This is almost the only way i can get to sleep now, though. Also, when i WBTB during the night, i like to keep it short (less than 5 minutes) or it can keep me up for a while