Thread: How to go to sleep right now

First of all, weird sleep schedules can seriously mess up your chances of LDing. Having said that, I find the reverse blinking is really useful.

What you do is calm down your breathing, then keep your eyes closed. As soon as you start to exhale, open and close your eyes quickly (At the same speed as if it were you blinking). Keep doing this for a while, and you should get tired.

I'm not sure why I'm about to write this, since the OP was a few days ago and it's not like anyone is going to listen, but w/e.

I used to have trouble falling asleep, but through trial and error I've recently figured out that I can fall asleep relatively quickly by doing the following, as long as I'm at least a little tired in the first place.

1) Don't try to sleep right away. Forcing yourself to close your eyes and thinking "sleep now!" and getting frustrated isn't the right way to go about it. Do what you need to before trying to fall asleep, because if you don't it will distract you and disrupt the process. Get a drink of water, masturbate, urinate, get any thoughts out of the way that you know you're going to think too heavily about if you don't now, etc.

2) Then adjust the covers so that you aren't too hot or cold, stretch out if you need to, position yourself however is most comfortable, etc.

3) Close your eyes, relax and let your thoughts drift randomly. Do not let yourself consciously decide what to think about. Instead, don't think about thinking about anything (if that makes sense). Just do nothing, and your brain will come up with stupid little thoughts on its own. The only time your consciousness should take control is if you realize you're thinking about something too 'heavy'. Basically, you're trying to meditate while allowing stupid meaningless little thoughts to sleep through. Encourage your thoughts to express themselves in images.

4) Eventually, you won't have to encourage your thoughts to express themselves as images anymore. They'll appear in front of you randomly without you even trying. When this is happening, you know that you're very close to being asleep. You'll see more and more images, and they'll become increasingly detailed, almost like scenes from dreams. Just continue to let this happen, and continue to let your consciousness fade to the background. It should only be an observer throughout the entire process. If you get to this stage you're pretty much guaranteed to be asleep within the next couple minutes.

I have found that taking melatonin tablet(s) before bed really makes me fall asleep faster. You can buy them at the grocery store in the dietary supplements section, or probably at a pharmacy. Just make sure that you don't take more than the recommended dosage!

Just to add to Dianeva, don't exercise within a couple of hours of your normal bed time. I was accidentally doing this for a while and getting some insomnia from it. Do exercise during the day, but not before bed.