I'm not sure if I'll be able to explain this well, but I'll give it a shot. I can have the same problem you're describing, which can keep me awake for an hour or more. However, I've noticed that when I finally start to fall asleep, the same thing happens every time: I let go. I don't engage in those thoughts anymore. They still come, but by not indulging in them, by not engaging my critical thinking processes to analyze these thoughts, to worry about them and follow them down a long and wakeful chain of imagined causality, they tend to start to form the beginnings of dreams. Instead of being purely intellectual, these thoughts begin to resolve into imagery and sound and rudimentary plot. Often it's just an acting out of the thoughts that have been plaguing me - if I'm worried about a particular upcoming event, that event will begin to play out behind my closed eyes. And as soon as these images start, I just lie back and watch - turn off the mind and turn on the imagination. What keeps you awake is thinking, so if you pretend as if you're just lying down to watch a movie - something which is passive instead of active - you'll be in a mindset more conducive to sleep. |
|
Bookmarks