Seems i'm having Brainwave Problem. help!!! Can't sleep

I dont have anxiety i'm relaxed. And now i even turn off tv and computer at 8 and spend 1 hour meditating and doing reading or stuff. I exercise everyday and eat well.

I don't know what i have but at night when i first sleep i can sleep. but it seems it takes longer than before. That's at 9pm. Then i get up at 1:30.

When i want to go back to sleep , i just can't. I have my eyes closed and i'm relaxed but my sleep state doesn't change. i just remain in the first level. Before in the past, i would easily go to the next deeper level. But now i stay 1 hour in that first level and it doesn't change to the deepr level. I don't know what's going on but i have a feeling it has to do something with my Brain waves not working eficiently.


LIke today i got up at 1:30, struggled to go back to sleep. At 4:00 i tried again, and i could barely get to a very light level, but i was clearly awake just like imagining stuff.

What's going on? I've been reading stuff about not being able to sleep in the web. They say Insomnia and stuff. but the tips they give to solve insomnia are things i'm already doing. So maybe i don't really have insomnia.

Because the things they say to do is
-turn off comptuer and tv some hours before going to sleep. I do that already
-Foods, i eat well
-exercise, i do
-It could be Stress and anxiety.. I dont have any.


The only stres and anxiety is kind of far away it's not an immdiate thing. I have anxiety because soon i need to look for housing cause my parents are selling the house.. But at the moment i'm not really worrying about that.

So what the heck am i doing wrong?

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I think maybe Brain wave problems?? I have had Brain injury before as a child. But i have been sleeping good all these years.. so this suddenly started and i dont' know why.

One thing that has also started recenly like 2 years ago, is i feel like i'm falling down. That's in my waking life. I suddenly feel like i'm falling . It's something i'm gonna get checked for soon.

But i dont know if that has to do anything with my sleep problems:shock:

ps i'm male in my 30s

Check some of my recent posts, I go into detail in how I've successfully figured out how to fall back asleep in the middle of the night when there's not a lot of that "drowsy" feeling easily waiting for you. I understand your frustration, you want to sleep and dream and make progress on lucid training! Me too. I had many nights where I just couldn't go back to sleep in the middle of the night, and it was very frustrating. I think that anxiety, even if you don't feel it directly, is lurking there somewhere.

In (very) short, I focus exclusively on relaxing, not sleeping. Relax the eyes, the body (especially head: jaws/cheeks/forehead), and the mind (try not to "clench" on to anything). Try to constantly go deeper and deeper into relaxation. For me, sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's a bit longer, but I know I will get back to sleep this way. Worse comes to worst, if you just can't sleep after about 30 minutes, get out of bed, maybe move to another room, sit quietly thinking about lucid dreaming, perhaps doing a mantra and visualizing desired dream scenes, maybe have a light snack (warm milk is great), then go back to bed and try again.

Ultimately, though, the thing about lucid dreaming and sleep is that it's highly individual. There are resources out there (and on these forums) that give a lot of techniques -- you need to figure out for yourself what works for you.

Thanks alot. I"m gonna do that today.
Yeah i've been focusing on sleeping. i forgot about relaxing.

The thing that gets me is when i'm getting to a deeper level i feel like i'm falling and i feel it like down the back of my neck so it startles me and i have to start over

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Originally Posted by voByJunior2013

Thanks alot. I"m gonna do that today.
Yeah i've been focusing on sleeping. i forgot about relaxing.

The thing that gets me is when i'm getting to a deeper level i feel like i'm falling and i feel it like down the back of my neck so it startles me and i have to start over

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I'm familiar with this falling sensation and the startle reaction. I think it means you're paying attention to how you fall asleep -- like you're keeping awareness with you throughout the process. Sort of like a WILD, where you're supposed to keep a pearl of awareness anchored to something (like a mantra) while you fall asleep. A month ago I made a bunch of WILD attempts every day for about a week, 5 hours after bedtime. The result was that I became very mindful of the process of falling asleep. I may have been (probably was?) doing it incorrectly, but that was the result. And for several weeks afterward just simply falling asleep after about 5 hours after bedtime became impossible, I was very aware of the process. I would get to the edge of sleep and something pulled me back to wakefulness.

The remedy was resolving not to pay attention to the process of falling asleep. Only keep trying to relax mind & body, to empty the mind of thoughts (let them pass quietly through and out, don't force them out), and if I started noticing signs of approaching sleep like body hallucinations (rocking sensations being the most common for me), I tell myself, "I am not trying to WILD" and just try to go deeper and deeper into relaxation.

For myself I find that I need to repeat the body relaxation several times, especially if I start to have dreamless, if I start watching them I tend to build up tension in the body again. I think the key for me, and perhaps for you, is to give up awareness in return for falling asleep quickly.

Then over time, as you get better at falling asleep, is to add in little by little more awareness, for example, if you're trying to WILD.

Thanks everybody. since now it's everyday that i can't go back to sleep, i've been researching ways to get back to sleep.

Some website said roll your eyes to get sleepy cause something to do with melatonin production if you roll your eyes. I tried itt but first, i didn't know what they meant by rolling? rolling in circles or just looking up down? and they didn't say if i have to do it with eyes closed or not.

But the way i did it really didn't make me any sleepy. So i don't know i have to experiment more.
By the way I've been waking up at 1:30 then i just can't go back to sleep even if i close my eyes and relax.


People tell me
=Relax and just focus on relaxing your body. Well i do but it doesn't work. i stay 1 hour and still my mind doesn't enter sleep state
=Don't meditate at night. meditate earlier in day. Ok now i do that
=Think of positive things in your day. I 'm trying but didn't make me sleepy
=Imagine things. I did and it doesn't make me sleepy
=get out of bed and do something like reading for a while. I did but it didn't make me any sleepy
=get out of bed and stretch for a while, did that hasn't worked

etc etc.

Basically once i'm up, my eyes dont feel sleepy at all. it's weird. My eyes don't feel sleepy but my body does feel kind of like it wants to rest but not my eyes.

So does it mean my body only needs 4.5 hours and it doesn't need more sleep or what? yesterday i just basically gave up. I woke up at 1:30. Tried to go to sleep. Turned into 3, with my eyes closed. so i got up again and trie d again to get back to sleep. Again didn't work. it got alittle bit of shalow sleep but i was awake. just with my eyes closed.

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""The remedy was resolving not to pay attention to the process of falling asleep. Only keep trying to relax mind & body, to empty the mind of thoughts""
Thanks for that advice. Yeah i tried relaxing , in the end it kinda started getting a tiny bit into sleep but i just cuoldn't enter sleep. my mind just kept in a shallow sleep state, i was just barely imagining things and kind of making up images and stories in my mind cause i wasn't entering sleep.

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Something definintely wrong with my brain and eye processes. I'm basically not sleepy in the eye area anymore after i wake up at 1:30.
Again, i got interested in that ROlling eyes technique that the website mentioned could help sleep. But i just don't know how to do it correctly i guess.
Maybe i naturally did that before all my life but sudenly i forgot how to relax and suddenly i forgot how to use my eyes for effective sleep.

Cause as you know, this inability to sleep well started like 2 weeks ago. Before that i could wake up and go back to sleep easily.

I think my biggest progress in fixing my sleep came with the realization that nobody could fix it for me, I had to do it myself. I resolved that I would really follow all the advice available that I could. This requires very honest self-evaluation: was I *really* doing all that I could, and following the advice I'd read?. Instead of saying "I tried (something), and it didn't work!", I instead thought "I'm probably not doing (something) right, at least not for me". With relaxation, I assumed there was tension in me that I did not yet know how to release, so I tried hard to find it. For me the realization came that wakefulness was closely related to my eyes, and noticed that there were different states my eyes could be in: I call these. "focused" and "unfocused". Unfocused leads to sleep so that's how I hold them, sometimes it takes a bit of practice to do it, but keep at it.

The other huge thing was making myself not care about falling asleep. This can be hard to do when you're in what seems like a vicious cycle of not sleeping which makes you more stressed about not sleeping. It also comes down to *believing* what you read. One of the things I read was that worrying about not getting to sleep and missing dream time was a sure-fire way to not sleep, so I forced myself to stop worrying.

Ok guys i'm back with some kinda good news.
I tried many techniques and i think i found out what works for me.

I did try to let myself relax more instead of thinking about wanting to fall asleep.
That along with not making eye micro movements( some insomnia website talked about this) and some eye rolls. And now i was able to go back to sleep each time i got up.

It was great.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by voByJunior2013

Ok guys i'm back with some kinda good news.
I tried many techniques and i think i found out what works for me.

I did try to let myself relax more instead of thinking about wanting to fall asleep.
That along with not making eye micro movements( some insomnia website talked about this) and some eye rolls. And now i was able to go back to sleep each time i got up.

It was great.

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That's great to hear. :content:
Do not make falling asleep an effort, just let it happen while you relax and fantasize about things that make you feel good. :)

Actually, you should approach lucid dreaming with the same attitude.
Do not let your quest for lucid dreaming become a struggle, instead tell yourself that you are now working towards lucidity and that any night you can become lucid, as long as you keep working on it.

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Originally Posted by Laurelindo

That's great to hear. :content:
Do not make falling asleep an effort, just let it happen while you relax and fantasize about things that make you feel good. :)

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I half agree with this -- relaxation is key. And yet, if one has not yet (re)discovered how to fall asleep after starting LD training, it does take some attention and some effort to follow relaxation routines, discover where tension is held in the body and to release it, how to hold the body and the eyes so as best to fall asleep, etc. It may take some trial and error before discovering the sweet spot and this becomes a truly effortless process. It takes action to break a cycle of frustrated insomnia due to hidden tension.

Quote:

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Actually, you should approach lucid dreaming with the same attitude.
Do not let your quest for lucid dreaming become a struggle, instead tell yourself that you are now working towards lucidity and that any night you can become lucid, as long as you keep working on it.

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This is where I am :). I think I'm putting myself under a bit too much pressure to LD, and as such I've had a dry week. Happy, positive expectation without demanding performance. But yet again, one must be doing the daily practice and night-time practice as well, so paying some attention to it is important, and finding the right balance between expectation and demanding is part of the learning process.