Help with actually GETTING to sleep? >_<

This is really annoying :confused:

I really want to have lucid dreams, but the thing is, I can’t get to sleep properly! Last night I went to bed at 12:00, but I didn’t actually get to sleep until 4:00 am.

When I went to bed I was doing MILD for about an hour until eventually I realised I wasn’t going to fall asleep. So I just lay in bed trying to sleep, but I couldn’t! I ended up waking the next day at 12:00! :grrr:

So basically what Im asking is, does anybody have some tips for getting to sleep easier?
Thanks in advance! :grin:

Dont do MILD for an hour, do it like 10 minutes or maybe 15. If you keep doing it you might not fall asleep because maybe you get too focussed. 10 to 15 minutes is enough to tell your unconsciousness to notice the fact that you are dreaming next time. Just go to sleep after this and if all goes well, you will become lucid. And offcourse it doesnt work all the time :cool_laugh:

i have the same problem and recently started to look for some solutions on insomnia websites. i dunno if it’s the case for you that it’s always taken you forever to fall asleep, but it is for me.

basically all the sites i say said if you don’t fall asleep in 15-30 minutes, get up and do something else until you feel tired. if you lie a awake in bed, your mind starts to associate the bed with wakefulness when it needs to be associating it w/ sleep

also, don’t go to bed unless you are tired. for some people eating dairy products before bed helps bring on sleep because something in them that starts with a “t” (i always forget the word) gets changed to melatonin in your brain.

good luck, and like xetrov said, don’t sit there and do MILD for an hour. i find it more helpful to do MILD with WBTB rather than before going to sleep

Ahm…Now I know I’m new, but what IS the “Wake back to bed” method?
I think somewhere I remember it, but I’m not sure…
Can anyone remind me real quick? :eh:

Yeah I’ll try not to do it for so long next time. The problem is though, what do I do after the 15 minutes of MILD? I still can’t get to sleep, which is the real problem, I just end up lying in bed for hours on end :grrr:

The annoying thing is when I do get into bed, I feel really tired, but as I try to fall asleep I feel myself getting less and less tired until I have no chance of sleeping. Usually I go downstairs and surf the net and when I go back to bed I fall asleep without too much trouble, but what I want to know is how can I sleep without having to go do something else in the first place?

hehe, hope that makes sense. Thanks again.

Oh yeah, one more thing. What does WBTB mean? :bored:

I hope you don’t mind if I just reprint something I wrote awhile back.

WBTB is an acronym for the WAKE-BACK-TO-BED method.
This is how it works: You get up a couple of hours before usual, wash your face, have a snack (optional) then read, write or watch something having to do with LDing for about half an hour or so (very important)! Then it’s back to bed you go. Give yourself positive mental reinforcement by saying to yourself I AM GOING TO DREAM, I AM DREAMING, I KNOW I AM DREAMING over and over (you can make up your own mantra). When you begin to drift off, concentrate on the swirling images that arise (I forget the scientific name of these). This is when I shorten my mantra to I AM DREAMING, although I have read elsewhere that you are supposed to visualize yourself waking up in a dream, flying or the content of the dream you want to have. Then sometimes BAMM! you are there and aware. Sometimes I use this method for a few days and then have a LD on the first day that I don’t do anything.

Some people might actually call this a combo of WBTB and WILD, because you are trying to go straight from being awake to an LD. With a pure WBTB you would have the LD a little later in the dream cycle (same technique though). It’s worth shooting for a WILD though, I’ve only had one, but it was pretty dramatic.:alien:

ah, that was useful information indeed, oneiromancer. thanks. even though i’m not the guy asking.

Hmz yes, Dezolat0r, also i think it is indeed best not to try WILD or MILD when you go to bed in the evening/night, unless you are realy sure it does something good for you. I think it is much better to make the combination with WBTB as Firehorse wrote (at least for me it is). I think this counts for you too, but you have to try how fast you can fall back alseep when u do WBTB because it has very little use when you arent able to fall back asleep again.

Doesnt any body find that doing when doing MILD staring at you third eye (between your eyes on your forhead) tireing and annooying?

[rant]i hate WILD in all it’s forms, it’s my white whale, being an insomniac i’m not skilled at actually falling asleep so i’ve never had a successful WILD but i don’t find staring at my third eye particularly annoying though[/rant]

anyway, back to you dezolat0r, i dunno about you, but i find warm things make me sleepy. i can drink coffee and be knocked out. maybe you should invest in some mint tea and start drinking it before bed (there’s a couple threads on here that claim mint tea helps with dream recall anyway, i dunno about that, but warm things make me tired so… whatever)

also, you might wanna watch your sugar and caffeine intake close to bedtime (do you drink a pepsi w/ dinner or something?) hit up google and look up some sites on insomnia this is where i’m getting all this stuff, good luck :smile:

lets hear it for the insomniacs! hip hip hooray!

PS I find mint tea slightly helpful in my efforts to recall dreams, increasing recall from one dream average to two. I can’t really be sure as this statement is based on only 4 nights. I haven’t seen if mint tea helps with LDs or not yet.

Well Im not sure about WILD since I’ve never tried it, but I don’t normally have that much trouble getting abck to sleep after I’ve woken up, I dunno, maybe that technique would work? I should try it.

As for ‘warm things’, well, considering there’s a heatwave going through the UK at the moment, I find that the cooler I stay the more comfortable and therefore easier to sleep it is for me. I’ve never seen mint tea around though, I might try asking my mum to buy it for me next time she goes shopping :content:

I guess I’ll have to look on an insomnia website :confused: Thanks

Won’t brewing the mint tea mean hot water? I suppose you could ice it before you drink it. Is the heat wave a major cause of your sleeping problems? I hear it’s really gotten nasty over there.

Actually infection, that’s a good point. I’ve only recently started having real trouble getting to sleep since the summer holidays started (about to weeks ago), which is around the same time the heatwave began. When I go to bed I always find myself over heating which obviously doesn’t add to my comfort! Theres not really much I can do about it except keep all the windows open :bored:

Still I’m sure it’s not the only problem, sometimes the temperature is fine and I still have trouble sleeping. I guess it just contributes :angry:

My sympathy Dezolator … I am an insomniac too. Yep 2.40 am at the moment…lol.

I find it easier to get to sleep with a dvd playing as that way I am mildly distracted rather than allowing random thoughts to take over my brain for hours as happens if it is quiet.

The herb Kava Kava and also Melatonin pills can help you sleep. Melatonin is also supposed to be a “fountain of youth” type thing that keeps you younger by its effect on the pineal gland.

I also went to a natropath for the problem and he did a lymph drainage thingy on me and lo and behold I fell asleep in 2 minutes in broad daylight in his office…lol. He kindly left me there for 1/2 an hour and sent me home with some sort of homeopathic remedy and I slept like a baby for a few years…but in neeed of another drainage again me thinks.
Worth a try :smile:

The best way to fall asleep is to lay in bed and try to stay awake for as long as you can.

If you try to fall asleep, you won’t be able to. :happy:

holy crap tripper!! how much is the drainage thing? can it be done in the stupid US? otherwise i’ll be stuck… well either way I can’t do it till I’m out of the house and my mom doesn’t know about it… a few years…

Yeah, that lymph thing sounds amazing. I wanna get it! I doubt there’s anyone that does it here in England though :neutral:

I thougth i point out stuff that makes me sleep. Warm milk, makes me, and most people i heard of sleep like babies. Second, tea, ever just made to get the smell of tea, just smelling the aroma of the tea makes you get very calm. And most important of all, never go to bed hungry, even the sligthest feel of hunger may keep you from sleeping. This migth be common knowledge. but i just wanted to share it if it may help someone…