Who of us has not endured a restless night (after night after night) of sleeping? When you can’t fall asleep, just think about how to keep yourself from falling asleep. You could even keep recalculating how much sleep you would get if only you could fall asleep now. Or now. While we know that all of this thinking is hindering our ability to achieve our dreams of sleep, how can we prevent it? The answer, according to one cognitive scientist, could be a trick he calls “cognitive mixing”.
Luc Beaudoin, Simon Fraser University, developed a method (and an app) to mimic adults falling asleep as children. Beaudoin writes the following on its website:
Adults live in a very “left-brained” world that is dominated by language and thinking. Small children, on the other hand, spend a lot of time imagining and playing. Of course, adults look at a lot of pictures – videos, TV, films, photos, and logos. But they tend to do so passively, and usually with a lot of chatter (whether vocal or not).
Sleep researchers have found that people often experience visual images and “micro-dreams” when they fall asleep. The varied images that people imagine can help them fall asleep.
In contrast, thinking ahead in a verbal, analytical, and problem-solving mode can delay falling asleep.
In other words, we need less thinking and more imagination. Don’t picture a bunch of sheep jumping, however – this shit is boring and will make your mind wondering again why you are having such big trouble falling asleep in the first place. Instead, you have to allow your brain to wander through a variety of random images – the bottom line is that you have to create some “micro-dreams” and that’s where Beaudoin’s method come inside.
How to Use Cognitive Shuffling to Fall Asleep Quickly
1. Lie in bed and prepare for sleep.
2. Think of a random, emotionally neutral word of at least five letters. Beaudoin suggests “bedtime” as an example. Others could be “laptop”, “peach”, “movie” or “lightbulb”. (Try to choose a word that doesn’t have too many repetitive letters, such as “banana”.)
G / O Media can receive a commission
3. Slowly spell the basic word in your mind and then, starting with the first letter, think of another word that also begins with this letter. Imagine the element that the word represents. If your base word is “peach,” start with words that begin with the letter “p,” such as “peach”. B. “Puzzle”, “Pig” or “Pizza”. Imagine each item one at a time and pause long enough to get a clear picture of it before letting go of it and moving on to the next “p” word.
4. Repeat as many times as possible for each letter. If you run out of “p” words (or if you are bored with “p”), skip to the next letter which, in our example, would be “e”. Now imagine an Easter egg, an eagle, and an eggplant.
If you have trouble finding “e” words, skip it and go to the next letter. Likewise, if you choose a word that you cannot easily imagine, leave it out and move on to another. You can also think of different versions of the same word. For example, when you think of “bread,” you might think of soft white sandwich bread and then crusty French bread, followed by your favorite homemade sourdough. If you can make it to the end of your base word without falling asleep, start over with a new base word.
While this is a tactic worth trying, Beaudoin says it has its limits. It does not work in these conditions:
- You are too tired to evoke words but not sleepy enough to fall asleep. (For example, when you wake up in the middle of the night.)
- You don’t like to think deliberately when trying to fall asleep.
- Despite practice, you find it difficult to find words that begin with a certain letter.
- You find the spelling a hassle.
But if the conditions are right and you just find it difficult to guide you through the practice, you can also download Beaudoins free mySleepButton app for iOS or Android. Think of it like a guided sleep meditation rather than meditating in silence – it may be helpful to start with the guided version until you are comfortable doing the practice on your own. Sweet dreams, hopefully.
