Followup to: Notes on Interventions for Falling Asleep
[This is a draft]
Some people seem to have a natural affinity for napping. They can just lie down and easily fall asleep. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. So over the past 2 months, I’ve been experimenting with and iterating on napping procedures, aiming to acquire the minor superpower of sleeping durring the day.
I have not yet gotten to a ~100% success rate: my current protocol effectively causes me to fall asleep something like 70% of the time. But I’ll keep iterating and post and update if and when I find a more robust procedure.
How to Fall asleep durring the day
- Make the room as dark as possible.
- (In my case, simply using blackout curtains is insufficient, I need to cover my window with with cardboard sheets, with the blackout curtains over it.)
- Cool the room or set up a chilling airflow.
- (This one might be specific to me, I have long needed cold to fall asleep: when I was 3, I would ask my parents to put my red blanky in the freezer.)
- Lay down in a comfortable position with your arms over your chest or by your sides.
- Progressively relax each part of your body.
- Put your attention on each body part, and silently tell it to relax. Continue until that body part has a tingly, heavy, “set” sensation (a feeling like it would resist moving or is encased in clay).
- Continue up the body:
- Toes
- Feet
- Lower legs
- Upper legs
- Buttocks
- Back (this part is hardest)
- Arms
- Neck
- Face (this is the most important one, I think)
- [Still experimental, so maybe useless] Lean into the hypnogogic imagery.
I usually have the subjective impression that it’s not going to work, that I’m not going to fall asleep, and then the next thing that I’m aware of is waking up an hour or so later.
As I said, this procedure is very much still experimental. It seems plausible that some parts are superfluous or inefficient, and also that there are still pieces missing. I’m going to keep tinkering.
musings and rough drafts 