How I fall asleep fast

“I don’t know how you do that!”

My wife says that to me at least once a month. She does know the answer, because I’ve told her. She’s just amazed that, night after night, I fall asleep within 15 minutes.

To be honest, the whole process starts long before my head hits the pillow. It involves some consistent habit building, although those habits don’t take much more than 15 minutes, either.

And then there’s one not-so-secret weapon I used to seal the deal.

It’s all about creating theta waves.

Theta Waves

Theta waves are one of 5 common brain wave electrical patterns. In previous articles, I discussed the presence of alpha and beta waves. Beta waves (oscillating between 12 and 40hz) show up while you’re using that cognitive brain power, while alpha waves (8-12hz) are present when you are at idle but fully awake. Theta waves travel at 4 to 8hz and are present when you are going to sleep. It is similar to being in a meditative state.

The goal is to make those waves more present by the time you’re ready to sleep, whether you are into meditating or not. I will teach you what works for me and the basis of helping my clients who have trouble staying asleep.

Preparing For Sleep

I teach my clients that there are four domains when it comes to building better sleep habits: Nutritional, Physical, Environmental, and Mindspace. If you take a look at each domain with scrutiny, you can see elements that are either helping or hurting your sleep. My system helps clients explore to make those discoveries and put together a plan to address the present sleep issue.

Let’s look at nutrition. If you have trouble falling asleep, it could very well involve what you are eating all day. Too much caffeine will have your brain running even when you have your eyes shut, so it’s no surprise it can also keep you from even getting to that shut-eye state.

For me, I love good coffee. But I also like a good sleep. So I have no caffeine after noon. Its half-life is anywhere between 5 and 9 hours. If my target sleep hour is between 1030pm and 1130pm, caffeine is typically out of my system by 9.

Part of my environmental set up is to actually stay out of my bed all day. I don’t nap in it. I don’t hang out and watch TV in it, even when I wake up. This helps my body associate bed with sleep. So I spend my 20 to 30 minutes sleeping on the floor next to it.

For the physical aspect of sleep, I deal with chronic lower back pain. So I do light stretching or some breath exercises on the floor. Doing this keeps me from constantly repositioning my body when I crawl under the blankets. I make sure I change out of whatever I was wearing all day and into a fresh set of pajamas.

My Not-So-Secret Weapon To Fall Asleep

The finishing touch has to do with the mindspace aspect of falling asleep. If you build a consistent habit to empty your mind of any busy thoughts, it helps you drift into sleep versus closing our eyes out of sheer exhaustion from working up until the last minute.

My not-so-secret weapon is semi-boring podcasts.

As a podcaster, I do appreciate the art. I listen to many interesting ones. But interesting ones would keep me up and awake and entertained.

Completely boring ones would get my mind wandering and eventually also keep me up.

But a semi-boring one, with relevant but drab information, knocks me out.

I do make my own guided meditations that help people do progressive muscle relaxation. I set them to nature themes and make them as downloadable audio products so that your eyes don’t look at screens; or your ears get interrupted by commercials.

I also have binaural beat relaxing music that can take people from Alpha to Theta waves. I recommend these to clients, whether they are my products or someone else’s. They are helpful transitions that, when done consistently, become an unconscious habit that gets your brain craving the wind-down.

But I’ve listened to my own voice enough (especially during the creation period) that I need something else.

And nothing puts me to sleep faster than financial reports via podcasts.

Ironically, the investment is paying dividends in terms of taking my brain to Theta Wave pre-sleep state, turning 15 minutes into 7 to 8 hours of restorative sleep.

Remember that the healthy way to ease into sleep starts with building good habits all day, and then gliding into bed at night. Rushing the process only keeps you awake.