As asked in the stream today - what are your tips?
I think in general the question to ask is, is your mind too active? Are you worrying about something or focused on what you need to do tomorrow? This is also sometimes called 'monkey mind' and there's a lot of meditations and simple relaxation meditations to help with this - check them out!
Personally what I've done for years is a few things - first, I slow my breathing. Think of how you breathe when you're asleep - do that! "Fake it till you make it" applies here. While I do that, I just start to watch the back of my closed eyelids. At first I'll see bits of color or little snippits, an image here or there then it's gone. I don't focus on anything, just let it all flow past. That's kind of it, but I've always been the type to fall asleep quickly...
If I have trouble falling asleep, I'll do what I suggested above and try a relaxation meditation. There's tons of tutorials online, but a simple one I've used in the past involves relaxing all the muscles of your body. Find a comfortable position. Start with your breathing, slow that down as above. Next, starting with your feet - with every exhalation, imagine all the tension and energy that may be containing in your feet flowing out through your toes with each breath. Imagine it flowing outwards. Do this for, say, 10-20 breaths. Next, move up to your knees - feel the muscles of your calves and your whole lower leg, including your feet, and let all that tension and energy flow out through your toes with each breath. Do that for another 10-20 breaths. Move up to your thighs, then from your waist down, then up to your chest down, then shoulders and arms down your body and also down and out your fingertips, then neck, then face and finally head. If you've gotten this far you should be pretty relaxed... When I've done this in the past I've often fallen asleep before too long... Also, this can sometime take practice, it's simple in general, but sometimes your thoughts intrude! You have to just let them go past and focus back to what you were doing...
Hope this helps! Anyone else have any tips?
I am experimenting with light to get asleep faster. Generally, I try to imitate the Sun while I am inside a room. I use for it smart lights, blue light reducing glasses and google assistant.
1. During the day I use daylight color. I set the intensity quite high so that it was as if I were outside.
2. After 5 p.m. I start to wear the blue light reducing glasses. I also adjusted my monitor so that it emits a bit less blue light.
3. After 6 p.m. my google home routine triggers. It changes the color of lights to sunset and it decreases their intensity every 30 minutes by small steps.
4. At 8 p.m. the light intensity is very low and I turn off PC and go to bed to read a book via eBook reader. Reading a book is very good for getting tired before bed.
5. At 9 p.m. I put my sleeping mask on, turn off the lights and go to sleep.
I also like to use progressive muscle relaxation, and lately, I've started "practising" SSILD and Dreamwalker to help me fall asleep, which works surprisingly well. Daniel's "Lucid Dream Hypnosis" does not put me to sleep immediately, but I find it easier to fall asleep afterwards.