A short YouTube transcript of Ben Greenfield describing a relaxation/sleep technique learned from Dr. Peter Martone: instead of forward-thinking (planning) which activates frontal cortex and increases sleep latency, intentionally recall recent past activities (e.g., meals, workouts, conversations) to shift brain activity and promote relaxation and sleep. The advice is practical and example-driven.
I think it was Dr. Peter Martone, who's like this sleep specialist who I had on my podcast. He taught me that if you're trying to fall asleep or trying to relax, if you engage in forward thinking, like planning what you're going to do, maybe when you get up from a nap or the next day, or a conversation you're going to have, or an email that you're going to write or whatever, you actually see a shift in electrical and blood flow activity to the frontal cortex, where you kind of host a lot of your ruminating thoughts. And it will increase sleep latency or disrupt napping patterns or relaxation. But the complete opposite occurs if you force yourself to instead think back to. And you can start with very simple things like what I have for breakfast this morning and what was the first thing I did when I got up, and then maybe what did I have for dinner last night? What was my workout yesterday? Who did I talk to? And you train your brain to start to shift into the past. It's actually an incredible way of to relax you.
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