Ben GreenfieldFounder, Ben Greenfield Life

The Power of Smell on Sleeping Patterns

11 Jan 2025 · 0 min

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A short excerpt from a Ben Greenfield YouTube conversation about using smells (specifically camphor/menthol, e.g., Vicks) as associative anchors to enhance sleep and study. The speakers describe deliberately smelling an aroma during relaxed/study states and re-exposing oneself to the same aroma before or during sleep to improve sleep onset. The clip also links light-driven trance states to increased neuroplasticity and defines hypnagogia as the liminal state between wakefulness and sleep.

Camphor is the stuff they use in Vicks. It's got that menthol smell. And so anything, if you want to anchor a state smell is a great way to do it.
That's a sleep tactic. I've talked with a couple of sleep practitioners about this, and a study tactic. If you're in a deeply relaxed state and you're able to smell something, and then you smell that same aroma when you're sleeping or before sleep, it can enhance sleep.
So these lights flashing through your closed eyelids cause you to go into a state of. Of high neuroplasticity and trance and what we call hypnagogia. Hypnagogia is that place where you were describing at 4:30 in the morning, that liminal state between sleep and wakefulness. You go through hypnagogia on your way into going to sleep at night, and then on the way out of coming to sleep at night.