Dr. Don Wood teaches a technique to fall asleep in under five minutes by shifting focus from sleep to rest and using tactile sensations. He explains how alpha brain waves (7-14 Hz) represent the rest state, and recommends noticing the texture of your sheets and pillow to ease the transition.
Questions this video answers
15–30 Hertz (cycles per second).
7–14 Hertz (cycles per second).
Less than five minutes.
Chapters
This is a hack to teach you how to fall asleep in less than five minutes. A lot of times when people have trouble going to sleep is their mind. And their brain is operating in a very high beta brainwave state. That means that the brain is active between 15 and 30 Hertz or cycles per second. You need to move into theta and delta, but in between beta and theta is alpha, which is running 7-14 Hz. A lot of times people try to jump from beta high beta into theta. It's too big a jump. So when you sit there and you're lying in bed and you're saying, I just want to sleep, I just want to sleep. Alpha is the rest state. So I want you now to focus on thinking about rest, not sleep. Don't keep talking about I want to fall asleep. I'm trying to fall asleep. Enjoy the rest. You know that feeling when you just sort of roll over and you feel that really nice comfortable position? Think about, I just want to rest. All I want to focus on is rest. Don't think about sleep, just think about enjoying the rest. Move a little bit if you have to to get into a more comfortable position. But then just enjoy the rest. Rest will lead to sleep. It's hard to jump to sleep right away. Enjoy the rest period. Another thing that you can do while you're doing that is to distract your mind is to focus on the texture of the sheets. Even if it's a blanket that you're having over top of, you just sort of touch it and feel it in your fingers, roll it in your feel that sensation. The idea is to sensation. The sensation will start to relax you because now you're going to be focusing on the sensation as opposed to focusing on sleep. So rest. Use the sensation of the sheets, the blanket, whatever is on top of you, even the pillow. Just enjoy the sensation of the pillow. Is it cool? If it's not, turn it over, get onto a cool side of the pillow. Again, that's all distracting your mind, allowing you to rest. And then it's just going to lead to sleep. And there it is.
