msolga wrote:One useful little habit I've picked up recently to help me switch off my very busy little brain is listening to a talking book when I hit the bed & turn off the light. Believe me, it works like a dream!
I heard about that. It doesnt appeal to me much, but they do say it works.
What also appears to help is a regular go-to-sleep ritual. I dont (just) mean the starting-to-prepare-for-night half an hour in advance thing, but just - something you play every night when falling asleep, for example. A. had this CD ... her "sleepCD". It was actually a beautiful CD ... kinda lo-fi guitar-ish alternative, female singer. Very beautiful actually, it carried so much of her. She had played it to go to sleep to every night for years - not for fifteen years in a row I think, but in phases of a few years. She used it here too. It worked amazingly. She would snuggle up in bed or on the couch (the couch if I was staying up), put the CD on, and be asleep by the third song or so -
always. Utterly instinctual.
It worked so automatically, that the one time it didnt work and she stayed awake, she totally panicked - like as if you suddenly found you were standing on water, or looked at your mum and it was a strange face or something. She stopped for a while after that, downloaded some thunderstorm-sounds MP3s instead, they worked pretty good too.
But I've never seen anything as instinctual and automatic as with her sleep CD. Very moving, actually <nods>
