Totally mundane topic about sleep quality and onset.

Note: I am quite familiar with topics and advice on improving sleep quality outside of what I am asking about here. I do most of the things experts suggest (limited caffeine, early exercise and sun exposure, limited evening light exposure, no screens prior to bed, blah blah blah), and it helps about 25%. Looking for other solutions at the moment.

Sleep became difficult for me around age of 28 (I'm 31 now) and has been the biggest negative factor to my mental health since then. Long story short, I was living in a cheap ass apartment at the time and had multiple break in attempts in the span of a few months. I'm already hyper sensitive to sounds, so these days I wake up if a spider farts in the next room over (I wear earplugs and sleep with a fan).

I am normally pretty happy, equanimous, and kind. When I get sleep deprived, which doesn't take much (I need more sleep than the average person), my empathy circuits dull severely and I become quite aversive and judgemental. It sucks but is a good way to get familiar with my shadow side I guess.

I have strategies to deal with my sleep deprived brain but the ideal thing is to just sleep well. 

I'm curious if people have experience with practices to induce sleep. I am particularly curious about controlled breathing practices. I recall listening to Rickson Gracie discuss very slow breathing, which allowed him to fall asleep an recharge before fights/matches. I've tried doing things along those lines for 5-10 minutes but not longer; did not have much success but I could increase the duration.

I do a lot of Samantha body scanning stuff in my normal practice. I would say it relaxes my body but it is not a silver bullet by any stretch.

I also find doing positive regard practices can help my sleep quality (i.e. restless aversive mind is less conducive to sleep) but I find it can be pretty energetic unless I land in 3rd Jhana (fucking auto correct) territory. 

Anything worked for you reliably? 

Nothing realiable here, sorry, just perhaps some contributions. I am curious about what others have to say for my own use.

I rarely have problems falling asleep, but for that case: herb extracts work quite well for me (valerian, hops, ...). What never worked was melatonine pills (it has the opposite effect, and I know a few other ppl for whom it was the same). Evening meditation definitely helps. Never tried pharma meds.

I often wake up too early. It tends to be much better a few weeks after a retreat (and in-retreat, as there is generally little sleep). It is worse with full moon, whether there are curtains or not. It is also seasonal (perhaps sunlight-related). What really helped me, long-term, is to reduce pressure and demand on myself to be efficient, bright, kind etc. during the next day, so much of the drama vanished, and then instead of not sleeping and getting stressed, it is sometimes just not sleeping, relaxing, and sometimes falling asleep again. So for me, it is working on the second arrow here, since the first one is just beyong what I can control, it seems.

Just to remind you of Willoughby Britton's story of how she got insto researching adverse effects of meditation (as I remember it): she was a meditation enthusaist and wanted to collect data showing that meditators sleep much better. She found out, hence her later interest in adverse effects which had been rarely covered in the mainstream, that regular medition does improve sleep, but only up to 30min/day in average. Beyond that, it makes sleep worse. Practice towards awakening, haha.

I find that letting go practices reliably get me to sleep. As a first stage, I will relax the body. I often find that, for example, if I have woken up in the night, and am lying down ready to go back to sleep, when I deliberately relax my upper body, it moves (settles) quite a bit. It's always a bit surprising, because I don't feel like my muscles are tense until I deliberately relax them. Sometimes I have to do it in several stages, as there is still muscle tension to relax, even when I think I have relaxed. Then, if a thought arises, I let go of it. This is something that I have practiced in formal sitting meditation a lot. If the mind sees images, I incline towards the images, as this seems to be an entryway to sleep for me. But, here, I guess that everyone is different, and you may have a different entryway to sleep.

My wife swears by counting backward from 100.

I had very bad insomnia for years. The biggest improvement to my sleep came when I read about sleep studies, which pointed out that, when people report that they were awake for a period of time (for example, between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m.) they were actually sleeping for much of the time, but because they woke multiple times during the period, they had the sense that they were awake the whole time. What is more, these people were actually getting much of the benefits of continuous sleep. After that, when I found myself awake, I would just lay still and, as it were, pretend to be asleep, in the hope that it would be partially true. More importantly, I didn't worry about how tired I was going to be the next day because I knew that, as long as I lay still for eight hours, I would be basically OK. This goes against the "sleep hygiene" argument, which encourages you to get up when you cannot sleep, but it has worked for me. 

Learn the jhanas. Best sleep aid available to human beings, bar none. 

+1 for this. People told me: don't meditate to sleep, but I find that advice to be not good, at least for me. When I wake up in the middle of the night or too early, I find a focal point and begin. I either go back to sleep or reach the state where my brain seems to be asleep (or calm, silent), but I am still aware. Either way is fine. 

I usually begin sleep with deep slow breathing. I've tried different methods but they all pretty much work. If I don't fall asleep right away, I find a focal point and go that way. 

Jhanas are fine but a six pack of cold lager works well too! Actually, 3 hot whiskeys also do rather well! 

​​​​​​​EDIT; I must add that jhanas are far cheaper! 

What I find works is to relax the body and mind and then keep the mind focused so thinking (wandering mind) doesn't keep me awake.

​​​​​​​Have you tried samatha type meditation (breathing in a relaxed way) while lying in bed?

What works for me is doing this relaxing meditation ... I start with some type of physical relaxation (progressive muscular relaxation, stretching, yoga, or relaxing forms of tai chi), then meditate in a way that is similar to a combination of autogenic relaxation and visualization of colors described here (the first bulleted link):
https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/meditation.html

It's vaguely similar to the military sleep method developed by Bud Winter (relax the body then focus the mind):
https://www.today.com/health/mind-body/how-to-fall-asleep-fast-rcna20886

It's the same strategy, relax the body then keep the mind focused so thinking doesn't keep you awake.

Mundane answers but it works:

Enough exercise over the course of the day to feel physically tired by end of day. This is probably the most important thing over all. A good tired makes for a good sleep.

Set alarm, pack work/school bag, pack lunch, set out clothes, take a shower, etc. Basically, be ready for tomorrow so you don't worry about it.

(before sleep: no screens, no alcohol, minimal lights, etc. as you said)

An "offgassing" meditation in the darkness. Just sit and allow whatever wants to come up to come up. Usually it's the dramas of the day bubbling off. Every so often, you'll also get an insight into your own reactivity, maybe a realization that you are taking something too seriously during the day or not taking something seriously enough. Don't try to actively search for this kind of stuff, allow it to bubble into consciousness. 

When you are starting to get tired and falling asleep... keep the lights off and crawl into bed to sleep. 

Ah, my man.

Listen to Shargrol and Chris, though.

 Thanks for the replies, I've read each one of them but I'll just respond to some specific points. 

I think one general point here is that I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to try to do Samatha Jhana before sleeping or when after waking up too early (i.e. well before my 4:30am alarm). I had heard from one teacher that Jhana 1 and 2 might be quite energetic and prevent one from going to sleep. Whether that is true or not, I did notice on my vacation that I was able to sort of go back to sleep by landing in Jhana 3 (or at least the thing where awareness flips over to the whole body and moreso the periphery of that). 

"What really helped me, long-term, is to reduce pressure and demand on myself to be efficient, bright, kind etc. during the next day, so much of the drama vanished, and then instead of not sleeping and getting stressed, it is sometimes just not sleeping, relaxing, and sometimes falling asleep again. So for me, it is working on the second arrow here, since the first one is just beyong what I can control, it seems." - Eudoxos

I have tried to work on this quite a lot lately. A big part of this has been being patient with myself and also tempering my partner's expectations of my mood and ability to emotionally support her when I am sleep deprived; both of which have been somewhat succesful. 

"What is more, these people were actually getting much of the benefits of continuous sleep. After that, when I found myself awake, I would just lay still and, as it were, pretend to be asleep, in the hope that it would be partially true. More importantly, I didn't worry about how tired I was going to be the next day because I knew that, as long as I lay still for eight hours, I would be basically OK." - Martin V

Neat, I did not know that.

"Jhanas are fine but a six pack of cold lager works well too! Actually, 3 hot whiskeys also do rather well!" - Dusko

It's true. A family member of mine would chase their first coffee with a cold, cheap lager, and would reliably pass out at 6pm on the couch! Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.

"What I find works is to relax the body and mind and then keep the mind focused so thinking (wandering mind) doesn't keep me awake.

Have you tried samatha type meditation (breathing in a relaxed way) while lying in bed?" - Jim Smith

Yeah... quite a bit but I think I need to try this more. Before I was reasonably consistently able to get past early stages of samatha meditation (so basically two years ago), I had a low success rate with this. Often I would just get lost in thought or bored. I also found some nights it almost seemed like that made the situation worse.

I do see a strong correlation with sort of Jhana 3 territory or higher and sleep though. I often lay down to meditate during the day because I sit all of the god damn time for my job. If I'm going to fall is sleep, it is generally in that state. Even if I don't, it is a pleasant enough state to just remain in if I can tune into the peaceful qualities of it.

"I start with some type of physical relaxation (progressive muscular relaxation, stretching, yoga, or relaxing forms of tai chi), then meditate in a way that is similar to a combination of autogenic relaxation and visualization of colors described here (the first bulleted link):" - Jim Smith​​​​​​​

Sidebar here, I basically have to stretch my hip flexors/psoas before bed every night. This was the biggest issue for bedtime sleep onset. It helps me relax overall and reduces 50-80% of tossing and turning. I'll have a look at the link later, thanks!

"Enough exercise over the course of the day to feel physically tired by end of day. This is probably the most important thing over all. A good tired makes for a good sleep."

Absolutely; I exercise every morning first thing unless injured. Since I have been doing that, I noticed that my initial sleep onset (i.e. initially going to bed) has been substantially better. Whereas before it might take me 45 minutes or so on average, these days it is generally about 20 minutes to fall asleep. 

"An "offgassing" meditation in the darkness. Just sit and allow whatever wants to come up to come up. Usually it's the dramas of the day bubbling off. Every so often, you'll also get an insight into your own reactivity, maybe a realization that you are taking something too seriously during the day or not taking something seriously enough. Don't try to actively search for this kind of stuff, allow it to bubble into consciousness. "

I will give this a try too. Some attention is very resistent to being fixed on a particular object so this might be a good option for such days. Thanks!​​​​​​​




 

IMHO, the value of jhanas being used to go to sleep is that they occupy a busy mind. They help alongside the strategies that Shargrol described.

This isn't a meditation technique but I use it to help with meditation but it also works to help sleep.

If you eat a lot of sugary foods you can get kind of jittery a few hours later because a rapid spike in blood sugar can cause a spike in insulin which lingers long after the blood sugar levels return to normal and that can can cause the blood sugar level to go too low. The way the body signals tissues to release sugar into the blood to compensate is with stress hormones which can make you jittery. But if you exercise that also causes tissues to release sugar into the blood so doing exercises like sit-ups, pushups, squats (without weights) etc can turn off the stress hormones and help you focus in meditation or fall asleep - whatever it is that the stress hormones are interfering with.

It's funny you mention that. I was trying out this thing called the Sugar Diet/Sugar Fasting for a bit over a week; stopped it two days ago. I'll spare nerding out about it but the main idea was dropping fats, proteins, and starches low; replacing that with simple sugars.

A very unexpected side affect of that diet is that my sleep improved substantially (both onset and not waking up in the middle of the night), even having sugars less than an hour before bed. I stopped the diet as it didn't work out for other reasons, but there's probably some lessons there for me.

By contrast, I noticed eating one meal a day in the morning made it impossible for me to sleep in (though the quality seemed a bit better when I did sleep), and various low carb or no carb diets of tried also generally made sleep more difficult.

Yes, eating sugar is another way to raise your blood glucose levels.

I am interested in nutrition so  I don't mind if you nerd out on this. ... I can't find any info about this diet on the internet, do you have any links or references?

Did your total caloric intake change? 

Starches digest into glucose, so if the "simple sugars" are table sugar (sucrose) or fruit juice or even soda, you probably were consuming a substantial amount of fructose (instead of glucose) which doesn't increase blood glucose much because it is processed in the liver. Depending on the details of what your normal diet was, you might have more stable blood glucose levels on the sugar diet.

The glycemic index of table sugar (sucrose -  which is  half fructose) is 65 (moderate)
The glycemic index of instant mashed potatoes is 87 (very high).

 Now that you ask, happy to share some details. I've been doing different diets for over a decade so it's kind of big part of my thought process.

This protocol is quite new in it's current form. For the terms Sugar Diet and Sugar Fasting, check out Mark Bell on youtube and Cole Robinson. They're both meatheads who focus on the practical stuff and probably get rapidly out of their depth with the mechanistic ideas. Also Mark is openly on anabolics so that changes things for him. Cole is... I just find his shtick annoying but whatever. I'm told that this diet was also followed by people who did fruit diets or certain kinds of vegan diets. I didn't use them as resources though.

As far as clinical resources, there's some old studies on fruit diets apparently but nothing modern or clinically sound that I'm aware of.

Here's the protocol I followed for about 8 days with minimal changes (I ate less protein than Mark and my cheat day was a sugar fast plus one meal with sushi, so nothing crazy):
"Day 1 Sugar fast
Day 2 Sugar fast
Day 3 Sugar fast, reset with lean protein & starch
Day 4 Sugar fast
Day 5 Sugar fast
Day 6 Lean protein, starch, fats under 50g
Day 7 Cheat

SUGAR FAST - fruit, fruit juice, honey, maple syrup, sugar, candy No starch, no protein, no fat during sugar fast" - Copied from one of Mark Bell's videos.

I had to stop on day 8 as the diet wasn't agreeing with my digestive system (which is admittedly very sensitive, hence the reason why I have tried over a dozen diets), and I got pretty worried about my teeth; which are good and I would like to keep it that way. I enjoyed some parts of it and would consider doing short term fasts with just fruit juices and low acid fruits, but long term it wasn't for me. I've never farted so much in my life.

Fat loss was fine. Not better than calorie counting, clinical ketosis, or carnivore for me. Also my energy levels were definitely higher and workouts were better compared to low carb diets. I did not get any brain fog which is common for me when eating starches, so a big take-away for me was to notice that digestion of simple sugars is very different from starches.

"Did your total caloric intake change?"

For this protocol, I'm not sure. I deliberately chose not to count calories and just eat according to hunger. If I had to guess, it was on average similar to usual, which for me is around 2500-3000. I was definitely under that a couple days and felt over it on others when I was really pounding fruit snacks. 

"Starches digest into glucose, so if the "simple sugars" are table sugar (sucrose) or fruit juice or even soda, you probably were consuming a substantial amount of fructose (instead of glucose) which doesn't increase blood glucose much because it is processed in the liver. Depending on the details of what your normal diet was, you might have more stable blood glucose levels on the sugar diet."

Lots of both fructose and sucrose on this diet. When eating things like berries or oranges, I generally would add plenty table sugar to them. My normal diet is a pretty even macro split but on the lower carb side. 
 

If you don't mind discussing it, why were you on the diet? Weight loss?

I was diagnosed with a "sensitive stomach" too because the doctors couldn't find anything to explain why I had chronic gastirits and lost 20lbs.
Medications didn't help. I was on a very limited diet.

I recently tried chewing sugarless gum, which is recommended for gastritis, and it helps a lot, I can eat much better now.

Gut health is very important for overall well being... probably sleep too. Since were geeking here, I often recommend this collection of info to people (eBooks and Resources - Chris Kresser) - but with the caveat that every piece of advice for the body needs to work for YOUR  body. Just like meditation advice, there is no universal right answer, you need to test it and see if it works for you. So for example, I don't do great on a very very low carb diet but I found increasing overal protein and the occasional use of supplemental HCl (in the form of Betaine HCl tablets) very helpful in getting rid of acid reflux and probably reducing bacterial overgrowth (How to Cure GERD without Medication | Chris Kresser).   

​​​​​​​

A decent dose of Caffeine... And ideally a few of them throughout the day. 

Caffeine does two interesting things for me.

A) gives me energy and I do a lot more stuff. I work more, I write more, I study more, etc, etc

 (this was supposed to be a b but the editor had other ideas) if I get enough caffeine early on in the day that by end of day I'm fucking crashing hard and also tired from doing shit then all the sleepy chemicals in my brain make me pass out


I'm the type of person who if I'm having trouble sleeping, I'm already in the trouble, I've never really been able to meditate my way out of that. But, one thing that has worked, or something I do to pass the time until my body is ready to sleep is active imagination / journeying type stuff. Sometimes just letting the mind run its course and go on a little adventure kind of tricks the system into falling asleep. 

I'm a big believer that people arent taking enough care of their electrolytes. Potassium is fucking key to everything !!! Potassium sorts out all the problems I have that a multivitamin won't fix. 

And here I was thinking that magnesium was the key to everything. 

No it's D3 just kidding, it's probably all, some, or none of these at any given time 

Magnesium is good too. That's one of them electrolytes as well. 

So I sleep very well and I didn't use to. 

I think the primary reason is activity. I often walk 5+km and hit the gym in a day, I also work a full day, play a bunch of chess, do a bunch of writing, dance a little salsa, read, research, etc 

I think if you really love your days to the best of your personal ability sleep comes easier. 

(This was supposed to read live your days but the typo is good too)

I did used to have a lot of problems with sleep and I used to be an extremely sensitive sleeper. If someone opened a door in the middle of the night I would wake up. If I drank a coffee I wouldn't sleep. But I was also just not active enough. Physical activity is super important but so is mental and spiritual activity. Social activity. Burn the fucking candle y'know. 

Few things that helps me fall asleep on those sleepless nights is;

1. turn around in the bed and put my head where my feet usually are. Dose off very fast!
2. White noise! Some sort of a ventilator noise or similar.
3. Coffee with milk and a bit of sugar makes me fall asleep easy when sleepless

I've done diets over the years for many reasons. Initially it was just a low carb diet for weight loss but that fixed a bunch of issues I had throughout my teenage years (acid reflux, serious brain fog, low energy, multiple headaches each week). I grew up on a garbage trailer trash diet so I think that did some damage which partially got healed from low carb.

Unfortunately my body seems to shift what diet it likes every few years because I guess impermanence is a fundamental aspect of experience. I stopped being able to digest high fat diets by my mid 20s and had to switch from carnivore/clinical ketosis to just general low carb. That allowed me to trust that farts were actually farts again. Also, I noticed that I had to be extremely careful with electrolytes on low carb (we're talking daily supplemenation of Na, K, and Mg), but even one or two hundred grams of carbs fixed a lot of dehydration issues. I still need to supplement Mg every day twice a day or I'll get brutal ocular migraines. 

Anyways, that was probably more info than needed but we're nerding out here and I enjoy that haha. 

The fruit diet was just to cut some extra weight from eating anything and everything while I was in Japan. I put on some weight and did a bit of damage by eating ALL of the macronutrients to excess. Spent the last few days there being kind of nauseous so I wanted to do some kind of elimination diet for a bit. I find that's the best way to un-fuck my digestive system quickly. 

I've since switched back over to Stan Efferding's vertical diet but just being careful not to over eat and upping my activity level. It works really well for me as a general purpose diet; will probably keep doing that for the foreseeable future.

Cool, I never heard that about sugarless gum; might give that a shot. 

What diet typically works for you?

I had similar experience shargrol. Initially I started low carb and it did very well for me, but over a long term period I found out that super low carb and high fat was not great either. I also do very well paying attention to easily digestable proteins (which for me generally comes from meat, which is a bit of a moral dilemma). 

"the occasional use of supplemental HCl (in the form of Betaine HCl tablets) very helpful in getting rid of acid reflux and probably reducing bacterial overgrowth"

My partner is a physician and I was trying to convince her to let me test Betaine HCl and Pepsin tablets to see if they help. We had to comprimise on me at least getting a stomach acid test first before doing so though. I'm excited to try this as I strongly suspect that I'm not producing enough stomach acid, and that may be at or near the root of my constant diet issues. I tested negative for H Pylori two years ago, but I very likely had that as a kid and it probably did some damage. 

"but with the caveat that every piece of advice for the body needs to work for YOUR  body"

This is so true. I have tried almost everything; low carb, general keto, clinical keto, carnivore, gross bodybuilder style broccoli and chicken breast, gross white trash diet, dirty bulking on junk food, clean bulking on healthy foods, IF 8 hour, IF 4 hour, OMAD, 72 hour fasts... and so on. It comes down to listening to the body while experimenting with new things and being wary of other people's advice. Some people become super tribal about their diets and assume what works for them must be the solution for everyone. 

For me, the Mg is actually the most important one. Without it I get epic ocular migraines regardless of water, potassium, and sodium consumption.

I do get a lot of potassium from my diet though so it's not like I ignore that.

the buddha bows down before farts that are actually farts.

and important line in all metta practice should be: may all beings fart farts that are actually farts

​​​​​​​

I try to keep carbs low but not to the point of ketosis. I can kind of tell when I am "fat burning" or "carb burning" because when I'm eating a lot of carbs when I get hungry I get weak and have cravings and it's hard to avoid gaining weight and I have mood swings. When I'm fat burning I can go without food more easily and I don't gain as much weight and can lose weight if I need to and am motivated and I feel better generally. Oh yeah, I sleep much much better when fat burning. So I try to keep carbs down to where I am fat burning. Another way to tell is that when someone is fat burning they don't have much glycogen (stored carbs) and as glycogen gets used up it releases a lot of water, so when you gain or loose a lot of weight in a day or two it's usually water associated with glycogen and if I lose a lot of weight in a short time I suspect I've transitioned back to fat burning from carb burning (the water being released can also produce a lot of urine).

I take omega 3 suppliments - fish oil and flax seed oil (there are three main essential fatty acids, two are in fish oil, one is in flaxseed oil), and a daily vitamin/mineral suppliment and an additional vitamin d suppliment and a magnesium suppliment. I add potassium chloride to my drinking water (nu-salt which is available at the grocery store is pure potassium chloride is cheaper than potassium suppliments). The potassium and magnesium help to prevent muscle cramps which had been a problem for me.

I prefer olive oil as a source of fat. As far as I can tell the research says that animal fats (saturated fats) are better than overeating carbs but that unsaturated fats (mostly plant fats) are better than saturated fats (I know there are differing opinions on this). I get nauseous thinking about how most seed oils are processed so I try to use extra virgin olive oil where the bottle has the location and date of harvest on it which is supposed to be the way to tell it is really extra virgin olive oil (there are differing opinions on this too, if you have a sensitive pallate you can taste whether the olive oil is good or not.) (I don't think I need to eat much fat, I have excess body fat and take the omega 3 suppliments)

While we're talking about health issues and things that impact sleep, I'll add that I think dopamine addiction can be a problem. By dopamine addiction I mean if you are checking your cell phone all the time for notifications, likes, replies, watch shorts on youtube but can't sit through an hour long documentray or podcast, etc etc. Or if you play video games compulsively, or check the news compulsively, or in my case read books that are hard to put down. I deliberately stopped reading those kinds of books because my attention span was poor and I thought it was from reading those kinds of books. Giving them up seemed to help, I find myself reading things that I am interested in and used to read but then became too boring. It's like I went back in time several decades and got my younger mind back.

Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu