Excerpt from Papaverous? Papaveracity! by Alvin Golively

Sleep can at times elude all of us, for one reason or another. It is one of the preeminent struggles of our time of much comfort, but little ability to accept it. Sleep plays an important role in every man’s life, and a deprivation of sleep can seriously damage your body, mind, and spirit (though it can occasionally be useful for treating specific issues). Regardless, in my many years alive, I have accumulated some exhortations on the subject of somnolence. You may have heard pontifications on the value of “warm milk” or “maintaining a schedule,” but I have never found these to be of much help for myself, and my peculiar sensibilities. Instead, I will provide for you my personal method for falling asleep. It is not always pleasant, but it ranks highly in personal replicability.

If possible, earplugs and a sleep mask will greatly increase consistency. They are worthwhile investments, and will allow you to test your sleep capabilities and sleep issues with more veracity. Try to sleep with them every night, if you can. Sleeping with earplugs allows you to attune to the rhythm of your own breath much better, and the presence of light influences your circadian rhythm, whether you feel it or not.

Silence is good, but white noise is better. It functions as a makeshift silence for the brain that is less easily interrupted by stray noises, such as a house settling, cars outside, or shifting positions. With earplugs in, the sound of your breathing forms a pleasant analogue to white noise.

Find a position that feels most comfortable to sleep in, which for me is on my side, and then commit to stay in that position. Begin box-breathing, 4 seconds in, hold 4, 4 seconds out, hold 4, or at longer intervals if you feel comfortable in your lung capacity. Try to energistically move your consciousness into your lower body, and out of your head. Try to slow the internal rhythm of your thoughts, if they are speech-based, by manually repeating the first word of whatever sentence you were constructing at a much slower speed, like a stereotypical slow-motion character in a movie. Try to cut off your thoughts by interrupting them and paying attention to white noise, or the sound of your breathing, instead. See how long you can go without your attention falling back to them.

Here’s the hard part. When you get into a comfortable position, as I mentioned before, you must commit not to move from it. Your body will itch. You will get too warm. You will be uncomfortable. You must stay strong, and allow your body to stay exactly where it is. The only things you’re allowed to do are to breathe slowly, and further relax your muscles. Try to hold the itches and discomfort within your awareness rather than distracting from them, as distractions will just make them more unpleasant when they come back to the forefront of your awareness. Imagine that all of your limbs and every part of your body is getting heavier, and more difficult to move. Imagine your body as a stuffed animal, or a pillow. Feel how hard it would be to animate yourself. Sleep is like an energy that builds up in every part of your body, and it is damaged by movements that are associated with wakefulness, so try to convince your body that it is asleep by relaxing yourself into a still position, then allow it to take its natural course.

Part of its natural course will be, rather unintuitively, moving again. Hypnagogic jerks are a normal part of falling asleep which we are not usually conscious to experience. However, you can fall completely asleep while maintaining consciousness, for the varied purposes of lucid dreams, or astral projection, so don’t worry too much about trying to “drift off” as that’s a trap that can take you further away from your desired outcome. So, after you have successfully slackened your thoughts, and felt your body become heavy, you can allow it to tense up in various positions that feel natural, while trying to repeat the processes that led you into this state of deeper relaxation. As I am falling asleep, I can tell that I’m getting there because my thoughts become more nonsensical, or would have no relation to my previous thought, and when I was younger, the sudden awareness of this would snap me back into wakefulness, but with practice, I became able to instead calmly notice it and continue along the process. Allowing your mind to take its natural course into dream uninterrupted is an utter necessity.

Something else I need to address is fear. As I am falling asleep, I frequently hallucinate incredibly loud and disturbing noises, like gunshots, doors opening or closing, or people calling my name. I also experience seeming certainty that THERE IS SOMEONE ELSE IN MY ROOM RIGHT NOW. If I give these any heed, it entirely resets my sleep process, so I instead focus on the many things espoused in this piece thusfar, such as the weight of my limbs, or my breathing, or white noise, while accepting the existence of the fear or offending stimulus. When I was younger, these fears would keep me awake for extended periods of time, and would loop on themselves as the fear expanded when mixed with sleep deprivation. So I now allow them to come and go as they please, and I sometimes fall asleep directly into a night of restful nightmare.

In short,

Use a sleep mask and earplugs.

Lie down in the same position every night.

Focus on your breathing while you

Commit to a weighty feeling in your body, and that you will not shift or itch.

Slow the internal rhythm of your thoughts.

Shift your awareness down, out of your head.

Allow your mind to become dreamy without interrupting it.

Allow your body to experience minor convulsions.

Allow the fear to exist within you.

Sleep.