tl;dr: If you focus, in a counterintuitively alert way, on the hypnagogic hallucinations you experience while trying to get to sleep, you can use them as a sort of biofeedback mechanism, following them as they change their characteristics in predictable ways in a direction that leads you out of insomnia into sleep.

Epistemic status: I have allowed the typical mind fallacy to run wild and have over-confidently described something that works for me as though it will work for anyone. But perhaps my mind is typical enough for the purposes. Caveat lector.

You roll from side to back to side, you take a deep breath and try to banish the stresses of the day, maybe you even try counting sheep, but nothing helps. Each time you open your eyes in exasperation the window-shades are a little brighter and you’re closer to another day you’ll have to get through without enough sleep.

It shouldn’t have to be this way. Why can’t you just sleep like your body and mind clearly want to and need to? Why has something that was so easy for you as a child become so elusive and difficult as an adult?

Maybe you’ve tried natural-spectrum light bulbs, or changes to your diet. Maybe you’ve tried to tire yourself with exercise at bedtime. Maybe you’ve taken a chance on drug dependency by hitting the melatonin or the sedatives. Maybe you’ve tried reorienting your life around an afternoon siesta, or something exotic like “polyphasic sleep.” You’ve Googled your way through dozens of slapdash popular medicine articles that rehash the same old common sense about not drinking coffee in the evening and the like.

None of it seems to help.

This page is different. It’s going to describe a set of guideposts that you can follow that lead from insomnia to slumber, and the method you use to get reliably from each guidepost to the next.

Unlike some other techniques for dealing with insomnia, this one is not something you have to remember to do before you go to bed, or something that requires you to buy anything or to install equipment or to change your daytime routine. It’s something that is available to you wherever you happen to be and right when you need it: when you find yourself unable to fall asleep effortlessly.

This technique requires a little practice to get it right, but once you’ve got it, it’s like riding a bicycle and you can use it whenever you need it.

How I came to write this

For many years I was p...

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