Tips to fall asleep on naps

[Reis]

Hello again, today marks my 14th day on Everyman2 with barely any slip
ups.

Even if I'm still hating the core sleep, the naps very much so help me
restore quite a bit and get me through each time interval. However,
I've lately been having issues with fully falling asleep.

Instead of being utterly unconscious, I feel only about 3/4 of me are
deep asleep. My body feels completely numb and even my mind is
slurred, but still aware that it's awake. Thus, it becomes a terribly
odd feeling to feel your body being pumped up quickly with sleep
hormones and restoring what it can restore while you're still "awake",
but not being able to go mentally unconscious.

Even so, it means the naps aren't being 100% efficient. Only once or
twice have I fallen truly asleep and it's only been for about 10
minutes instead of 20.

So what tricks might I use to help me get knocked out?

The things I currently do are:

- Focus on my breathing
- Focus on the white noise from Placebo's sleep track
- Focus on attempting to relax my body piece by piece (Which usually
happens fairly quickly).
- Try not to let my mind think too much about something and instead
just linger on thoughts until it acts on its own.
- Sleep on my back.

I also use Placebo's sleep track, tried several volume settings from
low to maximum. Maximum maybe is too loud for me though.
I did notice something though. At some points I hear a clicking sound
from the track and if I notice that, it tends to wake me up way before
my due time. Has anyone noticed this as well? Isn't there a "clean"
version of the tracks?

Before I used earplugs instead, but to wake up I had to use the
vibrating function of my cellphone put under my pillow and waking up
through that method felt too abrupt for me, making me wake up with a
nasty feeling, so I decided to resort to the mp3 file itself.


I also heard opening your jaw helps a lot in going into deep sleep.

It's funny. Until now I haven't had any issue with oversleeping (Only
overslept 30 minutes twice, and that was before I realized that my
earplugs made me not hear my alarm) but instead I have trouble
surpassing that last barrier of consciousness into full restful sleep
on my powernaps.


Any more hints and tips you think you could share?

My best regards,
Ricardo

[John Litborn]

During my adaption i suddenly stopped sleeping at my naps too, not
exactly the same feeling as you, but i simply couldn't sleep. The only
solution was to ignore it and just continue. If you cannot
fall asleep somewhere/in some way the reason is that you ain't
tired/adapted/used to it enough
;)

Now I'm sleeping again.

[Randall Bennett]

Also, maybe worth noting... if you can't fall asleep, just close your
eyes for 20 minutes anyway. Eventually you get tired enough to where
you sleep again. And if not, just do it anyway to keep up a good habit
which will work eventually.

Later,
RB

[Daniel Smith]

I've learned that I can remain conscious throughout the nap but still get useful sleep.

It's easy to fall asleep if you're super deprived. Once you're adapted, though, you aren't sleep deprived, so what lets you fall asleep? Consistancy with nap times trains your body to pump you full of sleep hormones at the appropriate times. At least this seems to be my experience.

--
Daniel Smith
http://www.schaumburggoclub.org/

[curiousalexa]

On Nov 14, 2:49 pm, Reis <r.rei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello again, today marks my 14th day on Everyman2 with barely any slip
> ups.
>
> Even if I'm still hating the core sleep, the naps very much so help me
> restore quite a bit and get me through each time interval. However,
> I've lately been having issues with fully falling asleep.
>
> Instead of being utterly unconscious, I feel only about 3/4 of me are
> deep asleep. My body feels completely numb and even my mind is
> slurred, but still aware that it's awake. Thus, it becomes a terribly
> odd feeling to feel your body being pumped up quickly with sleep
> hormones and restoring what it can restore while you're still "awake",
> but not being able to go mentally unconscious.
>

I've noticed something similar myself. For example, yesterday I saw
the movie 2012. During my afternoon nap, I kept thinking about the
movie, analyzing it, thinking about events and implications, and so
on. I was enjoying the thinking so much that I wasn't annoyed about
not being asleep. Then I was abruptly awakened! (I can't remember
now if that was the nap where someone came in and woke me, or if it
was placebo's roosters.)

The transition to awakeness was so abrupt and so sudden, I'm quite
sure I was asleep. Yet I was also have clear thoughts and analysis!
Was this an example of lucid dreaming? I did not think I was asleep
untilＩwoke up! But I felt fully refreshed in any case, which has been
the wonderful effect of this system for my life.

Alexa in Maine

[HalfABrain]

Look up.

Keep your eyelids closed, but look up.

[Reis]

Thanks for the replies until now. I guess I just have to punch through
and follow some leads here.

Oh, but about the clicking sounds on the Placebo sleep track? Doesn't
anybody else notice that? Maybe I'm the only one that when transfering
the mp3 to my cellphone ends up glitching somehow no matter how many
times I try?

[Gareth]

might be something to do with your headphones...

[Steven Gilberd]

> Oh, but about the clicking sounds on the Placebo sleep track? Doesn't
> anybody else notice that? Maybe I'm the only one that when transfering
> the mp3 to my cellphone ends up glitching somehow no matter how many
> times I try?

I certainly haven't noticed any clicking noises (using the 20 min v8 track), although if they
are in the second half or so I may have simply slept through them - if they are there, I
haven't woken up because of them.

Perhaps try downloading it again? Maybe your MP3 file is a bit damaged.

Cheers,
Steve

[Marcus Weidner]

To reply about analyzing stuff in your sleep and not realizing it, I
do that all the time now that I am on polyphasic. Many times I have
to really think about how I woke up to determine if I fell asleep, I
use the sleep track and the way I can tell if I was actually asleep or
just laying there thinking through things is to see if I remember the
spot in the track where it is silent before the alarm section, most of
the time I can't remember hearing that, and so that meant I was asleep
and having fully concious thought.

--
Marcus

[Reis]

Here's one that oddly nobody mentioned.

Wouldn't masturbating help with the falling asleep on naps? Or is the
physical tiredness too much for the 20 minute time span?

[John Litborn]

I've used it in some extreme cases to keep me awake, by dragging it
out long you'll stay awake, but afterwards you are very tired, and
I've fallen asleep on the spot so yes, it does help you fall asleep.
Keep in mind that directly going to bed afterwards might have the
reversed effect as you are still full of energy, or at least that's
how it is with sports and such.

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[zade]

From what I've heard sexual stimulation promotes sleepiness while
ejaculation itself actually decreases sleepiness. It had something to
do with how they affect sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. So in
masturbation the effects of stimulation and ejaculation counteract
each other. The longer the stimulation phase the more sleepy one would
be at the end. Stimulating without the final ejaculation would
probably have the biggest final effect.

I am not sure how that would work out for girls.

On Nov 19, 3:34 pm, John Litborn <john.litb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've used it in some extreme cases to keep me awake, by dragging it
> out long you'll stay awake, but afterwards you are very tired, and
> I've fallen asleep on the spot so yes, it does help you fall asleep.
> Keep in mind that directly going to bed afterwards might have the
> reversed effect as you are still full of energy, or at least that's
> how it is with sports and such.
>

[Gareth]

from what ive seen for girls it seems to promote awakeness. my last
girlfriend used to get very very awake after sexual stimulation. she
said it was horrible because i would always fall asleep.

[Gareth]

ok in response to getting to sleep i have had a fairly large degree of
success with binaural beats. i found the theta binaural on this site
to be quite useful http://www.jetcityorange.com/meditation/binaural-beats.html
however it has no alarm. i assume that you are smart enough to know
how to use something like audacity and add your own alarm at 22 mins.
what i did was layer it over the top of placebo's sleep track. it
works a little too well at night so i can only use placebos track at
night...

[Aya Hu]

This is true, I have found as well. When I was adapting caffeine would
keep me up through a nap which would lead me to remain conscious
through the nap, but my body went to sleep, it was very interesting, I
hope everyone can experience it.

You need to be very strict with naps for exactly this reason, you are
training your body it has 20 some minutes to fall asleep, every time,
exactly 6 times a day, or whichever schedule you have chosen. Once you
have adapted, things are more flexible, because your body is so used
to sleeping upon being told for 20 minutes.

Every day at noon, my only nap that is a 100% guarantee of sleeping,
my body breathes rapidly while sending chemicals to put me to sleep
through it. I better be in my car at that time or I become
ridiculously tired and sometimes my equilibrium is thrown off.
However, if Im out in LA, I will sometimes be distracted from this
experience, but almost always, even now, I try and hit within 20
minutes of my naptime.

[Aya Hu]

Also, when I first adapted I found repeating an 'easy' song in my
head, maybe one or two lines, and focusing solely on repeating those
lines, would clear my head of anything else and put me to sleep
through the repitition. I also tried to visualize the steps of
consciousness, our waking mind, the subconscious, and down into the
dream conscious, I would try and see myself being led down stairs to
each cellar. I dont know if it really had any effect but it might
have. The song thing did. Only very easy songs.

[Twinge]

On Nov 14, 11:49 am, Reis <r.rei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Instead of being utterly unconscious, I feel only about 3/4 of me are
> deep asleep. My body feels completely numb and even my mind is
> slurred, but still aware that it's awake. Thus, it becomes a terribly
> odd feeling to feel your body being pumped up quickly with sleep
> hormones and restoring what it can restore while you're still "awake",
> but not being able to go mentally unconscious.

I propose that you ARE sleeping.

I recently somewhat casually started Everyman4.5 (about 2 weeks in,
same as you were when you posted this), and I've had the exact same
thing happen to me - my whole body feels tingly, etc. (Do you also
feel cold after you get up?) It basically felt like I had almost
fallen asleep but then suddenly was jerked back into consciousness
before I was able to do so. I thought that I wasn't really falling
asleep almost ever during my naps.

...And then I came to the realization that I actually WAS falling
asleep most of the time. I finally realized those random chains of
thoughts that I felt like I was actively, consciously having during
the nap period were mostly dreams, even though they felt like I was
simply thinking through random thoughts while alert. I specifically
came to this conclusion after having the same feeling after what had
to have been a dream. I think of some strange things, but picturing
some bizarre, live-action combination of Fireball Island and HeroQuest
with George Michael from Arrested Development playing the Dwarf
character falls under 'dream' ;) -- But my initial thought immediately
afterwards was the same as previous times, where I thought that I
didn't fall asleep and was merely thinking these things normally. So
eventually I figured out that I was tricking myself into believing I
wasn't falling asleep.

I also noticed that my breathing was also unable to keep up while I
was in that state - I tried to maintain the 'frozen tingly body' state
(previously assuming I was almost asleep but not quite), and I had to
start taking rapid breaths; I wasn't able to maintain shallow breaths
while alert and in that state, as I had actually just woken up and
thus required more air. Finally, I figure that even if non-sleeping
naps are still somewhat restful, if I wasn't getting sleep during 90%
of my naps then there was no way that I'd be reasonably alert and not
feeling tired during each day as I had been.