How to fall back asleep in the middle of the night

The best part about this video is that he doesn't make you feel bad about not getting enough sleep. I like the idea that it's still beneficial even to just lay there and get "non sleep deep rest". I do this a lot so that's really encouraging. All the other advice I've seen about sleep stresses how important it is and just make me feel more anxious about the fact that I'm not getting enough. Thanks for this :)

My mom always said, “if you can’t sleep, pretend you’re asleep”. Essentially the same advice!

I haven't slept well for 35 years. Started when I entered peri menopause. No other symptoms, I just stopped sleeping. I can with certainty, say that just lying in bed is NOT restful. Especially if you haven't slept in a couple of days.

I had a bad accident years ago and my dad found me wide awake sitting in the den at 3 AM. He asked "What's up" and I told him that I couldn't stop thinking of how I was going to deal with the coming challenges caused by the accident (doctor's appointments, getting rid of my totaled car, ongoing pain etc.) He told me to get a notepad and write down the troubling thoughts so that I would know that I could get up the next day and address the issues because I had the list, therefore no need to keep trying to make a mental list while trying to go to sleep. It worked for me and I still use that advice and it even helps when I have much smaller concerns.

Im a registered nurse and most folks resting heart rate is no one near or below 60 while sleeping and the reason I know this is cause I watch there telemetry all night long on a cardiac floor. Best advice for sleep is no caffeine at least 6 hours prior to sleep. Morning caffeine only and then leave it alone the rest of the day and then you will sleep a little better.

Knowing why I wake up at 2 or 3 am is gold. I thought it was just me. I have the problem of my mind turning to negative and depressing things as I lie awake but if I can imagine I'm walking in the woods barefoot it soothes me and I can usually sleep.

Try and stay unconscious enough during bathroom visits and don't think of anything about the anxiety of modern life.

This is one of those YouTube videos that come out of nowhere in your feed and are actually helpful.

I watched a video by Bhagwan Rajneesh about sleeplessness. He said you lie around all day on the sofa or at a desk and then you want to rest again at night?? You need to do something strenuous like gardening, brisk walking, to tire you out to get a good nights sleep.

Agree about relaxing and just laying there. I've done that for years. I think about how comfortable I am, how I used to hate getting up for school or work when I wanted to stay in bed. So appreciating the comfort of my bed and just relaxing helps me fall back asleep.

Never look at the clock. Cover yourself just enough to be warm, keep the sheets to a bare minimum and keep a warmer blanket to the side. If you are warm stick your feet out from the sheets. When u wake i n the middle of the night, DONT START THINKING ABOUT STUFF. Any thoughts that come to mind: picture that thought floating away like a dead leaf on a quiet river. If another thought comes, picture it float away also like a dead leaf on a river. Practice not thinking while focusing on breathing. Your mind is a river and you need to let those dead leaves go, practice Not Thinking every night and you'll be a sleep master in record time.

I sometimes find looking at the clock helps, because for me one of the things that tends to make it harder to fall back asleep is thinking that it must be almost morning and there isn't enough time to sleep. This is especially true in the winter when the sun isn't as much of a clue.

Here's my strategy that I stumbled across a couple of years ago, and it actually did wonders. I'm a fan of old radio shows, and one time after waking up in the middle of the night, I decided to listen to a show, and what I noticed is, I was never catching the end of it. I realized, I actually falling back asleep without realizing it, and so I stopped worrying. I continue to do this. If I wake up in middle of the night and start listening to something, I fall asleep. Part of the trick is having the volume at the right level where it's loud enough to hear, but quiet enough that it's almost a struggle. But it works without fail.

Hey guys! I used to have really bad insomnia too. One of the helpful tips I did was to work on increasing my blue light exposure early in the morning and reduce blue light at night to regulate my circadian rhythm. Hope this helps any one of you!

A bunch of those things have helped me but the one that had by far the most impact is learning breath mindfulness, so I can just focus on the sensations of the breath in the belly while noting "rising" and "falling". Puts me to sleep almost every time, there's literally nothing better on earth to slow down your heartrate while also quieting the thinking/anxious mind, which imo is sleep's biggest enemy.

I have a house plan in my head for my dream home, so what I do I start by walking into the house and pick a certain room, I then image it's layout, decor etc. My favourite is the master bedroom, I start by walking into that room and start on the layout and even before I get to the ensuite bathroom I always fall asleep! Works every time!

After 40+ years of chronic insomnia trying everything including sleep clinics and pills (rubbish except once in a blue moon and in an emergency), I can confirm that everything he says helps while the usual advice of, "If you can't sleep, get up and do something until you feel sleepy again " doesn't. At least for me, it doesn't. In fact, I've always been worse when I've gotten up and always been better when I've stayed in bed. "Non-sleep deep rest" is very real, so it's important to stay resting, particularly for your eyes, even if you aren't sleeping. To add to it there have been times I've been sure I was awake only to find when I looked at the clock, an hour or two had passed when to me it only seemed like a minute. If you get up you'll miss out on sleep you otherwise would have gotten. The main sleep killer is tension. So whatever you can do to reduce that will help. First off, one night of bad or lost sleep is not going to kill you, so stop worrying. It's the worry as much as anything else that will affect your performance the following day. But do stay away from machinery, please. Find a way to distract your mind from your worries, like engaging in wild, but not so wild you get an adrenalin rush, fantasies that give you a holiday from your normal day-to-day world far away from what's troubling you. And don't ignore physical issues. Have yourself checked for sleep apnea and restricted airways due to allergies or physiology.

The breathing does help. It´s relaxing, absolutely, but it also keeps our mind from wandering off or thinking of something stressful. I focus on the feeling of cool air entering my nostrils, then warm air being exhaled through the nose, and before I know it, I´m asleep again. I don´t mean to make it sound simplistic because I struggled for decades, but this has been working for me lately and I´m so grateful.

All the information coming at us about how important sleep is just adds to my stress about not being able to get back to sleep. This makes me feel much better.

This goes against what a sleep therapist told me to do. He said to get up out of the bed and read a "boring" book in low light for 10 to 15 minutes and then go back to bed. It was to avoid creating a negative association with the bed which could cause anxiety. However, I didn't feel like that advice was helping me much! I did notice that if I laid in bed I would drift in and out so I was getting some sleep. Whereas if I kept getting up as he suggested, I was dog tired the next day!