Racing mind keeping you awake?
One of the most common barriers to good sleep is a restless mind – we’ve all been there, when a million unconnected thoughts suddenly seem to impose themselves on our attempts to drift off to sleep.
But this is what a new technique called cognitive shuffling tries to help with. Sleep experts at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, have developed the technique as a way of steering our attention away from spiralling thoughts and worries before bed towards mimicking a more natural thought process that occurs before sleep.
People who struggle to sleep often report planning and problem solving – or worrying before sleep, while “good” sleepers often report imagery in the form of hallucinations before sleep. According to the sleep experts it’s not that we need to empty the mind – our mind is always busy, never empty (and don’t we just know it!?) – but we need to try and steer it away from anything too logical. And this is what cognitive shuffling attempts to do: a conscious mimicking of what the unconscious mind does as it falls asleep.
Hypnagogic state
Hypnagogia occurs during the transitional period of wakefulness to sleep, when alpha waves are decreasing but you haven’t yet reached the first stage of sleep.
During this period, your sense of being in the present moment transitions from the real world to the dream world, even though you’re not fully asleep. When this happens, people commonly experience:
- hallucinations
- lucid dreaming
- body jerks
- sleep paralysis
In about 86% of cases, hypnagogic hallucinations involve visual stimuli. Some of the ways visual hallucinations can manifest include:
- kaleidoscopes of changing colors
- the appearance of random geometric patterns
- flashing lights
- images of people, animals, or faces
Cognitive shuffling
As these visual images are the most common experience of a hynapgogic state, this is what cognitive shuffling attempts to mimic.
The idea is simple: choose a random word, for example: “pillow”, and then try to think of all the words you can conjure using each of its letters. Plimsol, puma, prize… iceberg, island, iguana… and so on. As each word comes to mind, spend some time visualising it – a process that mimics the spontaneous, often unconnected images characteristic of the hypnagogic state, that transient period between wakefulness and sleep.
As always, what works for one person may not work for you. But this is a new technique developed by sleep experts and is might be an easy, cost-free solution – so if you do struggle to drop off, why not give it a go?
Sleep course
If you would like to delve further into techniques and solutions designed to help you sleep, Reclaim Your Rest, The Seven Day Sleep Solution for Women in Midlife is a course I designed to support women in peri-to-post menopause struggling to sleep.
I can’t promise to totally solve your sleep problems immediately, but my sleep course can show you other scientifically-backed tools and protocols to put you on the right path to feeling more rested – and hopefully incentivise you to keep going. This course provides a comprehensive and actionable approach to improving sleep for women in midlife, addressing various factors that can influence sleep quality. It allows you to take control of your sleep habits and build a foundation for long-term sleep as you navigate the unique challenges of peri-to-post menopause.
If you’d like to sign up, and start to improve your sleep today, you can do so here.
