During WWII, When the military realized many of its pilots were making deadly errors due to sleep deprivation, a sports coach who specialized in stress management was brought in. He developed a 2-step method that was deceivingly simple, but very effective: Physical relaxation, followed by mental relaxation.
Physical
Focus on relaxing specific individual parts of your body (i.e. neck, shoulders, hands) until you feel like a jellyfish.
Mental
Next is to halt your mind. You can do this by imagining you\’re in a calm scene, like laying in a peaceful meadow, being in a \”big, black, velvet hammock and everywhere you look is black,\” or just repeating \”don\’t think\” over and over in your head.
Since you\’re already in a state of physical relaxation, if you focus on that one thought for ten seconds, you will fall asleep.
The coach tested the technique: \”The cadets at the pre-flight school had been broken into two groups: one which took the relaxation course, and the other a control group. The former outperformed the latter in every mentally-taxing class, discipline-requiring drill, and physically-intensive test. And after six weeks of practice, 96% of the aviators were able to fall asleep in 2 minutes or less — anywhere and anytime.\”
As a terrible sleeper, I\’m definitely giving the technique a shot tonight.
