Re: Random things in your askbox. I sometimes can't sleep - brain too busy - and will mentally 'construct' a cozy 'dream' bed. It's usually a tiny cabin somewhere that it's raining, and the bedding is warm and fluffy, and it has a window that lets in the chilly air and the sound of the rain, but not the actual rain. I then try to picture myself curled up in it; the smell of the air and the sounds coming in with the rain. Usually works, or at least helps. D'you have any tricks/visualizations?
Beautiful. Personally, I have an awful time trying to get to sleep most nights, either because I’m a night owl and it’s too early, my brain won’t shut up, or so forth.
Two things tend to work for me … One is that I have a little humidifier that I often use that sits on my nightstand. It’s shaped like an owl, and it trickles as it mists, and the two sounds combined help keep my ears distracted, and I can often pretend it’s rain and concentrate on that until I drift off.
My other trick is telling myself stories … As I said, my brain is often too loud, thinking too many random things at once. To focus and relax, I start creating a very neutral story, something that I just keep simplifying and simplifying, or I start concentrating less and less on a tale and more on the vague details until I’m finally under. For instance it might go something like this: It starts with going to lunch with an old friend, someone I’ve just seen or haven’t thought about in a while. We walk and talk about old times. We enter a restaurant and the restaurant is old and dark, and we sit at a table with a cloth that is very white, and there are two plates, and glasses and there’s murmuring in the background and zzzzzzzz …
Sometimes it will kickstart into lucid dreaming and then lead into actual dreaming, but often it just fades away. I will occasionally fantasise as well, but that doesn’t help me sleep in the slightest, most of the time … *cough* >_>;
