Problems sleeping....

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It's probably because of my mild ADD, at night I never feel like sleeping, my head is working all the time, when I'm in bed I usually have a lot of thoughts about different stuff and I can never seem to relax. When I wake up in the afternoon, I still feel very tired and it feels like I haven't slept well. I just feel like staying in bed a couple more hours because it feels good. It's though because I never want to go to sleep but when I sleep I never want to wake up. Does anybody have any tips to sleep better?

Meditation is the only thing that stops my brains whirring.

Don't try not to think for that is impossible, instead try not to hold on to the thoughts that arise, and especially not to follow tangents or related thoughts. If you can imagine thoughts as floating in one side of your head, try to let them float right through and back out the other side. Try not to become frustrated of beat yourself up, it takes patience and practice.

Start with 10 - 15 minutes meditation a day before bed, work your way up to half an hour. It's really god to combine meditation with stretching and flexibility exercises.

You may also benefit from reading about lucid dreaming. There are some exercises that will help you transition from meditation to lucid dreaming, where you have control of your dreams and can still exercise your mind while your body is shut off and recuperating. Quick note on the last part, you can become awake again while your body is still under sleep paralysis and this can be quite terrifying as you can't move. If this happens, try to relax, it will pass in a minute or so.

I had this problem when I was younger. I could never sleep at night, and would end up falling asleep in school. I eventually grew out of it. But, the way I remedied it then was to have a really really intense work out in the evening, have dinner and then read until sleep took me. The books were usually something that made me have to utilize brain-power, like Tolkien or similar works. Something that eats up thought process.

When I was out of HS, I coped by getting a night shift job. It's only in the last couple of years that I learned how to sleep whenever I need to. And I'm still comfortable having my sleep run from around midnight to 9am or so.

Chamomile tea and a face mask (not for skin, the kind you put over your eyes at night) helps. Chamomile is a muscle relaxant and a face mask blocks out light so that you can produce melatonin. I've never been so well rested in my life. Excerising before dinner is suppose to help you get tired too. Before bed you should start turning off lights and especially tv to encourage natural melatonin production. You can also buy it in the health store if you want to try it that way.

Great advice! Nice to see another meditator--we seem to have surprisingly quite a few around here. Maybe we should have a poll and see just how many of us are lurking in the woodwork. Could be very interesting to learn each other's different methods as well.

I also recommend trying to keep a relatively consistent schedule and avoiding artificial light once it's gotten dark out--helps your body to produce melatonin and know that it's approaching sleep time. It can also be good to avoid doing anything not sleep (or sex) related in bed, such as reading or watching television.

I've actually been interested in getting into some form of meditation, Yoga perhaps. The problem with me, as always, is where to begin.

So how exactly do I meditate?

I like melatonin. Melatonin is one of the chemicals your brain produces naturally to induce sleep, and you can get melatonin pills to promote sleep.
It isn't a knock out pill, but it will make it somewhat easier to sleep. It's cheap, you can get it at any local pharmacy, and it's only a supplement, so it doesn't have the kind of side effects drugs do. There is the risk of dependence, but you'd have to use it a lot for that to be a problem. It's not expensive, so perhaps it's worth a try.