If you often have trouble getting to sleep because you canât seem to shake the worries of the day, a Canadian researcher may have a solution.
Luc Beaudoin, an adjunct professor in cognitive science and education from Simon Fraser University, says the key to battling insomnia is something he calls the "cognitive shuffle."
The shuffle is a technique one does in bed, while trying to drift off. All it involves is picturing random mental images to distract your mind and set the stage for sleep.
âThe idea is to imagine one thing after another,â Beaudoin told ŰÎŰ´ŤĂ˝ Channel Monday from Vancouver.
Beaudoin says itâs surprisingly hard to simply think of random things, he likes to start with a main word, such as âbedtime.â Then you begin picturing things that starts with the first letter of that word, such as a bed, a baby, a banana, a can of beans.
âWhen you canât think of anything else, you move on to the second letter in the word, âe,â he said. ââŚAnd you go on like this until you get knocked out.â
While picturing bananas and beans might sound an awful lot like picturing sheep jumping over a fence, Beaudoin says counting sheep isnât really that effective because itâs too boring to imagine the same image over and over. And when our minds are bored, they tend to wander back to our worries, which are more interesting, thereby bringing us back to square one.
The technique of picturing images strung together in a random way, Beaudoin says, mimics the way our minds work as we drift into sleep.
Beaudoin recently presented research about his technique -- formally entitled âSerial Diverse Imaginingâ -- to a joint meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. His study found SDI to be as effective as other known sleep techniques in reducing pre-sleep arousal and allowing for more restful sleep.
Beaudoin says the technique works because it both distracts the mind and mimics our brainâs own ways of falling asleep.
âThe whole thing came out of a hunch about what happens when we naturally fall asleep. Our minds drift and wander. So one reason it might work is it imitates the kind of thinking you do when you are falling asleep,â he said.
âAnother reason this might work is that, while youâre doing this technique, youâre not thinking of the things that might keep you awake,â he said. ââŚYou canât think about your mortgage, your kids or your marriage or whateverâs causing you problems or concern because youâre doing this technique.â
Because itâs often difficult for people to conjure up random images, Beaudoin has also created an app called mySleepButton, in which a narrator offers suggested images or scenes for the user to imagine.