When we lay down at night why our brain does not recognize it and make us fall asleep much easier? Interesting that we have control over so much things but not our own body.
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What would you signal your brain with exactly? Your soul?
You brain already is the thing that sends the signals to sleep.
Going to sleep isn’t usually just an on/off switch, it’s a dimmer switch on your mind that takes time to turn down. If you keep running it at full brightness and go straight to bed it’s still too bright for sleep. Some people can get a decent amount of control over that dimming, but full control over when you actually let go and sleep for most people is a bit of a catch-22 — the last step of going to sleep is the end of a process of shutting down, and you need to ‘let go’ for that step to occur.
Some people are really fortunate and can go through that shut-down process quickly, some people are unlucky and sometimes can’t get through that shut-down at all.. but ideally you just need to reduce the stimulation and working processes to allow it to be able to rest and finally sleep.
But…. I think I can. I lay down and fall asleep within 5 mins max, most times immediately.
I think there are a few different points that touch on that –
1- Sleep isn’t like a computer shutting down. Your brain is actively working when you sleep, just in very different ways to your awake state. This shift from one mode to the other takes time, and that shift is also dependent on many outside factors because:
2- The brain isn’t isolated from the world. The brain evolved to keep you alive *(Take note here: Not happy, fulfilled or satisfied with it’s services. Alive.)* which means it is always monitoring the world around around you to see what’s the best course of survival is. Over many many years of evolution, brains were molded into falling asleep under certain conditions – Low light, falling temperatures, safe environment etc. The lifestyle of humans changed much faster than those hardwired mechanisms could, so we ended up basically acting against ourselves in many ways. We actively sidestep many of those exact “now sleep” signals we evolved to react to, and we often not give our bodies the conditions and routines we need for it to do what we like. Our bodies depend on external and internal conditions because it’s a very complex, reactive system and:
**3- Your aware self which “you” control is a surprisingly small part of you.** Many people think the brain rules the body, and their “self” should rule the brain. The truth is actually very *very* different. Your body, brain included, is a system in which all parts are in a constant push-and-pull balancing act. What you think of as “me” is part of **the results** of this dance. This isn’t to say you are helpless in your own body. **Your self and choices have a huge influence on what’s going on!** But if you want to be in charge, you need to understand your role is manager, not dictator.
Yes it’s a learned skill
For me it helped a lot to remember the sensations your body when your absolutely tired. And to replay this sensation of heaviness and falling through the bed when I need to fall asleep.
It doesn’t help when I’m agitated or anxious but works on a normal day when I’m just not sleepy enough.
Saying with ELI5: you need to tell your brain this in a language it can understand and its somatic feeling rather than verbal.
You kind of can, or I should say I can, but it’s a learned skill.
For me, what works is to put myself into a sleep breathing pattern, and I do something else which is really hard to explain but I think of it as putting myself into a dream. There’s a sort of mental space I inhabit in dreams, and I can put myself into that space when I want to go to sleep.
Sorry, it’s appallingly hard to explain, but it is something I’ve learned to do over the years. Might be something you can develop too.
Me, in hour three of “Maybe if I just read a little, I’ll get tired enough to fall back asleep,” nodding enthusiastically
You can create a signal or signals to help to fall asleep.
You create a regular routine, perhaps reading a novel, or thinking about a story in your mind, something similar. It’s why we read bedtime stories to children.
It takes time or multiple repetitions, but it works, I fall asleep in 20 minutes 95% of the time by lying down with my phone on night mode (no blue light) and read a story yellow letters on black screen, brightness down to minimum, no lights on in the bedroom. I read every night.
As with all questions along the lines of “Why don’t our bodies do ___?”, it’s because our bodies are evolved rather than designed and so this trait was not something that was required for us to reach our current evolutionary state.
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