Insomnia Tips

Insomnia?
Just Go To Sleep
And Forget About It

Insomnia Tip #20

Counting Sheep

We finally figured out why it never worked for us. The old wives' cure for insomnia is to count bouncy little sheep leaping over a fence. No wonder it doesn't work. Bouncy sheep are hyperactive and wide awake. They're the last thing you need to dwell on when you want to go to sleep.

So try the variation that worked for us. Count sleeping sheep. Imagine a beautiful green meadow stretching to infinity. Every ten feet or so, right in a row, lies a peaceful, sleeping sheep. Imagine that you're just gliding by, almost floating. And that you pass by a sheep every 3 or 4 seconds (experiment to find which time interval works best for you -- it varies from person to person). Count the sheep and glide on to the next, and the next, and so on.

Take it from us. Sleeping sheep are much more effective.

Note - We found this recently on the Web:

Apparently in the 1970s two Harvard psychologists, Richard Davidson and Gary Schwartz, researched "counting sheep" as a classic way of dealing with insomnia. They concluded that counting sheep occupied both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously, preventing the type of disturbing brain activity that is often responsible for insomnia.

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