A woman has shared her easy trick to help her fall asleep and it’s cured her 25 years of restless nights. The trick has even been dubbed ‘light switch’ moment by doctors too
The big return to work after Christmas means early mornings and stricter routines, but it’s not always easy to fall back into a healthy sleep pattern.
The weird and wonderful limbo between Christmas and New Year often throws our schedules out the window, and rich food and booze don’t help you drift off to sleep either.
All of this combined with the shock to our system that January can bring means this week can be a huge struggle for Brits struggling to get to sleep at a reasonable hour.
There are endless sleep hacks and products that claim to help you drift off, from so-called sleepy cocktails to banning blue light exposure. But one woman says she’s managed to cure her restless nights thanks to a simple hack which helped her fall asleep ‘instantly’ after 25 years of struggling.
Pasha Marlowe, who goes by the name @neuroqueercoach, took to TikTok to share how she had been using the ‘cognitive shuffling’ to fall asleep and claims it’s a real game-changer. She said: “If your mind is like mine, it’s very active, it’s hard to quiet it at night.”
Plauged by an endless to-do list and busy schedule, Pasha says she’s always found it hard to drift off, but now swears by the cognitive shuffling technique. According to experts, it’s a form of cognitive behavioral therapy and the goal is to disrupt your thought patterns by focusing on words, phrases or images to help your mind relax.
Focusing on random things will distract your mind from anxiety stressors, which can disrupt your ability to fall asleep. The concept was originally developed by Luc P. Beaudoin, who holds a PhD in cognitive science.
Pasha explained in her video: “You pick a word, and you take the first letter of the word and think of as many things you can that begin with the same letter.” She gave the example of the word ‘pumpkin’ and listed words all beginning with P.
Pasha said once you run out of words, you then go to the next letter of the original word, so she then gave examples for things beginning with U. “I have fallen asleep before I finish the letters for the word I choose every time. Because it’s random thoughts,” she explained, adding: “It’s not the thoughts that keep you up at night.”
Dr. Scott Walker, a Denver-based dermatologist also took to TikTok to call this a “light-switch moment” for him, and said the technique is the same as “rearranging” the thoughts in your head, similar to shuffling a deck of cards. He said distracting your mind in this way helps to create ‘micro dreams’ which he said “gives your brain the green light to go to sleep”.
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