Insomniacs: How to Fall Asleep

I sometimes get up at night and have a hard time falling asleep. Someone forwarded an email to me about the 4-7-8 method. They promised that it would help me fall asleep in a minute. I tried it for a minute or two and it didn't work so I forgot about it. However, I did mention it to some friends.

Last week, my buddy, Diane told me that she's been trying the method and although it didn't work immediately, if you kept it up, you'd fall asleep faster than if you just tossed and turned.

Since I lost the original e-mail, I looked it up online and found this article on Huffington Post. I've been using this method this past week and it did actually work for me. I did not fall asleep in a minute. I must be a hard core insomniac, but within 10 minutes I did fall asleep!

Here's the 4-7-8 Method:

1. Place the tip of your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth, and keep it there through the entire exercise.
2. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
3. Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
4. Hold your breath for a count of seven.
5. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.
6. Repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

This method is supposed to increase the amount the oxygen in your blood stream.

As I said, it did not make me fall asleep in 1 minute, but I did fall asleep a whole lot faster than if I laid there twiddling my thumbs.

If you're an insomniac and you already tried the warm shower, lavender scenting your room, cooling your room, wearing socks and whatever, you might try this for fun. It worked for Diane and it's worked for me (sort of).