Chapter 23 Chapter 6 Falling asleep naturally and easily

The best remedy for insomnia is to exert yourself to the point of fatigue with physical exertion. If you don't sleep well, you must be worried, right?However, you may not know that Samuel Antmer, an internationally renowned barrister, has never had a good night's sleep in his life. When he was in college, two things were the most difficult: asthma and insomnia.Both of these ailments were serious and there was little cure for him.So he decided to settle for the next best thing, instead of tossing and turning in bed when he was insomnia, he got out of bed and read.As a result, he ranked among the top in every subject in his class and became a wizard at the City University of New York.

After he became a lawyer, insomnia still plagued him.But he wasn't worried at all."Nature will take care of me," he says. Indeed, he has been in good health despite getting very little sleep, and he outperforms his colleagues at work because he is awake when others are asleep. By the time he was 21, his annual salary was as high as $75,000. In 1931, he received the highest fee for a lawyer in history-$1 million in a lawsuit. But insomnia still can't get rid of.He spends half his nights reading and gets up at five in the morning.He was almost halfway through his day's work when most people just started working.

He lived until the age of 81, but it was rare for him to sleep soundly one day in his life, but he was not anxious and irritable because of insomnia, otherwise his life would have been ruined long ago. We spend a third of our lives sleeping, but no one knows what sleep is all about.We only know that sleeping is a habit and a state of rest, but we don't know how many hours of sleep each person needs, let alone whether we have to sleep. As hard as it may be to believe, during the First World War, a Hungarian soldier named Paul Kern was shot through the front lobe of his brain by a bullet. After recovering from the injury, he could no longer sleep and felt drowsy.

All the doctors said he would not live long, but he proved the doctor's words were unreasonable.He found a job and lived a healthy life for many years.Sometimes he would lie down and close his eyes to rest, but he could never fall asleep. His case is one of the mysteries of medical history and has overturned many of our conventional ideas about sleep. Sleep duration may vary from person to person.The famous conductor Toscanini only slept 5 hours a night, while President Coolidge slept 11 hours a day. Worrying about insomnia can do far more damage than insomnia itself.One of my students, Ira Sandler, nearly committed suicide because of severe insomnia.Below is his story.

At first he slept well and couldn't wake up from the alarm clock, and ended up being late for work every morning.The boss warned him that if he overslept again, he would lose his job. A friend of his suggested to him to focus on the alarm clock while he was sleeping, only to have the damn ticking sound haunt him and keep him up all night, tossing and restless.By morning, he could barely move.In this way, he has been tormented for two months, and he thought he must have lost his mind.Sometimes he would walk up and down for hours, and even tried to jump out of the window to die. Finally he went to a doctor, who said, "Ira, I can't help you. If you go to bed every night and can't fall asleep, say to yourself 'I don't care if I sleep or not, just lie awake all night. , that can also be rested.'”

He followed the doctor's advice and was able to sleep peacefully in less than two weeks.In less than a month, he regained 8 hours of sleep and no mental pain. It wasn't insomnia that afflicted Ira Sandler, but the anxiety it caused. The first necessary condition for a sound sleep is to have a sense of security.Dr. David Harlow Funk has written a book called "Destroying Nervous Tension," which proposes ways to talk to your body.In his opinion, language is the main key to all hypnotic methods.If you want to recover from insomnia, you say to the muscles in your body, "Relax, relax everything." It is well known that when the muscles are tense, it is impossible for your mind and nerves to relax.So, if we want to fall asleep, we must start by relaxing our muscles.Then, for the same reason, put a few little pillows under our arms, relax our jaws, eyes, arms, and legs, and before we know it, we'll fall asleep.

Another effective remedy for insomnia is to tire yourself out.You can grow flowers, swim, play tennis, play golf, go skiing... This is what the famous writer Dreiser does.When he was a struggling young writer, he also used to worry about insomnia.So he went to the New York Central Railroad to find a job as a railroad worker.After a day's work of nailing and shoveling stones, I was too tired to sit down and finish my supper. If we are very tired, nature will force us to sleep even if we are walking.When one is utterly exhausted, one can sleep peacefully, even under the horror and danger of thunder or war.The famous neurologist Dr. Foster Kennedy told me that in 1918, when the British Fifth Army was retreating, he had seen exhausted soldiers fall to the ground and sleep as if passed out.Although he held their eyelids open with his hands, they would not wake up.All of them had their eyeballs rolled up in their sockets. "Since then, whenever I can't fall asleep, I just roll my eyeballs into that position. I find that within seconds, I start yawning and drowsy, a feeling I can't control. automatic response."

No one has ever killed himself by not sleeping.No matter how much control he has, nature will force a man to sleep.We can go without food and water for a long time, but we cannot go without sleep. Dr. Henry Link, vice president of Psychological Problems, Inc., has talked to many people who are worried and depressed.In the chapter "Removing Fear and Anxiety" in the book "Rediscovering Man", he mentioned that he once said to a person who wanted to commit suicide: "Anyway, if you are going to commit suicide, you must at least act like a Hero, run around this street until you die of exhaustion."

This person really tried it, not just once, but several times, and each time he felt better.On the third night, Dr. Link finally achieved what he had originally set out to achieve—the patient's physical fatigue (and physical relaxation) enabled him to sleep soundly.The patient then joined a sports club, took part in various sports, and soon wanted to live forever.