[TimMember]

@will, I really appreciate this reply and my apologies for the incredible tardiness of my response. I thought I had responded but now I come back to this thread to give further feedback I see I did not. Maybe I did not press submit?

Anyway, I wanted to say a heartfelt thankyou, and to let you know, and anyone else reading this thread, how extremely helpful the sleep module of the headspace app has been. I haven’t even quite finished it yet but I am already seeing improvements, and I assume I will be doing the course multiple times. It’s really useful to have that as a tool in my practice and it is useful in shifting my attitude to being less anxious about the insomnia itself.

I’ve also been using all the suggestions on https://blog.bulletproof.com/sleep-hacking-part-3-falling-asleep-fast-with-biochemistry/ except GHB (which unfortunately I don’t have access to) and chamomile tea (which gives me acid reflux) which has been helpful. I have to be super careful to use small amounts of brain octane oil which is basically MCT oil otherwise I get stomach problems.

I have also been tracking my sleep via the Fitbit app in conjunction with my Fitbit Charge2 – it seems to track my sleep more accurately than the Sleep Cycle app which works really poorly on my new phone (a samsung S8+, it used to work fine on my samsung S4).

The big benefit of the Fitbit setup is that gives you stats on how much REM, light and deep sleep etc you are getting and compares it to benchmarks of folks your age. This is helpful because I noticed that I get about half as much REM sleep than people my age generally get and I also noticed that on days that I am more tired I have gotten less REM sleep and on days when I am less tired I got more REM sleep. So I decided REM sleep was key for me.

This led me to investigating how to increase REM sleep and per https://blog.bulletproof.com/sleep-hacking-ending-insomnia-with-an-electrosleep-machine/ I tried the Fisher Wallace Stimulator. I was initially extremely skeptical and concerned about messing with my brainwaves but it has made an immediate improvement to my REM sleep and it doesn’t seem to do any harm.

I don’t think there is one silver bullet for me but I really appreciate all these suggestions. Slowly my sleep, and attitude to my sleep, is improving and I am having more consistently productive days as a result.

[TimMember]

@Kim L, I really appreciate the info, I will check out the Shinzen Young video and the Reggie Ray book, many, many thanks!

[TimMember]

Many thanks for all the advice! I’m not sure how to reply to specific people via this site, when I clicked ‘reply’ next to a specific post it looked like I was just replying to the whole thread, so I’m going to consolidate replies:

@Salina D, @kimw, I will definitely try standing and walking meditation.

@kimw, many thanks for the tips about standing meditation! I am pretty sure that it is the micronaps that tend to occur in the first part of the meditation that are making the second half more wakeful, but I could try the first half being standing or walking and then the second half of the practice being sitting and see if it helps. But even if I have to stand or walk for the whole practice it would still be great to have that as an option when I’m super tired.

@ Julian S, I appreciate knowing I’m not the only one suffering from this! For the times when I am extremely tired I think it would lead to nodding off if I do a couple of short sits with walking meditation in between although that definitely sounds like something that would be helpful to work towards. I do take daily vitamin D supplements, I will re-start my 5-HTP and L-Tryptophan (I let those slide during a particularly bad period of my insomnia where they didn’t seem to help, but it’s worth a try to restart them). Unfortunately, and very annoyingly, Magnesium Citrate helps me sleep but gives me gastric trouble, so I can only take very occasionally, definitely not night after night. The quality of my attention in the latter part of my sit because it tends to vary a lot, sometimes distraction is gross, sometimes subtle. Regarding which level I’m at, I have not yet read TMI (my copy just showed up) but I think I’m at level 2, I have established a practice and I am working on extending my periods of attention.

I really appreciate all the input, many thanks!

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by  Tim.

[TimMember]

I probably also should have mentioned for context I never have caffeine, chocolate, or alcohol, all of which I cut out due to them exacerbating insomnia.

[TimMember]

Many thanks for the reply, I will try doing multiple shorter meditations and gradually increasing the duration.

I forgot to mention in my original post I exercise quite hard 6 days a week and I used to exercise in the AM but that tended to cause a crash 4-5 hours later, so now I exercise at 4 or 5 pm in order to time the crash for when I go to sleep. Unfortunately my problem is not going to sleep, but staying asleep!

[Author]

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