WELL here’s a new one for helping insomniacs fall asleep naturally, and as a sometime insomniac, I tend to notice any drug-free advice for helping sleep to come more quickly.
This one suggests doing a visual walk-through of a house you know and this is supposed to be helpful in getting you to sleep a lot more easily.
My biggest problem is my mind doesn’t always switch off, meaning it’s difficult to segue into slumber because I am mentally writing something, planning or sorting something or some other something, none of which is conducive to mental relaxation.
But hey, perhaps a slow wander through houses I have known could take my mind off all the other stuff and be dull enough to bore me to sleep.
I started with one set of grandparents’ houses. A nice waterfront home in Sydney which had a lot of rooms and they lived there when I was very small. It may have been long ago but I do remember that house and the tour through all the rooms was interesting, if not sleep-inspiring and still awake, I headed for the other grandparent abode.
This house was smaller so the tour didn’t take long at all. I even ventured into the backyard; there was the Hills Hoist, the mulberry tree and chook yard. Even the old shed on a serious lean.
Still, sleep would not come.
Maybe I needed to do an even slower wander, but when you know a place you’re hardly going to linger in the rooms, are you. Whatever, I moved onto the terrace houses I’d inhabited in inner Sydney. None of them were what you’d call spacious and I was upstairs and down again in no time flat, and with backyards the size of a bathmat, the outside just wasn’t worth the mental effort.
The top floor unit I had in a northern suburb of Sydney was nice. Two roomy bedrooms, balcony overlooking a park, close to the ice rink where I skated twice weekly. It was light, airy, had a nice bathroom and it was so convenient to work. Of course, being a unit, it took no time at all to do the visual wander.
The old stone farmhouse on the Central Tablelands offered more strolling options though. An interesting place built in 1864 with rooms aplenty and its fair share of quirky inclusions.
A lot of acres too and sheep. Lots of sheep, which I could start counting if I wanted to revert to that old faithful of sleep-inducement. Having never tried counting sheep though, I can’t guarantee how successful that one really is.
Unfortunately, long stroll that it was, it didn’t put me to sleep. Nor did the wander through any of the houses I’ve occupied since. All it did was whet my appetite for decor and design and what changes I would have made had I owned them and, well, none of that is sleep inducing, because while I’m thinking colour and decor and design, I am definitely not sleeping!
Trying to come up with other options to help me to fall asleep sooner also keeps me awake.
I know there are also things like herbal brews and other pre-bed rituals. Reading is not recommended for me however, because if I am really into that book I’m not about to put it down and go to bed. Hence just crashing when exhaustion eventually catches up with me.
That always works.
