Wake up in the middle of night and can’t fall back to sleep.

I read myself back to sleep but the sleep clinic I attended recently said to get up and do something soothing until you're sleepy again.



Oh, and for falling back asleep my book can't be too interesting or have a lot of dialog. Long, descriptive passages in a book I've already ready works best for me. The Clan of the Cave Bear series has lots of these. I use a kindle and look up things in Wikipedia. These can put me to sleep. I fell back asleep twice reading an entry about a Slavic goddess

I usually fall asleep the first time to a new and interesting book, and have another book going for getting back to sleep in the middle of the night.

I find herbal teas ie twinnings sleepy tea , camomile , sleep meditation music off YouTube, and cbd oil really help me to fall asleep well and a lavender scent ,
Hope some of this suggestions help 🙏🙏

do some research into mindfulness. What works for me is to lie on my back and breathe, through my nose long and deep breaths. I then focus on the feeling of the breath through my nose and the feeling of my lungs expanding or retracting. This helps me channel through the thoughts and craziness going on in my thoughts. Doing this can also reduce your overall pulse rate and make it easier to transition back to sleep. I can only get to sleep on my left side so once I've done this for a while and feel calmer, I roll over and, very often, go back to sleep.

You have to find what works for you. It's hard and what works for me may not work for you but give it a go and see what you think.

This happens to me fairly often, especially since menopause, and it’s so frustrating! (Maybe once every few months or so, I end up taking a sleeping pill that lets me sleep through the night, which is bliss but not a real solution.) What usually helps me is listening to one of the ten-minute Headspace videos on YouTube. The ones I like most are Beachcombers and Nighttime SOS: Mental Chatter. I think there are longer versions on the Headspace site, but I’m not a subscriber and the short ones are often enough to get me back to sleep. If not, I try Jon Kabat-Zinn’s body scan video, also available on YouTube.

Learn the techniques of mind-emptying meditation. Actively think of nothingness.
It takes a lot of practice and patience with yourself. The biggest part of it is to be able to identify a thought and abandon it when it pops into your mind.

*or*

Put 100% of your attention into very slow breathing. Inhale, counting 5. Exhale, counting 6. Really get settled into the slowness. Then after a few minutes raise the numbers- inhale 6, exhale 7. Feel the air moving through your mouth and nose. Listen to the sound of your breathing. Put all focus on all things breathing.

I've done both of these methods when sleepless

Do math problems in your head. It forces you to use a different part of your brain.

I find it helpful to turn on a podcast or something, or to pray/meditate. If I take the reins and give my brain something to focus on, then it settles down and I fall back to sleep.

I used to wake up and start worrying about “undone” things at work. I Put a tablet by the bed and just jotted them down. This helped me let go of the worry and get back to sleep. If allowed my work-brain to shut off.

Have you tried magnesium capsules? My sleep is much better since I started taking them.

It really depends how long you can sleep before that.

3-4 hours before waking early? You might've woken up at the end of a sleep cycle, which is what people actually aim for when they want a polyphasic sleep pattern. If that happens to me, I'll often lean into it and get up, stop by the bathroom if I need to, grab a glass of water to take back with me, and make sure what I need in the morning is where I should've left it. Usually that means I'll hit the hay again in an hour or two and try to grab that second half. Sometimes I have work in another few hours and I probably just have to live with it for the day.

1-2 hours? Try to pin down what might be waking you up early. A glass of water before bed can actually be an effective alarm clock, so try to avoid that but still pay attention to your thirst and just throw out everything I said here if you think you need it anyway. Noise can also wake us up early, and you might not even know that was it if it ended before you got your wits about you. I also sometimes get woken up by minor earthquakes, and I usually don't know until later because I'm probably too out of it to tell if the floor is jelly or not.

Rather than suggesting taking something since that was like half of the thread already, I'll say another possible cause could be that you're eating too close to bedtime. For me, anything but a really light meal (hard to call a cup of yogurt a meal, but more than that) gets me going again if I eat too late. We're all at least a little different there, but for me I aim for dinner about two hours before bed, and maybe 3-4 hours if there's any slowly-digesting stuff like meat in that meal.

Are you feeling overwhelmed or anxious or just have a lot to do? Journaling can help that. Just getting it out of your mind and onto paper can help. If you've got a lot to do, create a to-do list or just a list of whatever is on your mind. If you wake up, add more if necessary.

Also, I've found Valerian helps especially if you combine it with Benadryl. Knocks me right out.

Cut out phone/computer/tv screen for one to two hours before bedtime as the blue light emitted by the devices reduces melatonin (the sleepy-time hormone) by half in adults and even more in children. So go take a relaxing bath, journal, read a book, meditate, crochet, whatever, listen to an audiobook. And get outside in the sunlight when you first get up to help reset your body clock--get in that morning daylight, which lowers your sleepy-time hormones and increases your wakeup hormones.