If you’re lying in bed reading this, unable to fall asleep, here’s the good news: several techniques can help you drift off in the next few minutes without getting up or taking anything. The key is shifting your body out of its alert state and giving your brain something boring to do instead of worrying about not sleeping. Start with the first technique below and give it a full two minutes before moving on.
The Military Sleep Method
This technique was originally developed to help soldiers fall asleep in uncomfortable conditions, and it works by systematically releasing tension you may not realize you’re holding. Lie on your back, close your eyes, and deliberately relax each part of your body starting at your forehead. Work slowly down through your face, jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, chest, stomach, thighs, calves, and feet. At each spot, notice how it feels and consciously let it go heavy. Most people carry surprising tension in their jaw and shoulders without realizing it.
Once your body feels loose, picture yourself lying in a canoe on a calm lake with nothing but blue sky above you. If a thought pops up, don’t fight it. Just return to the image. The whole sequence takes about two minutes, and the combination of physical release and simple visualization is often enough to tip you into sleep.
Try 4-7-8 Breathing
If your body still feels wired, controlled breathing is the fastest way to activate your body’s natural calm-down response. The 4-7-8 technique is simple: breathe in quietly through your nose for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, then exhale slowly through your mouth for 8 seconds. Repeat this cycle three or four times.
The long exhale is what matters most. When your out-breath is longer than your in-breath, it signals your nervous system to slow your heart rate and lower your blood pressure. You’ll likely feel the shift after just two cycles. If counting feels like too much effort, simply focus on making each exhale as long and slow as you can.
Give Your Brain a Boring Task
Racing thoughts are the most common reason people can’t fall asleep, and fighting them only makes them louder. A technique called cognitive shuffling works by giving your brain just enough to do that it can’t maintain a coherent worry, but not enough to keep you alert.
Pick a simple, neutral word like “chair” or “lamp.” Take the first letter and think of as many words starting with that letter as you can: for “lamp,” you might picture a lemon, a ladder, a laptop, a llama. Don’t rush. Visualize each one briefly. When you run out of words for that letter, move to the next letter in your original word. The randomness of the images mimics the way your brain works as it falls asleep, and most people don’t make it past the second letter. Avoid words tied to strong emotions or memories. Boring is exactly what you want.
Tense and Release Your Muscles
Progressive muscle relaxation is particularly helpful if you feel physically restless or if tension keeps pulling you back to wakefulness. Start with your toes: curl them tightly and arch your feet, hold for about five seconds, then release and let your feet sink into the mattress. Feel them getting heavy.
Work your way up through your calves, thighs, buttocks, lower back, abdomen, upper back, shoulders, arms, hands, neck, jaw, and forehead. The pattern is always the same: tense, hold briefly, release completely. By the time you reach your forehead, your body will feel noticeably heavier than when you started. Breathe slowly and softly between each muscle group. The contrast between tension and release teaches your body what “relaxed” actually feels like, which is something most of us have forgotten by the time we’re lying awake at 2 a.m.
Stop Trying to Sleep
This sounds counterintuitive, but if you’ve been struggling for a while, the pressure to fall asleep may be the thing keeping you awake. A technique called paradoxical intention flips the script: instead of trying to sleep, you try to stay awake. Lie comfortably with the lights off, but keep your eyes open. Give up any effort to fall asleep and any concern about still being awake.
When your eyelids feel heavy and want to close, gently tell yourself “just a couple more minutes, I’ll fall asleep when I’m ready” and let them drift open again. The trick is that this is passive, not active. You’re not doing jumping jacks or thinking stimulating thoughts. You’re simply removing the performance pressure. Once the anxiety about being awake dissolves, sleep often arrives on its own. This works because sleep effort (trying harder to sleep) creates arousal, and giving up that effort lets your natural sleep drive take over.
If You’ve Been Lying Awake Over 20 Minutes
Stanford’s sleep program recommends getting out of bed if you haven’t fallen asleep within 15 to 20 minutes. Go to another room and do something quiet and low-stimulation: read a physical book, do a crossword puzzle, listen to soft music, or sketch. The goal is to break the association between your bed and frustration. Return to bed only when you feel genuinely sleepy again, and repeat this as many times as needed through the night. It feels disruptive the first time, but it retrains your brain to link your bed with sleep rather than wakefulness.
Set Up Your Room for Faster Sleep
A few quick environment changes can make every technique above work better. Drop your room temperature to 60 to 67°F (15 to 19°C) if you can. Your body needs to cool down slightly to initiate sleep, and a warm room fights that process. Even pushing the thermostat down a few degrees or kicking off a heavy blanket helps.
If you’ve been scrolling your phone, switch it to its night mode or warm-light filter before setting it down. Research from the University of Kansas found that using a phone without a blue light filter in the two hours before bed was associated with taking longer to fall asleep, while using a warm-light filter largely eliminated that effect. The average person in the study used their phone for 44 minutes in those last two hours. If you can, put the screen face-down or across the room so the temptation to check it disappears.
Block as much light as possible. Even dim light from a hallway or standby LED can interfere with your brain’s sleep signals. A sleep mask is the fastest fix if you don’t have blackout curtains.
Foods and Supplements That Help Tonight
If you have access to your kitchen and haven’t eaten in a while, a small snack can help. Kiwi fruit, tart cherry juice, dairy, and fatty fish all contain compounds that support your body’s natural sleep chemistry. Two kiwis eaten about an hour before bed have shown measurable improvements in how quickly people fall asleep. A glass of tart cherry juice works through a similar pathway. These aren’t dramatic sedatives, but they give your body raw materials it uses to produce sleep-promoting signals.
If you have melatonin on hand, the standard approach for short-term sleep trouble is a low dose (1 to 3 mg) taken 30 minutes to an hour before you want to be asleep. Melatonin doesn’t knock you out; it tells your brain that it’s nighttime and nudges your sleep timing forward. If you’re already in bed and take it now, give it at least 30 minutes to start working, and use one of the breathing or relaxation techniques while you wait.
Avoid caffeine (obvious but worth saying if you had coffee after dinner), alcohol (it may make you drowsy but fragments sleep later in the night), and large meals that can keep your digestion active when your body wants to wind down.