The simple relaxation technique presented here will assist you in learning how to control a busy mind so you can fall asleep quickly. Another benefit of becoming good at relaxing both the mind and body is that you will have an easier time remaining calmer during very stressful situations.

One big problem that prevents most people from falling asleep quickly is that our brains are too busy thinking. The brain has a difficult time falling into the first stage of sleep when it is cluttered with thoughts, memories, and ideas. Even though the average person’s life is becoming busier, there is a rather easy way to control how quickly a person falls asleep.

With a little practice, anyone can train their brain to turn off the busyness and fall asleep quickly every night. First, ensure that the sleep area is comfortable, is not too hot or too cold, and has minimal or no distractions. Lie down on a bed, on your back, with arms either along your sides or comfortably placed on the torso. Cover up with a blanket if needed. Next, close your eyes and imagine your entire body beginning to relax. Visualize all of the day’s stress moving away from your body and all tense muscles becoming peacefully relaxed. Do this by focusing on fully relaxing the muscles in each area of the body. A good place to start is at the head and face, then slowly move onto the neck, shoulders, down each arm, the chest, abdomen, upper back, lower back, legs, and feet. It is important not to move onto the next location until the area you are currently concentrating on is completely relaxed.

Once all of the muscles are relaxed in the body, then it is time to move onto clearing the mind. This part can be challenging when first starting to learn how to control the mind, but it can be accomplished rather fast with consistent practice. To clear the mind and prevent unwanted thoughts from disturbing the process of falling asleep quickly, imagine a clean garbage can sitting next to all the thoughts running through your head. Simply imagine putting all of those thoughts into the garbage can. As soon as they are placed inside the garbage can they disappear along with the garbage can, and they do not come back. If you start to worry about losing important thoughts, then take a few minutes before laying down to write down the things you need to remember.

Continue placing and deleting thoughts into the garbage can each time they pop into your head until your mind is completely clear. Finally, it will be easy for your clear mind and calm body to fall asleep quickly. At this relaxed stage, if the brain still needs a little more assistance in falling asleep, you could very slowly repeat one word or a very short phrase over and over again such as ‘sleep’ or ‘relax and sleep’ (repeat the phrase using your mind instead of using your voice).

In the beginning it might take about five to ten minutes or possibly longer to relax both the body and mind. With enough consistent practice some people may be able to fully relax after only about one or two minutes.

This same technique can be applied in stressful situations by imagining all the stress immediately leaving your body as it enters. Closing your eyes is not needed to relieve stress. Start at the top of your head, and quickly imagine all of the stress inside your body being push down and out through the bottom of your feet fast. Continue imagining a sweeping motion going downward throughout your entire body fast as stress leaves and your muscles relax. It will take practice to achieve this skill, but not too long if you practice relaxing daily to fall asleep faster. Once you have mastered this skill, be sure to practice it at least a couple times a week so you do not lose this wonderful ability to relieve stress anytime, anywhere.

Training the brain to fall asleep quickly and relax fast not only helps with falling asleep faster, but also helps people to better deal with life’s stressful situations. A little extra practice now has the ability to lead to years of falling asleep quickly every night, and overall less stress.