I’ve always been envious of people who could fall asleep as soon as their head touched the pillow. I don’t know about you but it would take me forever to fall asleep.

I’m still not sure if they’re right, or if they just forget trying to get to sleep. How can you just switch off within a few seconds, especially if you have lots of things on your mind?

These days I get to sleep much quicker and I want to show you the technique I use.

Waking up after X hours of sleep

If you can’t sleep at night you might love this technique but you’re probably wondering what it has to do with lucid dreaming. It can help everyone who needs to set an alarm clock in the morning.

If you set your alarm clock to go off after 6 hours of sleep so you can attempt to lucid dream it’s pretty annoying when you can’t get to sleep for 2 hours. It means you only get 4 hours sleep instead of the 6 you want. Fall asleep quickly and you’ll be able to practice lucid dreaming every day and still feel fresh for work.

Do you know how to fall asleep quickly?

Think about how you fall asleep in the first place. You toss and turn until you lose your awareness then your mind suddenly runs away from you until you finally loses consciousness.

So the trick is to lose your awareness on purpose

Ringing in your ears

If you listen closely enough you’ll hear a ringing inside your ears. You definitely won’t hear anything right now unless you have tinnitus, but if you’re lying in bed and you focus your complete awareness onto your ears you will hear something.

You can’t not hear something because even if you were sitting inside a vacuum your mind would create sound on it’s own. It doesn’t really matter where the sound is coming from, but you need to know how to find it.

It’s not an external sound

You can hear a sound in two different places: the place where the sound originated + the inside of your ears.

You know where someone is when they shout on you because you can hear what direction their voice is coming from, but the sound they create will also cause your eardrums to vibrate.

The internal sound inside your ears is what you need to concentrate on. Lie on your bed when you’re about to sleep and focus on the inside of one ear until you can hear a very faint ringing sound.

It’s tough and you won’t be able to hear it straight away. You’ll only hear something when 100% of your awareness is focused on a single eardrum. It could take a minute or two until you can be positive you’ve latched onto it.

Fading into the background

Try staring at something in front of you for a second. It can be anything you want as long as you focus 100% of your awareness onto it for a minute:

• A certain word inside this article
• The logo on the coffee mug in front of you
• A stain on the carpet at your feet

Did you notice anything strange happen? When you focus on something 100% everything else around it blends into the background. It starts to get fuzzy and you can’t see anything except the thing you’re staring at.

This is the exact same thing that happens when you focus on the ringing inside your ear. All other sounds mean nothing and you can use it to your advantage.

Be prepared for a fight

By now you should be focused on the ringing sound. Other external sounds will try to fight for your attention, but when they do you just need to try even harder to focus your attention onto the ringing sound.

• When a car goes past your window focus more on the ringing sound
• If you can hear music next door focus more on the ringing sound
• When your radiator pipes start creaking focus more on the ringing sound

You might hear the ringing sound then it will go away. It disappears because you’ve broken the connection and you’re not focused any more. Just turn your awareness back onto it and fight to keep it there until the ringing comes back again.

Everything can make it disappear. Even if you breathe too loudly you will lose it. Over time it will get better and nothing will break the connection between your awareness and the ringing sound.

Did you know when someone grabs hold of an electric fence they automatically grip it tighter? The same thing happens here and after a while as soon as you hear any external sounds you will automatically focus your awareness onto the ringing sound even stronger so it doesn’t go away.

Now for the easy part

You’ve won the battle once you learn to hold onto the connection. Your inner-voice might not go away within 2 seconds, but as soon as you’re focused on the ringing it will shut up.

This is probably the best technique to use when you want to kill the inner-voice, but it does have one major fault and I bet you can guess what it is?

So the trick is to lose your awareness on purpose

It will get rid of your inner-voice, but it’s too easy for your awareness to slip away. It’s great for falling asleep quickly, but not so much for helping you to lucid dream. You probably want to know why your awareness will slip away so easily.

It’s impossible to hold on

Staring at hypnagogic imagery is fun because it changes all the time. It keeps you interested which means it’s an easy way to hold onto your awareness.

Initiating a falling sensation inside your head is fun too because it’s relaxing and enjoyable. You can even use the hypnagoic imagery to pretend you’re falling down a whole or through space.

Listening to a constant monotone ringing in your ears is not fun. It’s boring. Your mind will get bored and it will suddenly drift away when you least expect it.

By listening to the boring ringing in your ears you can lose your awareness on purpose

It can be used to lucid dream (sort of)

I suppose it could help you to lucid dream. You can use it to kill your inner-voice and after a few minutes you can switch over to a different technique before you mind drifts off.

It’s also a very good way to build up extreme awareness because if you can focus on nothing else but the ringing sound for an extended period of time you’re a superhero.

Try it for yourself

Test out the technique tonight and let me know if you got to sleep quicker than you normally do.

When you’re lying in bed nothing else should matter except the ringing in your ears.