Eye Tricks to Fall Back to Sleep

A one-minute Night Shift episode testing three eye-based sleep cues: rapid blinking, slow blinking, and slow closed-eye movements. The goal is simple: give your brain one boring physical signal that the day is over. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to Night Shift with Justin S. King, how to transform your life one night at a time. I'm going to be talking about a simple trick to help you fall back to sleep, and that is three different techniques involve being blinking. The first technique is involves rapid blinking. This is where if you're laying down, you wake up, you're going to quickly blink your eyes as fast as you can for 20 to 30 seconds. But not straining or going too fast. Just blink until your eyes start to feel heavy. The second method of blinking is slow blinking. This is where you are going to have your eyes closed, but then slowly blink your eyes without opening your eyelids. So it seems like you're blinking almost, just imagining you're blinking, but your eyes should still make a slight movement. And you can repeat that slowly 5 to 20 to 30 times. Left to right, left to right, then up and down, up and down slowly, then slowly in circles in one direction clockwise, and then one direction counterclockwise. And you finish by gently looking down towards the bridge of your nose. With all three of these, you're going to finish by looking down at the bridge of your nose. The second two, your eyes are closed, but your eyes inside behind your eyelids will be looking down. And the of these three, I think the best supported version for helping you fall asleep faster is one with your eyes closed and just slowly blinking. But I've myself have found success with the with the left to right, side to side, up-down circles. Um, especially when I wake up in the middle of the night. I've tried that one. As far as the first, the rapid blinking, there's not very much evidence for that option. Those are three different techniques that you can give a try that may help you fall back to sleep. Or to start sleep onset, because the eyes are one of the first places that the nervous system shows fatigues. Fatigue, and researchers often use eye movement, blink patterns, and eyelid closure to measure drowsiness. So for the shift or the night shift tonight, I would pick one of the slow blinking techniques, either just closing your eyes and pretending you're blinking, or the side-to-side, up-down circles as quiet as you're falling asleep. And if you wake up in the middle of the night and remember to try it as well. And then just add that to your arsenal of things you can do to help you fall back to sleep or to sleep. That's it for tonight's episode of Night Shift. My name is Justin S. King. And I help entrepreneurs find peace tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of their lives through sleep optimization, motion regulation, and discovering their purpose. Good night.