Being an insomniac of the most extreme kind, I use several techniques to help me fall asleep. I meditate and/or count sheep and/or try to persuade my physical body to relax and unwind.
And sometimes I chant (silently) a mantra that I created as an alternative to counting sheep, which can be boring.
One version of the mantra is "...to love myself I have no fear to love myself I have no fear to love myself I have no fear..." etc. Which translates into: "The method I use to help me love myself, is to have no fear".
It also makes sense "backwards": "...I have no fear to love myself I have no fear to love myself I have no fear..." etc. Which translates into: "I'm not afraid to love myself".
The mantra can be adapted to the state of mind of the mantra-utterer at the time of utterance, eg: "...to have no pain I love myself..." or "...to have no pain I heal myself..." or "...to heal myself I have no pain..." etc
Does it work? Does it put me to sleep? All I can say is that sometimes I drift off on a wave of inner mumbling!
Just sayin'.
And then there's the thermonuclear option: The Art of Wakeful Sleeping.
NIGHTMERRIES: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF DARKNESS This so-called "book" will chew you up, spit you out, and leave you twitching and frothing on the carpet. More than 60 dark and feculent fictions (read ‘em and weep) copiously illustrated by over 20 grotesque images you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.
AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY (Vot could be Verse?) We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.
MANIC MEMES & OTHER MINDSPACE INVADERS A disturbing repository of quotably quirky quotes, sayings, proverbs, maxims, ponderances, adages and aphorisms. This menagerie holds no fewer than 184 memes from eight meme-species perfectly adapted to their respective environments.
MASTRESS & OTHER TWISTED TAILS, ILLUSTRATED: an unholy corpus of oddities, strangelings, bizarritudes and peculiaritisms
FIENDS & FREAKS Adults-only Tales of Serpents, Dragons, Devils, Lobsters, Anguished Spirits, Gods, Anti-gods and Other Horse-thieves You Wouldn't Want to Meet in a Dark Kosmos: 4th Edition
HAGS TO HAGGIS Whiskey-soaked Tails of War-nags, Witches, Manticores and Escapegoats, Debottlenecking and Desilofication, Illustrated
Humble mumbles are far more genteel than crumble grumbles. No?
Antares
yes, much more so than bumbled, jumbled, fumbled rumbles!
cheers, MM
Seems that many creative people struggle with insomnia.
Hi Cie, "what you resist, persists" -- the best way to handle it may be not to struggle but to embrace!
Cheers, MM.
COMMENTS? Come on... gimme your best shot!