"Your brain is too active to let you sleep in fact the stress of all these thoughts tells the brain that it's not safe to sleep, you have to stay on high alert, says Bradford GP Amir Khan. Cognitive shuffling interrupts this process, and invites your brain to go into sleep mode. Khan says to do it, choose a random word like bed, or dream then think of objects starting with each letter of it, while picturing them in your head."
"Bed begins with b, so maybe bat, binoculars, baseball, banana, he adds, helpfully, Once I've exhausted the letter b I move on to e emu, elephant, eyes. And so on. Great. Apart from when I happened to mention to my husband that I planned to try cognitive shuffling. We had such a row over suitable starting words, we were awake long past 3am."
"My husband's word? Mound. Obviously he fell at the first hurdle spot the odd one out: bed, dream, cloud, MOUND. But it's more than a genre issue. This is what's going on in his head. Mound. Imagine discovering this when you have already procreated with the person. Mound is less a word, more a noise, like bleurgh or ugh. It's a state of mind. A mound mind."
Cognitive shuffling interrupts an overactive, problem-focused mind and encourages the brain to enter sleep mode. The technique asks a person to pick a neutral word and mentally list and visualize objects that begin with each letter of that word. Examples include using "bed" to generate bat, binoculars, baseball, banana, then moving on to "e" for emu, elephant, eyes. Neutrality of the starting word reduces emotional associations that keep the mind alert. Personal experience shows that word choice can provoke disagreement and reveal personality quirks, which may ironically delay sleep.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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