MORE DEVICES FOR GOING TO SLEEP
Oh Sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole.
COLERIDGE.
If life be a succession of ideas, says Dr. Binns, then sleep is the
interval; “consequently, we may say that sleep is the art of escaping
reflection.” If one could follow the Chinese advice, divest the
mind of all unpleasant images, “the secret of sleep at will,” Dr.
Binns thinks, “would be in the possession of all men.” This accords
in its essence with the very modern theory of Dr. Henry Hubbard
Foster of Cornell University, that sleep results from the absence of
stimulations. It is conceivable that things that stimulate, or rouse
us, may come from inside as well as from outside. A sudden thought, a
new, delightful, or horrible mental picture will arouse us and send
sleep flying as effectually as a sudden noise or an exciting commotion
from without.
We might amend the Chinese advice thus: put out of the mind all images,
pleasant or unpleasant, or, as Dr. Gardner puts it, “bring the mind
to a single sensation.” It has long been known that monotony will
induce sleep. Not merely the monotony of silence, but sometimes even
the monotony of great noise, such as the ceaseless firing of heavy guns
which have lulled the wearied soldiers into rest. There is a sleepy
sound in “The distant boom of a random gun which the foe was sullenly
firing.” It is the sudden, irregular noise which disturbs. If anyone
listens for several hours to soft, flowing music, he will have great
difficulty in keeping awake, no matter how great a lover of music he
may be, particularly if he has to sit in the same position all the
time. Let a musical number with strongly marked staccato movement be
introduced, let the drum throb loud at intervals, the horns blare, then
the sleeper will awake and find renewed enjoyment, not because he loves
noise, but because the monotony has been broken. The mind has responded
to the new stimulus.
Professor Boris Sidis, of the Harvard Physiological Laboratory, says
that “the fundamental conditions of sleep are monotony and limitation
of voluntary movements. Sleep,” adds Sidis, is not so much due to
cutting off impressions through the senses, be they intense or faint,
as to the monotony of the “impressions that reduced the organism to
the passive state which we experience in sleep.” In other words,
monotony has such a benumbing, deadening effect upon the mind that
sleep naturally ensues.
Although Binns did not know Foster’s and Sidis’ modern views, yet
accepting Gardner’s theory of “bringing the mind to a single
sensation,” he worked out a plan for inducing sleep which he said
nearly always succeeded. During his long practice he had known of only
two instances where it failed when faithfully and intelligently tried.
The method is simple, yet it includes putting out of the mind all
images pleasant or unpleasant, and restricting voluntary movements. It
is this: “Turn on the right side, place the head comfortably on the
pillow, let the head fall naturally, using the pillow only to support
the neck, slightly close the lips,—though this is not absolutely
essential,—take full inspiration through the nostrils, drawing in as
much air as possible, then leave the lungs to their own action, neither
hastening nor checking exhalation. Think of the breath as passing from
the nostrils in one continuous stream, and, the very instant the person
so conceives, consciousness and memory depart, the muscles relax, the
breath comes regularly, he no longer wakes but sleeps. It is all the
effort of but a moment.”
Another method in common use is counting up to a hundred on an
imaginary string of beads. Often one will have lost consciousness
before the hundredth bead is reached, but sometimes they have to be
counted over and over, and sometimes the plan fails altogether. The
immediate reason for this is undoubtedly that we have not brought
the mind to a single sensation, nor succeeded in cutting off the
impressions that come through the senses.
Everybody has at some time used some such device for inducing sleep
to visit him. The practice of imagining sheep jumping over a gate and
counting them as they go is but another way of bringing the mind to a
single sensation, of deliberately securing monotony and shutting out
all stimuli, as scientific men call the various causes that arouse
sensation in us. Such simple devices are never harmful, and are so
frequently followed by sleep that they continue from generation to
generation.
If the impressions received through the channels of sense cannot or
will not be shut off, it is useless to continue counting beads or
sheep, or seeing a stream of breath. It becomes necessary to discover
what it is that is back of the stimulation—what impression is so vivid
and so insistent that it will not down. As Frederick Palmer says in his
delightful book, “The Vagabond,” we should “take a good look at a
thing before we run away from it.”