I have joined Lucidology, and I have watched most of the first videos on you tube (videos by LucidDreamTricks) I have tried the “Relaxation” technique and the “Stop, Drop and Roll” technique in the videos. And I cannot seem to do them right… In part 5, (fast relaxation for Lucid Dreams and OBEs) when I go to bed, I first do all the exercises that I read from a piece of paper that I wrote down all the steps on, and when I get to before the “Roll” step, I don’t feel the “Roll Over Signal” at all… And I wait there lying on my back with my arms out to the side, for ages, but I feel no urge to roll onto my side… What am I doing wrong? I have tried the techniques 2 days in a row, and I can’t feel the signal, It’s 8:06 PM now, and i am going to go to bed between 9:30PM & 10:00 PM, please I really need some help, I usually have trouble going to sleep anyway, even if I am tired, and I could probably benefit from your techniques. Oh, and I am 13 years old.

BTW you can download PDFs of each video to print out at <a href=http://www.lucidology.com/101

Just click the link for each video and there's a box for the pdf. The roll signal only happens when the body is *unsure* if the mind is awake. If it actually is sure, then it will paralyse without the roll signal. However in your case you're not getting the roll signal at all which means:

1.) The body isn't tired enough
2.) The body isn't relaxed enough

If you really are deeply relaxed then the problem may be lack of serotonin from daytime sunlight. Make a habit of getting up at dawn and eating breakfast outside in the sun. That will ensure you get lots of sunlight and if you stay awake from 6 am to 9 pm you'll be plenty tired at bedtime.

Also, check out these Lucidology 101 videos on “How To Cure Insomnia”

Good luck!
Nick

This post is in answer to a question I got:

Please help me, I have had insomnia since Sept 2008. I have tried everything, it seems to work for a few days then I go back to this curse.

This is seriously affecting the lives of my children. I really liked your video, can you please suggest some tips to help me. forever grateful.

Here are the insomnia tricks:

1.) Part 3: New Lucid Dream Tricks: The “Stop, Drop & Roll” Sleep Command To Fall Asleep Fast

In part 3 you learn how to use basic mind-body communication tricks to get your body to first ask for permission to fall asleep and then give it the “yes” command to actually fall asleep. You can use these tricks to simly cure insomnia or have wake-induced lucid dreams by keeping your mind awake while your body falls asleep.

2.) Part 4: 5 New Sleep Commands To Trick Your Body Into Falling Asleep While You Keep Your Mind Awake

These are more advanced sleep starters and sleep triggers which you can use to time the exact moment your body enters waking sleep paralysis.

3.) Part 5: Secrets How To Relax Fast And Fall Asleep Quickly And Induce Lucid Dreams And O.B.Es

In part 5 we cover the detailed steps to quickly relax and what not to do which most relaxation programs include.

4.) Part 6: How To Use The Sun To Avoid The #1 Mistake In Lucid Dreams & How To Optimize Your Brain Chemistry

In part 6 you’ll find out how to optimize your brain chemistry for quick sleep using nothing more than the sun and free yourself from needing expensive drugs to sleep.

How To Save A Boatload Of Time On The Relaxation Stage

You don’t have to spend hours relaxing every part of your body to have O.B.E.s. About 90% of your body’s tension is in about 10% of your muscles. If you target just those key areas you can quickly relax enough that your body will interpret it as a signal to sleep.

The Best Place To Start Relaxing

Most books on relaxation say to lay down and start relaxing at your feet and work your way up to your head. That’s not the most effective way to do it because the vast majority of your body’s tension is in your jaws, not your feet.

The jaw is the strongest muscle area in terms of extorted force. The world record for bite strength is 975 foot-pounds for 2 seconds. No other muscle in your body can exert more total force than your jaw muscles and no other muscle holds more tension.

The Top 5 Health Problems From Excess Jaw Tension

Many people go their whole lives and never consciously think to relax their jaws. This causes bruxism, or “teeth grinding” which wears down your teeth and cause other problems such as:

1 – Tooth aches
2 - Headaches
3 – Ear aches
4 – Tinnitus (which is ringing in the ears)
5 – Dizziness

So the very first thing I do before an O.B.E induction or falling asleep is to relax my jaws. This step is absolutely required. It only takes a few seconds so it gives you the most bang for your buck of all the relaxations you can do.

Step 1: Jaw Relaxation

Start with a very firm massage of the meaty part of your upper jaws in front of and below your ears. This is called your “masseter muscle” and is the single biggest culprit for locked up muscle knots in the entire body. Press strongly with your fingers on both sides of your head and get a ‘good hurt’ feeling.

Step 2: Palm Squeeze

The second step is to squeeze on both sides of your jaws with your palms instead of just your fingers. You can use quite a bit of force when you do this because your jaws are quite strong. Let your jaw go as slack as you can while pressing.

Step 3: The Jaw Stretch

It’s common to stretch before and after exercise such as stretching your legs by touching your toes. But have you ever stretched your jaws muscles? You may look silly doing this, but it really goes a long way to relaxing your jaws. So the third step is to relax your jaws as much as you can then use your fingers to pull your jaws open. You may be surprised how much your jaws resist your fingers but by stretching them you can get the tension out.

My grandfather was a professor of a science called relaxology. One of his colleagues could relax his jaws so much that you could wiggle it with your hands and it felt like there was almost nothing holding his jaws on his head. You don’t have to relax your jaws that much but I mention it to give you an idea just how much tension is in your jaws even if you think they’re relaxed.

Step 4: Horizontal Wall Chest Stretch

Step 4 is to stretch your arms and chest against the wall. Place a palm flat on the wall and turn the trunk of your body so that you get a good stretch from the very tips of your fingers, down your forearm, you bicep, shoulder and all across your chest. Exhale all the tension out. Repeat this twice with both arms.

Step 5: Vertical Chest Stretch

Step 5 is to stretch against the wall by placing both palms above your head against the wall and then bending forward. This really targets your shoulder and chest tension. Inhale and exhale fully and slowly 3 times to work all the tension out. Stand up normally, then repeat the vertical chest stretch.

Step 6: Stretch Your Feet

Step 6 is to stretch the bottom of your feet by propping your foot against the wall and leaning forward. This will also give you a good calf stretch. Repeat this on each foot two more times then sit down and massage the individual muscles in the soles of your feet with your hands.

Step 7: Stretch Your Hands

Step 7 is to stretch the palm of each hand by pushing your fingers back with the other hand. This also gives your forearms a nice stretch.

Step 8: Relax Your Shoulders

Step 8 is the last stretching step. Do some slow windmills to relax your shoulders. It’s tempting to skip this step but your shoulders carry almost as much tension as your jaw so it’s important to stretch and relax your shoulder as much as possible.

Step 9: “Pre-roll” To Dissipate Overall Body Tension

For step 9, remember that one purpose of the roll over signal is to get you to roll over which causes you to gradually gather and release tension. Here’s a trick to speed that up or even skip over it.

Lay down in bed and relax a much as you can for 15 seconds or so. Then roll over and relax for a couple more seconds. Roll again and relax… Repeat this several times and you’ll relax the rest of your muscles quite quickly.

This works because normally when you stretch one body part to relax it, you have to tense up another part.
For instance, to stretch one hand you had to tense up your other hand. By laying down and rolling around for a minute you stretch and relax everything a little bit at a time and get your “roll over” phase done all at once.

Step 10: Stop Drop And Roll

Once you’re done rolling around, step 10 is to start Stop Drop And Roll. Lay flat on your back with your arms above your head and start daydreaming. See Lucidology 101 part 3 for how to do Stop Drop & Roll to fall asleep if you haven’t yet.

Step : Start Sleep Breathing

Step is to begin sleep breathing. See Lucidology 101 part 4 for details if you haven’t seen it yet.

Step 12: Roll Eyes To Relax Them

Step 12 is to relax your eyes and the stop micromovements. Roll your eyes around both directions a few times and then let them rest. The idea is to completely forget that your eyes even exist. To do that count 150 heart beats.

Step 13: 150 Heart Beat Count To Forget About Eyes

Focusing on your heart for a long time will make it feel like it’s going to beat its way out of your chest. However if you get up and actually check your pulse you’ll find that it’s beating like normal. The heart pounding sensation is just a trick of the mind which will help to distract you from your eyes.

Step 12: Bring Arms Down To Enter ‘Drop’ Mode

After 150 heart beats you’ve come to step 14 which is to switch on the roll over signal. Drop your arms down to your side and move to step 15 which is to tense and release each muscle group.

Step 15: Tense And Relax Muscles

By now you should be pretty deeply relaxed. Continue to sleep breathe and sense where you still have some tension left. Slightly tense that area for a moment then release it. This will cause you to relax that muscle further than before you tensed it. Start at your jaws and end at your feet.

To do this, count 150 heart beats starting at 300 which tires your brain out a little faster. After every 10 heart beats pause the count and tense and release another muscle group. For instance, when you get to 160 tense and relax your jaws. At 170 tense and release your face, at 180 your neck and so forth. If you lose track of where what number you’re on that’s a good sign that it’s working and you’re falling asleep.

Step 16: ‘Roll’ Phase

When you get to 450 you’ll either be asleep or feeling the roll over signal. If you don’t have a very strong roll signal then just daydream and continue sleep breathing for a while until it’s strong enough. When you really feel the need to roll over you’ve reached step 16 which is to simply roll over and release any remaining tension. Continue sleep breathing and you’ll black out within a few moments.

Warm Socks

Two things that really speed things up are socks and earplugs. You may not realize how much your body temperature drops when you fall asleep but when you’re feet are just a little bit cold it’s really hard to relax. So wear socks even if you don’t think you need them.

Silicone Earplugs

Earplugs are also incredibly valuable for falling asleep fast. You can get them on amazon or Target. The silicone putty earplugs work the best and you can make them last several uses by washing them with soap after each use.

Here’s the complete system, step by step.

1 Jaw Massage
2 Jaw Palm Squeeze
3 Jaw Stretch
4 Horizontal Wall Chest Stretch
5 Vertical Chest Stretch
6 Stretch Your Feet
7 Stretch Your Hands
8 Relax Your Shoulders
9 “Pre-Roll” To Dissipate Overall Body Tension
10 Start “Stop, Drop & Roll”: Hands Above Your Head
Start Sleep Breathing
12 Roll Eyes To Relax Them
13 150 Heart Beat Count To Forget About Eyes
14 Bring Arms Down To Enter To “Drop” Mode
15 Tense & Relax Muscles That Are Still Tense
16 Roll

Coming up in Part 6 you’ll find out how to use the sun to avoid the #1 mistake everyone makes in O.B.E.s & how to optimize your brain chemistry for lucidity.

Plus we’ll cover the ONE O.B.E. induction I would use if I was not allowed to use any others.

In the last section we found that sleep paralysis is most likely when you wake up and fall asleep again without moving at all. So to do that you need a way to fall asleep quickly and reliably. The question is, how do you do that?

Mind Body Independence

The key is in the principle of “mind-body independence”. Mind-body independence means that your mind and body never know precisely what the other is doing. For instance, your body is growing hair, transcribing DNA, digesting food, making blood cells and regenerating tissue. Your mind is mostly unaware of all these. If you had to think about each one you’d never get anything else done. This is mind-body independence.

Mind-body independence also works the other way. When you mind falls asleep your body never really knows completely for sure what happened and if your mind is really asleep or not. So how does your body know when to enter sleep paralysis?

The key is that even though the mind and body act independently, they still communicate using a language. By learning the words in this language you can talk to your body biologically and make it fall asleep when you want it to.

Your First Word In This Language

Your first word in this language is called the “roll over signal”. When your body has been very still and relaxed for a long period, your body starts to wonder if maybe your mind has fallen asleep. It would be a very serious mistake if the body went to sleep too early, so the body sends a test signal to the mind. This test signal feels like a strong urge to roll over.

The Roll Over Signal

If the mind is asleep, then mind does not respond and the body decides that the mind really is asleep and shuts down. If the mind does respond to the roll over signal and you move, then the body knows the mind is still awake and does not fall asleep. So this a major mistake that you need to avoid: Never respond to the body’s roll over signal because it sends a message to stay awake rather than fall asleep. This can be difficult because the signal can become so strong that it’s excruciatingly painful.

You can visualize the way this works with the two dotted arrows on this chart:
As you become more relaxed, the blue dotted line gets lower and lower. At the same time, the red dotted line represents the strength of the roll over signal that the body sends out which grows and grows. When these two lines meet the body decides to enter sleep paralysis and shuts down.

So the question is: what can you do improve this?

The 4 Types Of Roll Over Signals

There are four types of roll over signals you’ll encounter.

Fast Relax

1.) The first type is the ‘fast relax’ case. This happens when you relax quickly and deeply and the body decides to just go ahead and paralyze without sending much of a roll over signal, if any. This is a good case to have because it happens quickly.

Slow Relax

2.) The second type is the opposite case. If you’re tense but stay still long enough and if the body is tired enough, the roll over signal builds and builds until it becomes very painful and extremely hard to ignore. However, if you’re too tense the body won’t paralyze no matter how long you’ve been still. This is called a “signal swell”.

Urge Surge

3.) The third type is called an “urge surge” which is a very useful case. In an urge surge, the body sends out a strong signal out of nowhere. If you’re able to resist the signal for three or four seconds the body ends the surge and paralyses all at once. If you’re not relaxed enough, this will probably result in only partial sleep paralysis which is not ideal. We’ll cover ways to transform partial sleep paralysis into a successful exit in Lucidology 102.

The Quick Switch Roll Signal

Finally forth type of roll signal is called a “Quick Switch”.

4.) If sleep paralysis is the holy grail for new OBEers, the quick switch signal is the holy grail of urge surges. It happens quickly and rewards you with nice and deep sleep paralysis almost instantly. It’s also a very unmistakable feeling which is extremely useful because it lets you know what’s going on.

The Two Cases That Cause A Quick Switch Signal

This usually happens in one of two cases:

First: when the body is really tired and wants to go to sleep right now

Second: when the body was very recently asleep and is deeply relaxed.

In order to make those cases more likely you need a way to bring on the roll signal as fast as possible.

So how do you do that? The trick is to use the right body position.

Body Position Is Key

The body position that brings it on the roll signal faster than any other position is to simply lay flat on your back with your arms at your side. When you lay with your arms at your side you will probably tempted to place your hands on your stomach or cross your ankles. This is a veiled form of the roll over signal. If you get that sensation it means you’re on the right track, just make sure not to give in. Keep your arms at your side and your ankles slightly separated.

Using this simple bit of information we can eradicate the single biggest cause of insomnia: the toss and turn syndrome.

The Tossing And Turning Syndrome: Big Time Cause Of Insomnia

When you toss and turn in bed, what you’re doing is resetting your body’s internal sleep timer each time you roll over. The body is trying to go to sleep by sending you a roll-over test signal but you keep telling it not to sleep when you move. So you end up stuck in a toss and turn loop and never get to sleep. This results in insomnia.

So you may be thinking is that it?? You just lay there?
Not quite… There are a few things you can do actively to speed things up and tell your body to fall asleep.

3 Body Positions

What we do is add body positions before and after the hands-at-your-side position. The first position is to lay with your hands above your head. The final position is where you roll over and then fall asleep in that position.

We choose these positions very carefully so that when you move from one step to the next you release the maximum amount of tension possible.

“Stop, Drop And Roll” Releases Tension In Chunks

This way instead of haphazardly releasing small amounts of tension by tossing and turning over and over, you release it in a exactly two calculated big chunks and get it over with all at once:

Make The Body Ask To Sleep Then Tell It “Yes”

Here’s what is happening at each step.

1.) “Stop” – The Relax Step: In this step you have your arms above your head and relax as deeply as you can. Once you feel you’ve relaxed as far as you can, “drop” your arms down to your side which releases all the shoulder tension that you couldn’t get rid of from just laying there. This is the purpose of the first body position – to get rid of shoulder tension all at once.

2.) “Drop” – The Ask Step: When you drop your arms down to your side and relax the body will seriously start to consider that maybe the mind is asking it to go to sleep. This position will make you want to roll over which is what you want. The stronger the roll over signal, the more the body is asking for permission to sleep. If you get to a point where it feels like it’s plateaued, slowly roll over which puts you in step 3.

3.) “Roll” – The Yes Step: In this step you tell the body, “yes it’s time to sleep.” Simply roll over and then don’t move until you’re asleep. Your goal is to not move again the rest of the night.

Roll Over Signal Changes Depending On Your Position

The sneaky thing is that the roll over signal changes based on how you’re laying and that may trick you into moving. The roll over signal when you’re on your back tends to center in your chest. However the roll over signal when you’re on your side tends to make you want to move your legs. Don’t fall for that! Don’t bend them or straighten them or anything. Keep your legs perfectly still. The urge to move your legs is actually a disguised form of the roll over signal and you must resist it at all costs!

Best Body Position For Healthy Sleep

Here’s the best final body position that’s the healthiest for your back according to researchers at the University of Cleveland. You want to lay on your side so your neck and spine are neutral and relaxed
Bend your hips and knees a bit to lower pressure on your spine
To relieve sciatic nerve strain, put a pillow between your kneeson
Sleeping on your stomach is not recommended because it puts your back in an odd position

Bonus Secret To Build Up Roll Signal

We have one last very powerful trick in reserve that you can use when you have a really hard time falling asleep.

The key is to build up a super strong roll over signal before even getting into bed. Rather than trying to fall asleep in your bed, lay down on the floor next to your bed on your back and relax.

This is unpleasant and after forcing yourself to lay there perfectly still for 10 or 15 minutes, when you finally allow yourself back into bed your body will be so grateful that it will grab the chance to fall asleep as quickly as it can.

In extreme cases you can even lay on an uncarpeted floor such as in your kitchen which will build up the roll signal very quickly.

In the next section we’ll cover 5 more powerful sleep commands you can use to trick your body to fall asleep while you keep your mind awake to have O.B.E.s.