Learning how to sleep really fast in 5 minutes is not something most people can do regularly. I’m able to do it about 3 to 4 nights a week (depending on the previous nights’ sleep and what health practices I did that day).

It takes the average “healthy” (How they define “healthy” is anybody’s guess) person around 15 to 20 minutes to fall asleep.

That would be a dream right? No pun intended. 😉

I used to lay in bed with my mind racing for hours. The frustration was real. At some point during the night, it would become “beyond the point of no return“. Have you ever had that?

It’s the imaginary time you made up in your head that….. if you aren’t asleep by that time, the next day will be ruined. It’s just a story you made up to sabotage yourself for some reason.

You think to yourself,

“I have to get up for work at 6:00am. If I can at least fall asleep in the next 9 minutes, I can get 5 hours of sleep. I can run on 5 hours.” 

Then 9 minutes goes by.

Then 20 minutes goes by and you “try harder” to fall asleep. The more you try, the more your cortisol levels rise and the more stress you feel.

Then an hour goes by and just give up, trying to make amends with how you’ll just have to get through the next day on zero sleep.

I get it. I’ve been there. It sucks. It sucks really bad.

Fortunately I’ve learned some sleep hacks that nobody really talks about that allows me to fall asleep in about 10 to 15 minutes each night. You can track that with an Oura Ring. A few nights  a week I’m under the 10 minute mark. 

There’s one thing that you must understand…

That is you cannot live the average American fast paced lifestyle, eat the standard American diet (SAD) and expect to fall asleep in 5 minutes.

It’s just not going to happen.

The way our life is these days is almost designed to make us sick and unable to sleep. This is why 30% of Americans have been officially diagnosed with insomnia. That’s not counting the folks struggle with falling asleep or staying asleep but have never gone to a doctor about it.

I can’t imagine how many millions of people that is.

Our fast paced modern society is now a 24/7 society. We’re always “on”. We’re answering texts and emails late into the night. We never take breaks. We’re stressed about making money, keeping the money we do make, as well as our families and our health.

Human beings are unique in that we’re the only species that can move across the planes of the earth vast distances and create our environment. Even though I’m not genetically equipped to live in the middle of the African desert, I can move there and live there. I can move to northern Alaska and live there, even though I don’t have that in my genetic history.

I’m almost a “god”. I can create mini suns and put them in my home and tell my body it’s the middle of summer on the equator when I’m living in Canada and it’s 9pm in the middle of Winter. Our biology is not designed for this type of living. If you must use light at night, I only recommend using these bulbs that don’t break your circadian rhythm.

All of these are stresses when compounded, create a situation that causes many different kinds of sleep disorders.

You can’t live this way and go from a million miles per hour and suddenly “switch off” and sleep fast in 5 minutes.

Being able to fall asleep really quickly (in say 5 or 10 minutes) starts with how you live during the day. Every thing you do from the moment you wake up is either contributing to or taking away from your ability to sleep that  night.

That means, looking at that computer screen without blue blocking glasses or some kind of software that blocks blue light, contributes to you not sleeping that night.

That means skipping your workout.

That means eating too much sugar that’s causing blood sugar issues.

That means eating take out at work instead of making your lunch and taking it with you to the office.

That means….doom scrolling on social media.

Literally everything you do, during the day is affecting your ability (good or bad) to sleep well that night.

So let’s take a look at some of those things and see if we can’t optimize them.

Diet & Supplements

The foods you eat and the supplements you take play a huge role in how you sleep.

Diet

I recommend a low sugar diet that’s also devoid of oxalates. You could consider diets such as the Paleo diet, the Ketogenic diet or the Carnivore diet. I plan to write articles on each them in relation to how they affect our sleep. Essentially you want to eat a diet that’s fresh, whole (unprocessed), local, organic, in season, on time (that means eating on time) and ripe.

If you can follow those basic 7 dietary principles and apply them to a ketogenic low sugar diet, you’re going to notice big shifts in your sleep.

Supplements

In an earlier article I wrote about 6 supplements to “turn your mind off” so that you can fall asleep fast. These were specific supplements that allow your body to break down thought and let go of it. It’s based on the COMT genetic mutation. If you want to test to see if you have the genetic mutation, you can test here or here. I also wrote an article discussing specific herbs to help you fall asleep. These herbs work on the GABA pathway.

The other general supplements for sleep I recommend are..

1. Magnesium– 300 to 400mg is a great place to start
2. Melatonin – I take 20mg per night but you have to do it right!
3. GABA – I like to start at 750mg
4. Glycine Powder – Must be in powder form in high doses 2,000 to 3,000 mg (scoops)

Things To Avoid

There are so many things to avoid in modern living that it almost makes you feel like you can’t even participate in life itself. Thankfully there are things you can do (like wearing blue blockers or using blue blocking software on your screens) that allow you to still use modern devices for example in a less harmful way.

• Looking at any screen in the morning before you get sunlight
• Exposing your eyes or skin to blue light after sunset
• Exercise of any kind after sunset
• Night shift work
• Non organic foods and foods containing…
  • Glyphosate
  • Pesticides
  • MSG
  • High fructose corn syrup
  • Oxalates – more info
  • PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids)

What To Do When You Wake Up

Immediately upon waking up, open your windows to let full spectrum sunlight in your room. I personally sleep with a sleep mask on. When I take it off, I close my eyes until I can open my window to let full spectrum light into my eyes. When the window is open, letting sunlight in, I then open my eyes. Sunlight should be the first light that hits your eyes each morning. There’s lots of science to this that I’ve gone into before that I won’t get into here.

Then when I do that, I avoid my phone like the plague, (even though I’ve made it orange). I don’t touch it, I don’t even have it in my room. I’ll then go outside, with no shoes on and stand barefoot on the earth looking in the direction of the sun. I try to do this for at least 5 minutes and expose as much skin as possible to the sun.

I don’t wear contact lenses or sunglasses but if I did, I would avoid wearing them during this time. You may want to check out MyAlcon as they are the only contact lens developer that don’t block UV light. 

This is called grounded sungazing. It’s important to note that you don’t look directly at the sun. You look in the direction of the sun.

Big difference.

I look about 30 degrees away from the sun, which lets the photons of light enter my naked eye setting my circadian rhythm for the day and making that day’s worth melatonin.

A question I get a lot is, “is it okay even if it’s cloudy?”. The answer is yes. Nature wants us to sleep. Nature wants us to connect with it. God set all this up perfectly for us.

Another question I get is, “is it okay if I can only do it for a minute?”. The answer is also yes. There appears to be no upper limit within the first 2 hours of sunrise so the longer you can stay outside in the AM sun, the better.

Do this for 30 days and you’ll notice MASSIVE changes in your ability to fall asleep fast and feel more rested when you wake up.

What To Do During The Day

What you do during the day matters. A lot. Here’s a short list of things you can do during the day that help with sleep at night.

1. Block blue light by wearing yellow blue blocking glasses
2. Open windows (it activates “photon scattering” of sunlight)
3. Go outside multiple times per day (even for 1 minute) with no sunglasses or shoes (if possible) to reset your biology.
4. Exercise (preferably outdoors) hard. Cardio or strength training is preferable.
5. Engage in some form of critical thinking or problem solving activating your mental capacity.
6. Engage in something that is fun or that feeds you. For me that’s reading a good book, playing basketball, surfing, hiking and being in nature.

What To Do 3 Hours Before Bedtime

This is your time to wind down from the stressors of the day. It’s time to be in less stressful environment and to calm your mind, body and spirit.

1. Take a magnesium bath (even better if you can add boron and baking soda)
2. Read for 10 minutes
3. Stretch/yoga
4. Meditate
5. Avoid all blue light
6. Take a melatonin
7. Wear your red blue blocking glasses
8. No food (preferably avoid eating after sunset)
9. Very little water. I stop drinking my water around 5pm and I go to bed around 10pm.
10. Take supplements before bed. Take these supplements if you can’t turn your mind off.

What To Do When You Finally Lay Down To Sleep

It’s important to let go of every aspect of holding onto emotions. Release that tight grip on the things you’re holding onto. This is why it’s important to live in a humble and genuine way. When you don’t behave in a negative way that creates karma, you don’t have to go to bed with regrets each night. If you did the best you could on whatever task you may have failed at, then you can let go of the complications from it when you try to fall asleep. If you avoid arguing and yelling at people or losing your temper, you don’t have to go to bed thinking and ruminating about that when you try to fall asleep.

Do the best you can.

Act the best you can.

Express yourself the best you can.

Avoid stress and arguments the best you can.

Leave no regrets.

Create less karma for yourself to think about when you finally lay down. Treat loved ones like this will be the last conversation you ever have with them. You don’t know what the future holds. Put your best effort out and that way it makes it easier for you to let go of all the unnecessary drama in your mind when you try to fall asleep.

1. When you lay down take deep breaths with your eyes closed
2. While you’re doing this, pray and thank God for everything.
3. Come up with 10 things you’re grateful for and repeat them.
4. Count to 1000, this is to prep for step number five below.
5. After counting to 1000, if you’re still awake go through the letters of the alphabet and match each letter with a mammal. For example, A = Ape, B = Baboon etc.

Conclusion

As you can see falling asleep fast in 5 minutes isn’t something you can do immediately, especially if you’re living in our toxic modern environment. But the more you connect with nature and disconnect from how we live today, the more quickly you can fall asleep each night.

I invite you to put these practices together and do them for 30 days and see how you feel. I’d love to know if you can fall asleep in under 10 minutes by doing them. I’d be curious to know if you stay asleep and how deeply you can sleep.

I’ll tackle many more sleep related issues but I wanted to address those of you who wanted to know how to sleep fast in 5 minutes. It’s not easy but it’s definitely doable.

Questions:

• Do you have what it takes to do this 30 day challenge?
• How long does it take you now to fall asleep?
• When you were younger, could fall asleep faster?
• Did something happen to you, that affected your sleep?

Comment below.