A 4-minute practice for the hour before sleep
The goal isn't falling asleep faster — it's not arriving at bed already braced.
Most sleep advice starts at the pillow. By then, the important part is already over. The nervous system doesn't have an off switch — it has a dimmer, and the dimmer is operated in the hour before you lie down.
Clients often arrive convinced they have a sleep problem. What they usually have is an arrival problem: they reach the bed at full daytime speed, then wait, annoyed, for their body to do something it was never given room to do.
Why the hour before matters
Sleep pressure builds all day on its own. What you control in the evening is arousal — the alertness your system carries into the night. Bright screens, unfinished arguments, and one last work email all hold the dimmer up. The practice below holds it down.
You can't force sleep. You can only make yourself easier to catch.
Make it automatic
The clients who keep this practice are the ones who schedule it. Put it in your calendar as a recurring event — treat the wind-down like an appointment with a very quiet colleague.
And when it doesn't work — because some nights it won't — the instruction is the same as in session: notice, don't negotiate. Get up, keep the lights low, and try again in twenty minutes. One rough night has never broken anyone. The bracing does.