The late Sir Andrew Clark once said that he never knew anyone die from insomnia, though he knew of many who had died from trying to cure it. To a man who really suffers from insomnia, perhaps, this is but doubtful consolation, but in any case the latter half of this great doctor’s remark is valuable. For probably more poison is taken to remedy insomnia, and on the whole with worse results, than in the alleviation of any other disease which flesh is heir to. Drugs, especially narcotics, are the most dangerous things in the world to play with, since so many, if taken at all continuously, almost necessitate a gradual increase in quantity. Besides, the morphia habit, or any habit of that sort, is, frankly, the clutch of the fiend, and it would be infinitely better to die of insomnia (were it possible) than be dragged down to that particular Hell.

But it is not of these martyrs, whose case is one for doctors (who will most likely be unable to help them), but of the ordinary man who may, perhaps, not be a regularly good sleeper, and of those who are habitually good sleepers, that we propose to speak. People who sleep well, and know nothing about other forms of rest, may, perhaps, find certain things here said, fantastic, but the problem of rest is just as fascinating as the problem of energy, and curious though it sounds, rest can be induced and improved even by exercises.

Broadly, then, rest and recuperation, which is equivalent to the act of gathering energy, and is necessary to the employment of it, may come in three fairly distinct ways, either by sleep, or by mere quiescence, or by intentional and definite relaxation. The two first are purely natural, being the instinctive demands of the brain and body after a period of activity; the third is, at first anyhow, an artificial rest, to be had always at command, and demanding more than mere quiescence to induce it.

To take sleep first, it should be a condition as automatic as breathing, but by its very nature, by the fact that, in order to arrive at it, both body and mind must pass into and through a quiescent state, so that the condition of unconsciousness may naturally come, it has many more foes than the mere taking and expelling of breath. A severe pain in the foot or any remote organ of the body will make sleep difficult, if not impossible, until exhaustion has come, whereas such a pain would not in any way prevent breathing; or, again, any anxiety or tension of mind will hinder sleep. Continued pain, of course, results in bodily exhaustion, continued anxiety in the corresponding exhaustion of the mind, the inability to think longer; but these are rather special causes of sleeplessness, which are responsible for a comparatively small percentage of those patients—for they are no less—who habitually sleep badly, either finding difficulty in getting to sleep, or awaking at timeless hours, or awaking, not to sleep again, in very early hours of the morning. These, though one can class all under the general heading of bad sleepers, are divisible into at least two distinct classes, while insomnia may arise from very different causes.

Certain general rules apply to everyone in the regulation of the bedroom, and though confirmed bad sleepers may scoff at the notion of furniture and bedgear having anything to do with their own particular thorn in the flesh, it will at any rate be harmless for them to know how a bedroom can be regulated in order to give the best possible conditions.

In the first place, then, mere stuffiness of a room will be often quite sufficient to wake an ordinarily good sleeper, and if continued, to get him into the habit of sleeping badly. If the air in a room gets exhausted of its oxygen, he will during sleep breathe through his mouth as well as his nostrils, the lungs rebelling against their starvation. This continued for several hours will by the consequent dryness of mouth and throat, and the discomfort ensuing upon it, be quite sufficient to wake him, wake him thoroughly, that is to say, with a sense of uneasiness amounting to positive discomfort. A proper bedroom, therefore, should be incapable of stuffiness, that is to say, a window should always be open, and the room be as free as possible from curtains and carpets. No doubt the absence of them (of carpet, anyhow) affects the stuffiness of a room only in a very small degree, but it has its value in this way, that the air is far freer from dust, which is an important point, if for eight hours or so out of every twenty-four you are breathing that air. But it is true that the influx of light in the early morning tends to wake some people, and the absence of curtains lets in light. For this there are two remedies, both equally simple: have blinds of the ordinary dark-blue stuff which quite effectually excludes light, or better, pass a couple of nights, three or four perhaps, in which you are awakened by light. After that you will fail to notice it, and one of the present writers, who for years thought he must awake when light came in, found after doing so once only, that it made not the slightest difference, and he who carefully drew curtains, and had the position of a strange bed altered so as to be away from the light has now often awoke, when called, in a blaze of sunshine.

He is, therefore, you will conjecture, a naturally good sleeper. Naturally, no—that is to say, in early life he was a persistently bad one, who used to adopt all kinds of means to go to sleep, of which presently. But for the last six years his record is this: he has, as far as he remembers, through good and ill report, through such anxieties as are inseparable from life itself, through one attack of typhoid fever, and two of influenza, in spite of hard work up till the time of going to bed (in fact, particularly then, since he finds he works best when the small hours begin to grow bigger), lain awake for never more than one complete hour on three occasions. Once he had coincidently a bad cold, on the other two occasions he failed then, and fails now to account for so extraordinary a proceeding. All told, then, in six years he has been awake for three solid hours when he meant to be asleep. Otherwise, he extinguishes his light—and is called.

Now the secret of this is, as far as he knows, the complete conviction that he is going to sleep, a conviction not expressed at all, but an acquired instinct. Yet he does not—he says all this at the risk of being accused of egotism, but hoping it may be useful—bother about the matter at all. Once he used to bother about it: that was in the days when he slept rather badly; now he does not. Nor does he go to bed in the hopes of going to sleep; he does not go to bed till he feels, instinctively again, that it is time. Thirdly, if he has gone to bed early, and is not going to be called till after he has had his fill of sleep (this is rare, since he is a glutton at it), he instantly reads or gets up instead of trying to go to sleep again (which in itself would do no harm), or instead of wondering why he has awoke. This would do harm, for it partakes of the nature of “bothering about it.” He avoids sleep during the day, this also he thinks is crucial, and if he feels sleepy (sleepy, not to be compared with inclined to rest) he gets up and does something.

To return for a moment to his bedroom. The windows are open, there is no carpet, he has blankets which vary according to the time of year, but whatever the time of year he has an extra thickness over his feet. In his rare moments of semi-consciousness he sometimes (this is towards morning, always when the world is coldest) draws the extra covering over him, and without really waking sleeps again. He also invariably goes to sleep on his right side and invariably wakes lying on his left.

We have spoken about this enviable slumberer at some length, because he seems instinctively to have got hold of (no credit to him) some of the points which will be of use to the moderately bad sleeper, whose condition, we maintain, is wrong. If sleep is required, it is as pitiable not to get it as not to be able to eat without indigestion when hungry; if sleep is not required, it is as foolish to try to induce it as to eat when one is not hungry, also with indigestion. But to draw the lesson from this enviable slumberer, though much that he does would murder sleep like Macbeth (witness his odious habit of working immediately before going to bed), still much that he does is sensible. Pre-eminently sensible, for instance, is his acquired habit of not bothering about it, for the wondering whether one is going to go to sleep is in many cases quite sufficient to keep one awake. Go to bed assuming naturally, not with insistence, for that would spoil it all, that you are going to sleep, or to use a phrase from hypnotism, make the suggestion that you are. You will not succeed in capturing this attitude the first time you try, nor yet the second, but before long you probably will; probably, also, when you have done so, you will become a good sleeper. But if this fails, what then? You will lie awake, that is all, and you will not die of it. But if you fret about it you will lose all the benefit of the act of resting, which is very great. To lie still with twitching nerves, agonising for sleep, will not only not bring sleep, but it will deprive you of rest. You lie awake. Be it so—at any rate, rest.

Here innumerable complications enter. You may think it is a noise that is keeping you awake. Someone, who ought to be in bed, is moving about directly above you. Do not get irritated and think over the biting things you will say to-morrow. The morrow will take care of itself. Supposing there was a gale blowing, you would acquiesce in the Natural Law, and in consequence would go to sleep sooner, because you were not irritated. And irritation, it must be remembered, should be wholly within our control; in this case to get it in control is an essential preliminary to sleep. While you are cross you will not sleep. Therefore, cease to be cross. A greater distraction would calm your irritation; let the desire for calmness calm it.

Of great mental anxiety as a cause of insomnia, or of great physical pain, it is not our purpose to speak, for these are exceptional cases. But the ordinary person must, with an effort—until the act becomes automatic—put out of his mind when he goes to bed all interesting things, if he wishes to become a good sleeper. He must, at first anyhow, having definitely told himself that he is going to sleep, consciously let his mind dwell on monotonous affairs. Sheep going through a gap in a hedge is a recognised soporific, and no doubt an excellent one, only he must be absorbed not in each sheep but in the stupifying multitude of them. Similarly he may try to mark out a lawn-tennis court with as few possible liftings of the marking machine, without of course going over any line twice. Or he may say over and over again some passage of poetry, or some familiar form of words, which should be short, so as to procure the benefit of the tedious effect of mere senseless repetition. But, after he has wasted time—for these things are waste of time if one wants to go to sleep—in this manner, he must take into consideration methods even more simple than these. Cold feet, the least feeling of hunger will easily, especially in a nervous person, induce sleeplessness. If such causes are present, then additional covering, and some easily digestible food—biscuits, fruit, etc., will probably relieve him. Again, washing the face in cold water, also an awakening process, tends to send the blood anywhere but to the brain, which is desirable. A hot-water bottle to the feet serves the same object. Or again, failure of digestion is a common cause of sleeplessness; if there is a chance of this being the cause, drink hot water before going to bed, or cold water with a little bi-carbonate of potash.

Considering the incalculable benefit which a habit of sleep produces, we do not feel ashamed to write down aids, however tiny, to produce it. For that it is largely a habit is beyond question, and as a habit it is one of the entirely healthful habits—it is essentially good. But the contrary habit, that of lying awake, though largely remediable, is not fatal, and its ill-effects are immeasurably neutralized if the will is steadily exerted towards the grasp of that truth. To lie awake, fretting that one cannot go to sleep, is distinctly bad; to lie awake, if no remedy short of drug-drinking will cure it, does not appreciably matter, so long as one accepts “rest” as the best possible substitute.

A different variety of sleeplessness is that which attacks the sufferer early in the morning, say three or four hours before he wishes to get up. For this a somewhat heroic remedy may be tried, since it is always possible that natural awaking may mean one thing—namely, that you have had enough sleep. Therefore, it may be worth while, just once or twice, to try the effect, if you are really broad awake, of getting up instead of encouraging yourself to wake early again by letting this early waking dwell on your mind. You will probably be very tired by the next evening, you may even (in this case the remedy is clearly futile) be too tired to sleep. But it may easily happen that you will sleep that night exceedingly well, and wake at a normal time again. But if again, and yet again you continue to wake early, it is no use persisting in this treatment. Or you may awake, as stated before, owing to the airlessness of your room, and the fact that you have been breathing with an open mouth, or, and this is probably a frequent cause of early awakings, you may be engaged for weeks or months together on some absorbing occupation. You sleep at first because tired, and sleep deeply, but as the hours go by the sleep becomes lighter, and before your body regains consciousness at all, that strange part of the brain, the subliminal self, or the sub-conscious self, is awake, and begins thinking (gradually arousing the rest of you) of the engrossing occupation. Soon the whole brain is awake, and by the sub-conscious self is reminded, as it were, of the business. Then having once begun thinking about it, it is difficult for you to regain that passivity which is invariably the prelude to sleep, though it need be scarcely more than instantaneous.

It is here that the cause of sleeplessness and its remedy we believe largely lie, for it is within the power of all to put themselves into the control, more or less complete, of their sub-conscious self and develop the power of the sub-conscious self until it becomes a real potency. To take an example, how constantly does it happen that after wrestling with some mental difficulty, or trying to remember some name which one knows well, one by instinct dismisses the subject, to find in a few minutes that the difficulty is solved, or the name recollected. That is probably the work of the sub-conscious part of the brain. In the same way many people can wake themselves at any hour they wish, by telling their sub-conscious brain (this is what it comes to) to call them. They go to sleep, having ordered their sub-conscious self to call them, and at the appointed hour, it may be long before light, something inside them, which apparently knows the time, wakes the rest of the sleeping brain and body. And with a little training and practice the power of developing and using the sub-conscious brain increases very quickly. We believe that many early wakers could sleep comfortably on, by saying that they would not awake till a certain hour. One does not need violence or internal shouting, as it were, to communicate effectually with this sub-conscious self; a quiet determination of thought for a few moments before going to sleep does the work effectually. This also is invaluable to many who have found that going to sleep when getting into bed was difficult. One has to take it for granted that one is going to sleep, and cease to think about it, emptying the brain of conscious thought as far as may be. You cannot go to sleep in a rage, until the rage has given place to exhaustion.

To sum up, then, both for those who find it difficult to go to sleep, and for those who wake early, the following hints are recommended:—

This brings us to the second division of the subject—namely Rest, which does not only largely diminish the ill-results of not sleeping at night, but is probably good for all hard workers either of mind or body, at certain times during the day, in particular after a long continued stretch of brain-work, when an interval should be taken by the mind; after a meal, when quiescence on the part of the body leaves the digestion more energy to do its work; and after physical exercise, when those limbs which have borne the brunt of it should be left quiescent. A flat or semi-recumbent position is the best, one in which the body is completely supported, and no muscular effort is needed to retain it in its position; and the deep breathing of sleep may be at first imitated and will soon be acquired. The reason for this is that since slow, long breath is the means naturally adopted by the lungs in sleep, it is probably the best method of resting the breathing muscles even when awake. It is a mistake to spend too long over these rests; if two a day are taken, a quarter of an hour, provided it be real rest, is likely to be sufficient to freshen one up again completely, while if the muscles are left too long relaxed, they will be disinclined to begin work again.

Now sleep and rest are widely different from relaxation, the third means of recuperation mentioned above, since the first two are purely natural, and require merely passivity as a condition, whereas intentional relaxation is at first purely artificial, and requires, even when it has become easy with practice, certain voluntary efforts. It has therefore this initial disadvantage, and in addition this further one, that in the young it is seldom if ever required, since the natural means of recuperation, Sleep and Rest, supply all that is wanted. Unless habits are acquired in childhood or youth, however, there are few people who will ever spare the time to acquire them at all. It requires also an exercise of imagination—rest, that is to say, has to be attained self-consciously.

This all sounds confusing, and with a view to making it rather more intelligible by an easy instance of it, the following is recommended. It is of no use merely reading it, the thing has to be tried, and after two or three trials it will be time enough to say whether the particular individual finds it of value. Thus:—

Sit straight in any chair with a back to it. Close the eyes and draw a long, slow breath in, gradually lifting up the head, and thinking as far as may be of nothing whatever. Then breathe slowly out, letting the head drop forwards and the body and spine bend forwards, till the whole attitude is that of something broken or lifeless. Repeat.

Now this may sound like a meaningless formula to any who have never tried it. But the fact remains that many who have, find—whether it is the imagination that tells them so, or not—that they gain more recuperation from a couple of minutes of this, than they possibly could in the same time-limit of mere rest or sleep. The reason is not far too seek: in sleep and in rest the muscles certainly do rest, but is it not more than possible that a muscle bidden by the will to rest, rests far more completely? Certainly each of the present writers, if, for instance, he is thoroughly tired, and by the exigencies of life he has to do something else in three minutes by the clock, does not attempt to lie down or go to sleep for three minutes, which he can easily do, but has found by experience that voluntary and intentional relaxation like this, dictated by the will, is far more freshening than either rest or sleep. At any rate he so believes it is, that the illusion is complete. The fact of saying to the muscles, “I will rest,” is indeed more immediately productive of refreshment than passive rest. This may sound fantastic, but to take a larger instance, how often has it happened that a patient in some serious fever, when exhaustion is the foe to be dreaded, has pulled through by an exercise of will, by making an effort, whereas if he had lain passive—in the natural condition for recovery—he would certainly have died? There are few doctors who would not endorse this. And voluntary relaxation, in the same way, is the remedy for milder exhaustion, especially when another business has to be gone about almost immediately. To some, the note “quack” will sound here. But “quack” is worth trying, if it can do no harm.

The same exercise—one of the present writers has not personally found it so successful—may be tried standing, or in a more elaborate form, it can be tried lying. From a kneeling position on the floor, with the head forward on the chest, and the spine relaxed, one slowly, but with the vivid idea of rest in one’s mind, crumbles down to a lying position, eventually resting on the back, with legs and arms outstretched and separate. The breathing must be full, slow, and rhythmical. Then after a minute or two one rises very quietly.

Or, again, relaxation in a milder form can hardly fail to be useful to everybody, and many people practise it unconsciously. The commonest form which is known to everyone is stretching at the end of work, and for a few seconds afterwards remaining utterly relaxed. No one has ever stretched—we boldly assert this—without the subsequent relaxation, which, quite apart from the relief of a cramped position that stretching gives, gives rest to the body. Similarly, also, every sedentary brain-worker will find that he works best when he is most unconscious of his body, when the energy which would be employed in bracing limbs is left unoccupied for the brain to make use of. Mere stillness is of course not at all the same thing, for stillness may go with rigid stiffness. But the point of relaxation is that during work every muscle that is not employed in that work should have nothing whatever to do, and that after work no muscle should have anything to do if the work has been physical, and if mental that the brain should be empty. True the will has to say, “Holiday for all, holiday for all,” because all rest better so; but no more. The energy of the whole frame is devoted to rest.

In the same way, just as when the brain bears the stress of exertion, the body should be completely relaxed, so when one part of the body, the arms or legs, for instance, are actively employed, and above all when storage of energy may be useful, the rest of the body not wanted should be trained to give no trouble, not to require the usage of energy. Innumerable instances of the truth of this present themselves, for in athletics “reserve,” “quietness of action,” all imply the unconscious storage of energy. Force employed is energy gone, and the less unnecessary energy one spends, the more there is left for endurance. Look at a practised racket player and one who does not know how to husband himself! The one takes two quiet steps and is in easy time, the other rushes to the corner, is there before there is any need, and has to make a call on his muscles to check himself. Result, one has expended no energy, practically speaking, in getting there, the other has parted with energy twice, once to start with violence, once to check himself with violence. This repeated twice a minute for half-an hour will leave one fresh, the other beaten.

Here we have an instance of intentional sparing, a thing related to relaxation, for both are an economy of force. And in this body of ours, so “fearfully and wonderfully made,” servant as it is or should be to the will, a conscious command is far more binding than a laisser aller. A man with a severe headache may be unable to go to sleep in the ordinary course, but let him learn to know and practise the use of the huge power of will that is lying chiefly dormant within him, and he will not only be able to get on satisfactorily with his work, which would be impossible if he paused to think how his head hurt, but he will easily be able to go to sleep. He could, and the ordinary man can, if he tries, induce by practice both energy and passivity.

But there are “foes of its own household” even here, as in Vegetarianism and Teetotalism. And the hearth-abiding foe of the power of the will is Christian Science. This strange sect holds that all ailments are imaginary, and that since there is no matter, there is no such thing as a broken leg, because there is no leg. This is futile, and the answer incontestably is that there must be legs because they can be broken. But the subject is not worth discussion.

Again, to sum up:—