(i.) Do not load your brain with interesting stuff, just before going to bed. This will both prevent your going to sleep, and will also tend to wake you up. Try reading a stupid book for a few minutes after getting into bed.
(ii.) Have as much air as possible in the room, and wear the minimum of bed-clothing that keeps you warm. But have an extra rug over the feet, which you can easily draw over you towards morning, when both the night is coldest, and your vitality lowest.
(iii.) If you still lie awake, try the effect of some monotonous exercise, like counting sheep going through a gap, marking out a tennis-court, or repeating some short and familiar form of words.
(iv.) If you suspect even slight indigestion, take a little bi-carbonate of soda or of potash.
(v.) Tell yourself quite quietly that you are going to sleep, but do not rouse yourself to see how you are getting on.
(vi.) Eat or drink something easily digestible, rice, biscuits, or hot cocoa.
(vii.) If all these are useless, be quite resigned; try not to get irritated, do not toss about if you can avoid it. Do not think about interesting things. In fact, if you cannot sleep, take as much rest as you can. Lie utterly relaxed and breathe deep. Finally, with regard to the number of hours of sleep required, it must remain a personal question. Some people do not need more than between five or six, especially in later life, others seem positively to need not less than eight. But the chances are that everyone requires from about five and a half to eight. Less than that minimum is probably insufficient in the long run, more than eight probably unnecessary for anyone in good health. Nor must it be forgotten that in itself the desire for much sleep is not a healthy sign; it may easily point to a sluggish liver.

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.