Dozey Sleep

It is late. Your body is tired. Your mind is not. You are rehearsing a conversation from Tuesday. You are planning a week that has not happened yet. You are working out how many hours are left, which has never once helped anyone fall asleep. Dozey gives that part of you something else to hold. HOW IT FEELS A quiet voice says a word. Candle. A few seconds later, kettle. Then feather. Then anchor. The words have nothing to do with each other, and nothing to do with you. There is no story to follow, nothing to work out, nowhere for a thought to get a grip. So it loosens. And somewhere in the middle of it, without noticing the moment it happened, you are asleep. This is called cognitive shuffling. It is an old idea and a very simple one: a racing mind will not let go of a thread, so you give it a thread that goes nowhere. Dozey does the hard part, which is thinking of the words, so you can…