Cognitive Shuffling: A Trick to Calm Your Mind and Help You Fall Asleep Fast

Sleep disorders are the scourge of modern people. According to doctors, 30% to 48% of adults experience sleep problems, and 10–30% of them have chronic insomnia. CNN talks about a cognitive shuffling method that will calm your thoughts and help you fall asleep.

When Dr. Luc Baudouin was an undergraduate student nearly 40 years ago, he often had trouble falling asleep on Sunday nights and was eager to find a solution.

Baudouin found inspiration in a cognitive psychology class he took and a professor's theory about visual motion detection.

"Then I thought, if I can understand the human brain's 'sleep-onset control system,' then maybe I can develop a method to trick the brain into falling asleep," he said.

In 2009, when the doctor turned 41, he finally invented an effective method for falling asleep.

“My insomnia went away,” Baudouin said. “My girlfriend (now my wife) was amazed that I was falling asleep so quickly. I felt like I had found something important, so I read more and thought deeply about the sleep control system.”

Cognitive Shuffle

Modern life forces us to be in a constant state of heightened alertness – and it can be difficult to get out of this mode. Our brains have a hard time switching off at night.

Cognitive shuffle is a disordered flow of thoughts. It is when you focus on imagining a sequence of random objects in your mind so that your brain does not have time to sort them out, and as a result, worries and anxiety are pushed into the background.

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"Researchers have found that people use visual imagery and 'micro-dreams' to help them fall asleep," says cognitive scientist Baudouin, who studies the technique. "But thinking out loud, analyzing situations, and problem-solving, on the other hand, will keep you awake."

"We believe there is a positive feedback loop in the brain: microsleeps are not just a byproduct of falling asleep. They signal to the brain that it is safe and appropriate to fall asleep," the doctor explained.

How the method works

As soon as you are ready to fall asleep, remember the alphabet and think of two or three words for each letter. Once you have thought of one, move on to another letter.

Or you can take a word, for example, "fate" and remember three or four words for each letter of this word. Start with "s": elephant, dog, table. Then move on to the next letter: corner, catch, package. And so on. The main thing is that the word is simple and emotionally neutral.

Try to imagine an image for each word: it does not necessarily have to be detailed, you can fit yourself into the picture. Or imagine, for example, an elephant walking on the grass, a dog running down the street wagging its tail, you sitting at the table.

As a rule, after 10-15 minutes of using the technique, you can fall asleep. Because the brain "doesn't know how" to engage in meaningless activity and in this case "turns off" the flow of thoughts, allowing us to rest.

The main thing is not to attach meaning to this exercise. Come up with words easily. Take the first ones that come to mind. And you are guaranteed to fall asleep quickly!

Sometimes, Baudouin suggests, you can even visualize relevant scenarios or movements, such as yourself playing the piano or someone skydiving.

Why Cognitive Shuffling Works

There's little research on cognitive shuffling at this point. So what's causing some doctors to endorse a DIY sleep hack without much evidence?

It turns out that the fundamental theory of cognitive shuffling, although speculative, “is consistent with established principles of cognitive neuroscience and sleep psychology,” said Dr. Leah Kaylor, a Louisiana-based clinical psychologist and author.

The theory is based on a large body of research that Baudouin and other researchers reviewed in a paper published in April 2020 in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews.

Our brains tend to switch between random thoughts during calmer periods. Providing your brain with a neutral distraction can be more helpful than letting it find something on its own, said Dr. Cami McManus, a sleep psychologist in the division of sleep medicine at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia.

Baudouin published his third study on cognitive shuffling in 2016. The study’s sample size was small, but its results were encouraging. 154 college students, most of them women, were randomly assigned to three groups.

The first group received standard treatment before bedtime, the second group attended cognitive shuffling, and the third group went to both groups at once.

The cognitive shuffling group was more likely to experience improved sleep quality. Subjects were better able to cope with difficulty falling asleep and pre-sleep arousal — increased physical or mental activity when trying to fall asleep. These benefits persisted throughout the semester.

Baudouin and his team are planning further research.

Try this technique for a few nights in a row before deciding if cognitive shuffling is right for you.

If you have regular sleep problems, Baudouin stressed that cognitive methods are not a substitute for medical advice in general. Nor are they a substitute for cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, since in many cases, insomnia has more than one element that requires treatment.