[mcjkrw]

What type of meditation did you try? Try following / counting breaths. Definitely counting in the beginning, breathe out, 1, breathe in, breathe out, 2, breathe in ... up to 10, then re-start to 1. Do it for 20 min before falling asleep. Then as you try to fall asleep do the same.

Don't be discouraged if it's not working right away. It has to work but you may need months of training before it starts to work well.

The hardest challenge is to be completely cold to the thoughts, no matter how important they may seem, ignore them and return to counting the breaths.

[hnick]

I've done a few meditation podcasts where a guy talks and I follow along, and as soon as it ends I'm relaxed but more alert. If my power trips overnight and the noise (fans or other electrical background noise) suddenly stops, I jerk awake. This is the same.

I've tried counting back from 5000 slowly on each breath. I got very far before stopping. Going backwards with large numbers is meant to take a bit more mental energy I think.

I've done the 1-10 then reset, we did that in Yoga at the gym. I've also done the box breathing where you breathe in and out slowly but at different rates.

I think mostly it will come down to practice like anything else. I get upset if it doesn't work but I enjoy ruminating so it's hard to let go. In many of these techniques I was very relaxed but still had an attentive core stopping the sleep from happening.