[rekabis]

I also have sleep apnea thanks to a tongue that slides trivially into the back, and a uvula that loves to go up the back of my nose.

It took me a week of bedtime mental biofeedback to train myself to sleep exclusively on my side, which brought my sleep apnea down from several severe incidents a night to maybe a threshold incident a week or less.

This biofeedback - intense visualization of the objective right before falling asleep - is also what I use to consistently wake up at specific times with no need for an alarm. The only nerf to this technique is extreme lack of sleep previously, and lack of sleep on the night of. So if I try to wake up after only four hours of sleep while also suffering from an existing sleep deficit, imma gonna still wake up far enough to form memories of waking up, but then immediately fall back asleep.

Yeah, it’s not perfect, but as something that never needed much effort it’s actually quite a nifty superpower.

That, and the ability to pop out of bed like a piece of toast with full and instant wakefulness at any level shy of severe sleep deprivation. That alone is deeply annoying to my wife.

[lookACamel]

Can you tell us a bit more about the biofeedback you practiced?

[rekabis]

As the very last thing I do before I fall asleep, I do intense visualizations of the objective.

For example, if I wanted to wake up at 0600hrs without an alarm, I would look at the clock (to mark the current time for my subconscious, which is apparently a required step), close my eyes, intensely visualize the clock turning from 0559hrs to 0600hrs, and right as the numbers change I visualize the action of physically throwing the covers off, getting out of bed and standing up beside it.

It allows me to fully wake up within 30-60 seconds of the objective.

Although I have always had another superpower of being able to instantly wake up to full wakefulness, the kind where you can figuratively pop out of bed like a piece of toast. Which irritates my wife, who loves to hurkle-durkle, to no end. So maybe that helps.

From what I recall (it was about 30 years ago, now), sleeping on my side was much the same. When going to bed I envisioned myself sleeping on my left side (stomach positioning to reduce chances of acid reflux) and just kept doing that night after night. It didn’t take long before I could stop it and consistently sleep on my side.

I still flip, but I’ve noticed that I come fully awake to do most of my flips from one side to the other.

And because of the positioning, I have also recently changed to a very unique configuration of pillows that makes sleeping on my front or my back almost impossible. They’re extra tall (and stacked pair of them, too) so I keep my spine straight when on my side. This is a recent change, tho, which only happened because I’m getting old and can’t bounce back from a morning crick in the neck as easily as when I was younger.