Читать книгу The psychology of sleep онлайн

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In the same way if one has read an exciting book, or has seen a thrilling play, one may either live them over until the feelings exhaust themselves, because no longer new, or one may deliberately divert one’s self from thinking of them and devote the attention to more soothing things. Either course removes all cause for impatience with the fact of wakefulness and leaves the mind quieted. This tends to drowsiness, even if it does not really induce sleep.

Sometimes it may help us if we rise and read some quieting book, not “a thriller.” Such a volume as Thoreau’s “Walden,” or that more modern little volume, “Adventures in Contentment,” by David Grayson, or we may repeat some soothing poem like Tennyson’s “Sweet and Low,” or Burroughs’ “My Own Shall Come to Me” and similar verses.

Any of these will help to relax tension, and put us in a more restful frame of mind, and, as minds differ, so some persons will find books and verses of other sorts to have the desired effect upon them.

When we cannot sleep, to rise, throw back the bed-clothes so as to cool the bed, walk about the room, go to the window and fill the lungs with oxygen often tend to quiet the body and mind. We must learn to know our own needs and to find out each for himself what meets them. To “know thyself” is only the first step to control thyself.