I went hunting for answers and found a surgeon’s late-night confession that finally made me try something new.
Dr. Katelyn Tondo-Steele, surgeon, shares sleep hack to help you fall asleep: “It has worked very well for me”
I’ve spent more nights than I can count staring into the darkness around me, hoping that this would be the evening I drift off without a fight. Often I was left frustratingly disappointed. I’d tried various techniques, including when my sister recommended herbal tongue drops, but the coffee boost post-alarm was still very much in need a few hours later.
How can I get back to sleep?
Even more than the starting point to a good night’s sleep – I tend to only go to bed when I’m tired – I find that it’s more of a challenge when I wake up at random hours and can’t find my way back to where I want – need – to be. Contrary to most advice on the matter, I sometimes even start scrolling on my mobile device for something, anything, that might help. And that, my sleep-deprived friends, is how I landed on Dr. Katelyn Tondo-Steele’s Instagram post.
Tondo-Steele is a surgeon who admits that she too lies awake, for her it’s after middle-of-the-night call shifts, sometimes for one or two hours. Hearing someone with that kind of schedule say she was skeptical but found something that “works” stopped me immediately.
Her technique couldn’t be simpler: close your eyes and slowly move them side to side, then up and down, then in gentle circles. No gadgets, no supplements. Just movement. In her post, she explained that while there’s no direct research tying eye rolls to falling asleep, similar techniques in EMDR therapy have been shown to lower arousal and help the nervous system shift into calmer states. Slow eye motion has also been linked to parasympathetic activation – the body’s natural rest and digest mode.
Honestly, that was enough science for me to give it a shot.
Does the eye roll sleep technique work?
Before I tried it, though, I scrolled past the video to read the comments to see if anyone else was actually benefiting. People, generally, were ecstatic. One person said it was the first hack that knocked them out “like a light.” Another claimed it worked “many, many times.” A midwife with chronic sleep issues wrote that she’d been desperate for something exactly like this. Plenty of others echoed the same: surprised, relieved, almost grateful.
Not every reaction was glowing, however, with a few people feeling dizzy or finding the motion uncomfortable, but the overwhelming response was positive.
So I tried it on a night when my brain refused to quiet down after waking up just after 3 a.m. The slow movement felt oddly soothing, I have to admit, like my mind finally had something gentle to follow instead of racing thoughts. But I didn’t drift off any quicker. I’ve since tried it a number of times and again not found it to be the miracle cure I’d been hoping for.
But it’s a low-risk tool that I have in my snooze kit and it certainly seems to work for many others so it’s worth you giving it a try. My search continues...
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