How many sheep are there?
With every toss and turn, you increment your sheep counter by one. Suddenly, you feel more awake than ever before. As each sheep lightly hops over the fence, your mind begins to wander, questions popping up at a speed faster than the sheep themselves. Where are they going? Where did they come from? Is it just the same circle of ten sheep repeating again and again? Why sheep? How long until I sleep?
A device that is very close to the bed
Whether it’s the night before a vacation or just a regular school day, it’s always been difficult for me to calm my mind and fall asleep. I’ve heard that it’s easier if you turn off your devices a couple of hours before going to bed. However, when our laptops hold so much of our lives and our phones carry our alarms, devices also take up a lot of real estate in our minds. Maybe it’s because of this—the mechanical feeling of electronics—that counting sheep hasn’t been an effective tool to help me fall asleep. The neverending cycle of sheep parallels the loading symbols of webpages and the perpetual stream of appointments, meetings, and Zoom calls.
Instead of tallying up sheep, I’ve found that it’s much more effective to imagine calm moments that quiet the mind and spur some feelings of nostalgia! This blog post was inspired by a video on my YouTube feed. It’s really short (1.5 minutes) and I would recommend watching it with the volume on before continuing below! I’m not sure why I originally clicked on it—maybe it was the click-baity promise of bringing back childhood memories—but I didn’t regret it after because the video puts you into a really mysterious, whimsical headspace.
A transitional space
Before I share some of my favorite moments to imagine when falling asleep, I thought it would be interesting to explore the definition of a “liminal space” since I didn’t recognize the term at first. A quick Google search returns that it’s “an aesthetic that refers to the feeling of being in a transitional space that has been abandoned.” A liminal space is sort of like a waiting room between one space and the next—a place where time seems to temporarily freeze. A split second where you neither belong to the past or the future.
An empty dorm hallway (not Wayne State, I think)
When I watched the video, I felt a strange feeling, like I was somewhere that used to have a lot of activity. I think it’s easiest to understand this concept with examples! A couple of years ago, I traveled to Detroit for a conference and stayed in a dorm room at Wayne State University along with other students. One day, my roommate was craving some Oreo cookies, so we decided to explore our floor for a vending machine. The dorms were vibrantly decorated with green and yellow (the school colors). It seemed like the sound of laughter or soft conversation would emerge from any of the doors that were ajar at any second, but we only heard the echo of our footsteps. Even though it was mid-July, we felt goosebumps as we wandered through halls that were now empty after being inhabited by students during the year.
An art gallery with chairs
Another interesting example I read about was art galleries. If you’ve ever been in a gallery alone—especially one with furniture—you might have felt like you didn’t belong there. That’s because galleries are designed to imitate rooms, but nobody lives there, resulting in an odd space. Schools are also liminal spaces. During the summer, wandering through the halls of NNHS feels a little strange because you would expect it to be filled with chattering students and teachers.
Even though liminal spaces can make you feel a little uneasy, I feel like they are the optimal scenes to imagine in order to fall asleep at night. Here are a few of my favorites:
Driving on the highway at night.
Is this why Mack fell asleep in Cars?
The blur of street lights flickers through your heavy eyelids and the muffled sound of voices filters through the radio, intermingling with white noise. Highways are a transitional space between an origin and a destination. The repetitive way that a car passes road advertisement may seem similar to counting sheep, but it’s much more calming since it doesn’t involve focus… only observation.
Sunset!
Looking out the window of a plane as the sun sets.
Scattering light beams paint the sky in deep streaks of red and pastel shades of orange. The cold feeling of the glass that separates you from the clouds lingers on your fingertips. You know that there is nowhere to go, that your journey is in the hands of the pilot—all the more reason to fall asleep while enjoying the beautiful colors.
Sitting in a bus shelter when it’s raining.
The one with an umbrella has double protection from rain!
As you’re sleeping, you might only be able to control your sight, but there’s no reason why you can’t imagine controlling your other senses as well! This scene is ideal for rainy days, where you can pretend that the rain against your window is the same rain that patters against the ceiling of the bus shelter. As the storm pours in every direction around your small 2 by 4 foot space, you feel protected.
By imagining moments like these, you will be able to engineer a full night of rest in no time! Maybe you’ll even condition your mind to continue dreaming about the location even after nodding off.
Works Cited:
Thomas, J. (2018, March 13). Understanding how liminal space is different from other places. Retrieved February 05, 2021, from https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/general/understanding-how-liminal-space-is-different-from-other-places/
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