My ‘voodoo magic' trick will get you back to sleep in seconds if you wake up in the middle of the night
There's nothing more frustrating than waking up in the middle of the night and struggling to get back to sleep.
Thankfully, one woman may have just stumbled across a shockingly simple but effective way to ease back into slumberland.
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3 'I've tried it a couple of nights in a row and it literally works — like it's the best trick I've ever tried,' Jenna Coak says in a video on TikTok.
TikTok/jenna_coak
'I saw this trick on Instagram for falling back asleep if you wake up in the middle of the night and I was like, no way does this actually work,' Jenna Coak says in a video on TikTok.
'But I've tried it a couple of nights in a row and it literally works — it's the best trick I've ever tried.'
Keeping your eyes closed, you look to the right, then the left, up, down and around in a circle and around the other way — that's it.
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Repeat the process as many times as needed to drift off.
Coak was so blown away by this sleep hack, she said it felt like 'some type of voodoo magic.' But is there any science behind it?
'EMDR [eye movement desensitization and reprocessing] is a type of trauma therapy where patients move their eyes left and right repeatedly, in essence to calm the body while they're processing traumatic memories,' Dr. Alex Dimitriu, a psychiatrist and sleep medicine specialist, told The Post.
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3 Coak was so blown away by this sleep hack, she said it felt like 'some type of voodoo magic.'
samiramay – stock.adobe.com
'There is some evidence that these eye movements may indeed increase parasympathetic nervous system activity. With the knowledge that these eye movements may have a calming effect on the nervous system, I could see how this might be beneficial for some people.'
However, Dr. Stephen Carstensen, a dental sleep medicine specialist, isn't quite as convinced.
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'I can't say it doesn't work because the woman says it does, for her,' he told The Post.
'There's nothing in brain science that says it should, though, and plenty of science to say it should not.'
He's especially dubious about its ability to shepherd forward the dream sleep stage known as REM.
3 Keeping your eyes closed, you look to the right, then the left, up, down and around in a circle and around the other way — that's it.
Andrii Lysenko – stock.adobe.com
'REM is a special part of sleep that can't be controlled or started by a conscious effort,' he said.
'The brain can't be tricked into thinking it is in REM. Science doesn't know why the eyes move during REM; during this phase they just dart back and forth, not rolling in opposite directions. That takes brain control, which means the brain is not asleep.'
However, he admits that it's possible that just thinking about the trick — as opposed to something more stressful — was what made it work.
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'I think the woman was ready to fall back to sleep and maybe thinking about something simple like eye movement kept her from having more troublesome thoughts,' he said.
Dimitriu agrees — at the end of the day, it's all about the mind.
'Not thinking and not stressing and anything that can keep your mind clear will likely help your sleep,' he said.
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'If focusing on eye movements or breath clears your mind, use it! Just don't go near that phone!'
Other techniques that he recommends include box breathing — breathing in for 3 seconds, holding the breath for 4 seconds and exhaling for 7 — and repeatedly tightening and relaxing the muscles throughout the body, also known as systemic relaxation.
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