THIS IS AN EASY TECHNIQUE THAT YOU CAN TRY TO HELP YOU SLEEP.
First, get yourself into bed, ready to go to sleep.
Second, think of a random, emotionally neutral word consisting of at least 5 letters. “BEDTIME” is a good word. Try not to use one with many repeating letters. “BANANA” isn’t a great DIY-SDI word because “BANANA” has only 3 unique letters, B, N, A. “BEDTIME”, in this case is a “seed” word.
Third, gradually spell out the seed word (e.g., “BEDTIME”). For each letter of the word, think of a word that start with that letter. Then imagine the item represented by the word. Repeat this many times for each letter. I.e., think of many words that start with the letter and imagine each one of them.
Here’s an example: “BEDTIME” starts with B. So, repeatedly think of a word that starts with B and then imagine it. For example,
B…
BABY. Imagine a baby.
BALL. Imagine a ball rolling down a street.
BLINK. Image someone blinking a lot.
BANANA. Imagine a bunch of bananas hanging from a tree.
BEANS. Imagine green beans in a produce store.
BERRY. Ooops! There’s a theme here, banana, beans and berries are all produce. They and beer are all ingestible. So just skip this word.
BELGIUM. Imagine the flat lands of Belgium.
Bob. Imagine a person named Bob that you don’t dislike. (Notice that it’s fine to imagine people.)
Once you get bored of the letter (B, in this case) or you can’t find another word starting with that letter, just move on to the next letter.
The next letter in BEDTIME is E. So think of words beginning with E and then imagine them.
E…
EAST. Imagine the eastern part of the place where you live.
EAGLE. Imagine an eagle flying high.
EGG. Imagine an egg.
If you have difficulty coming up with words that start with E, either skip this letter, or use this trick: tack on an extra letter to E and see if that helps. For example, if you try ED… you might think of EDEN and then EDINBURGH.
Continue generating E_ words until you get bored of the letter E or you can’t find words starting with B anymore. Then proceed to the next letter in the seed word (BEDTIME, in this example).
If you happen to make it to the end of the seed word, BEDTIME without falling asleep. Just pick a new seed word, such as SATURN, and repeat the entire process. I.e., for each of its letters, think of words that start with that letter, and imagine those words.
Some tips:
If you produce a word that you can’t easily imagine, just reject it.
If you can’t think of any more words for a given letter, just move on to the next letter.
It is sometimes helpful to imagine a few contexts for the same object (e.g., if the word is ‘mountain’, you could imagine, one at a time, several different mountains you know).
If you produce a good word that doesn’t start with the given letter, you can still imagine it. These are not rules, just principles to facilitate the generation of mental content.
Limitations of DIY-SDI
DIY-SDI is not effective in the following conditions:
You are too tired to conjure up words, but not drowsy enough to fall asleep. (For example, when you wake up in the middle of the night.)
You don’t like to think deliberately when you are trying to fall asleep.
You find it difficult to come up with words that start with a given letter, despite practice.
You find spelling tedious.
INFORMATION TAKEN FROM https://mysleepbutton.com/support/do-it-yourself-cognitive-shuffle-sdi/ referring to a technique designed by Dr. Luc P. Beaudoin.