For those with a contemplative bent:

1. Reading inspiring literature. Your choice. If you have a roommate/partner, family member willing to contribute, talking about what you read and going over your day in light of that is immensely rewarding. My wife and I quickly recall the events of the day in reverse order (the REM/dream sleep you have in the first 4 hours of the night mostly involves processing the emotional content of the day; if you do it before sleeping you give your body a better change of getting more of hte most restorative delta wave deep sleep). We then look at one or two events in more detail in light of our reading. We LOVE it - we do it in a very relaxed way and laugh a lot.

2. Samaneri Jayasara. An Australian Buddhist woman who reads beautiful poetry and sacred literature. She started doing this one day when she found that reading out loud to herself helped her understand what she read better. Now she has thousands of followers and hundreds of videos from every spiritual tradition. Wonderfully restful if you do it before sleep.

3. Swami Sarvapriyananda - try him; most entertaining speaker I've found on youTube.

4. Keep a rebounder and/or stretch bands around when you watch TV. Get up off the couch and move, stretch. Great for winding down.

5. Keep your favorite books handy on your kindle or ipad. I play a few quick games of solitaire or a crossword, then turn to the books - I make sure they're up and ready to look at or I might spend too much time surfing the net.

Let me know if you try these, or any others. Oh, also, if you learn to observe images arising spontaneously (this happens quite vividly at the end of "Stage 1" sleep) you can learn to fall asleep in less than 5 minutes.

Write at www.RememberToBe.Life if you like.