How to Sleep Fast in 2 Minutes (Qigong Method)

As someone who formerly had significant sleep issues while finishing his doctorate, I turned to the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine to figure out the best ways to fall back asleep without needing to put anything in your body pharmacologically. So in this video, we'll discuss a simple Qigong method you can utilize if you don't wanna rely on herbs, medications, or supplements, or you're sensitive, or you wanna try this before you try those first. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hynde, board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, and author of the health book, Master of the Day. Let's jump in. Now, if you're having sleeping problems, you know, in the West, we very, very commonly think linearly. My patients that end up coming to see me in the clinic will always say, Dr. Alex, I'm taking magnesium, I'm taking melatonin, I'm taking medications. Inevitably, there's no real thinking that goes into why I cannot sleep. And I wanna give you a little insight here that I hope will change your sleep forever. Sleep is always secondary to something else. Sleep is typically not a root cause, it is a symptom, which means that there is something causing the sleeping issues, and so rather than taking melatonin, which can be fine, rather than taking trazodone or sleeping medication, which can be fine, the origin of the sleeping issue is something else. You find that something else, and your sleep will go back into balance. A few of the root causes that I see clinically in my practice that you may not think about, number one, are upper GI. A staggering percentage of my patients with acid reflux and digestive problems, when we fix those, their sleep goes back to normal. This wasn't something I was aware of before I clinically started practicing medicine, but now seeing that, going back 2,000 years in Chinese medicine, there's a famous formula that says, wei bu he, wo bu an. When the stomach has a problem, sleep is not peaceful. So there's even a textual precedent for this. The second thing is the nervous system, right? You have a fast heart rate, you're stressed, you have high levels of anxiety. That, of course, will impact your sleep, even if it's just very light and fragmented. The third is blood sugar. If you have problems with recent weight gain and blood sugar issues in A1c, fix that, and often the sleep will dramatically improve. So when you find the root cause, that will save you years of suffering, rather than thinking, I have to wear blue light glasses at night. I need to disconnect one hour before bed. If it were that simple, you've probably tried that, then that would work for everyone. But chronic sleeping issues usually mean there's an underlying cause. Now this is the part most people never get told about sleep. Insomnia is rarely the primary problem. For some people, it's digestion, the reflux, bloating, or upper GI sensations that keep you awake. For others, it's a nervous system that never fully shuts off. And for many, it's unstable blood sugar waking the body early in the early morning hours. So if you want clarity on what's actually driving your sleep issues, I've created a free root cause quiz you can take below. It helps you identify whether your insomnia is coming from digestion, stress hormones, blood sugar, or a nervous system imbalance, so you're not chasing random sleep tactics. So there's a link below the video to download the quiz, or just go to dralexhine.com forward slash quiz. So let's go into the method now. So what I'm going to teach you is a sleep Qigong method. And Qigong is a practice from East Asia used for thousands of years that one could translate as breath work or energy work. I call it breath work because you integrate breathing, a specific physical motion or activity, as well as visualization to generate improvements in your health without medications. So those are the three components that make something Qigong versus just I'm looking like a monkey doing something on camera. So the three motions we're going to do here are you're laying in bed, and you're going to do number one, the physical motion of putting your hands over your heart and rubbing over the chest. And you're just going to go slowly over the chest. This acupuncture point on the Ren channel or conception channel is very, very good for soothing and overactive heart rhythm, right? Fast heart rate, palpitations, anxiety. Also, parents will often put their hands on a child's chest to help soothe them. So number one, you're using physical touch to regulate your nervous system. Number two, breathing. When you close your eyes, either focus your attention on the tip of your nose or on your third eye. So either you're going to breathe in, breathe out, and you feel that sensation of wind, the breath on your nose and your nostril. Concentrate your attention on the nostril. If that's uncomfortable, you can also use the third eye between your eyebrows. And the third is you're going to recite a mantra, which is when you inhale, you say hong, and when you exhale, you say soh. So you're saying this internally in your head. Hong, soh. Inhale, hong, soh. Hong, soh. So what you do is when you're having a problem sleeping, you do all three together. First, this gentle rub. Second, where you're putting your attention either on your nostril for your breathing or on your third eye. And then this internal mantra, hong, soh, is something from the yogic traditions that helps just to focus your attention. So you have here something with your breath, a physical movement you do, and something mental. And this is a really effective trifecta that can help you fall back asleep. These three things are what we call qigong. Breath work, attention work, energy work, however you wanna translate that. And it's typically a lot more effective than cognitive strategies like counting sheep, right? The physical is a physical somatic grounding rod. The mantra is a way of focusing attention. And then the concentration on your breathing is a way of, again, regulate breathing, which is the fastest way you can change your physiology without any kind of medicine or medication or herbs. If sleeping problems were solved just by better sleep hygiene, most people wouldn't be struggling for years. This kind of real lasting sleep comes from fixing what's actually keeping the body on high alert in the first place. Might be digestion, might be blood sugar, stress, or a nervous system that's been running in survival mode for too long. So if you want help finding your root cause personally, I've linked up a free root cause quiz below. And it's designed to point you toward why your specific body is not sleeping. So you can finally stop managing the symptoms and fix the real problem. You can go to the link below the video or dralexhine.com forward slash quiz. And if sleep is an issue for you, sometimes this relates to an overactive nervous system, what we call sympathetic dominance. And I shot a great related video right here to help you take that stress level from a 10 to a one.