With many cities under curfews, violence in the news, uncertainty about the future, you might find yourself lying awake at night struggling to fall asleep.

Or maybe a month's long quarantine has led you to adopt a completely new sleep schedule.

Many of us are having a hard time right now getting to sleep. After we turn off our devices, get ready for bed, climb in,

the actual act of falling asleep can feel tricky, kind of like landing a plane.

You've just got to gradually bring the brain in the body down, sort of from that altitude of wakefulness onto the hard, safe landing pad of sleep at night.

That's Matthew Walker. He's a sleep researcher at UC Berkeley and the author of Why We Sleep.

And I told him about this little technique I used to wind down at night. I think of it as like channeling my inner Carl Sagan.

I say to myself, Alison, you are just recycled stardust and an ever expanding universe.

Staring at a blue dot, yeah. Exactly. And in a weird way, it calms me down. I'm floating, I'm completely detached, but my way isn't the only way.

Hi, so I have a less, uh, existentially, uh, big, conflicting, conflicting way of getting to sleep in Alison does.

That's our producer, Megan Cain. She has a different approach.

It's so silly, but I just have this little stick and it's infused with lavender. And I, every night I just put like a little dab on my temples and a little under my neck.

And I swear to God, it makes me fall asleep like instantly.

The essential oil trick. I know it's probably in my head. I think it's just telling me it's time to go to bed.

I think that's what it's really doing, but now I'm like hooked on it.

So Matthew, what do you think? It does seem to be one of those tricks. I'm hastin to use the word hack, but it is interesting.

You're actually latching on to a very ancient evolutionary process of what we call associative memory within the brain.

You've got a lot of inner wisdom there, Megan. It's a lot cheaper than sleeping, but I'll say that. I'm better for you.

You know, a lot of sleep rituals are really just about this. They're linking two things together.

So for me, it's the stardust and sleep and for Megan, it's the lavender stick and sleep.

I think whenever you pin an association in the brain, whenever you make a positive association that binds two things together, then one will prime the other.

In this episode, sleep rituals. We're going to answer some of your questions about sleep.

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