how to sleep

Some people can seemingly sleep at will, and it comes as naturally to them as eating or walking. I am not of this tribe. In the years before there was a general "sleep awareness" in society, I used to have pretty bad sleep, something that occurred to me only in hindsight. I remember being quite sleepy and inattentive in school and college. I thought this was a natural consequence of these institutions being dreadfully boring. Which is true, but I also wasn't good at sleeping. Most of my problem was being able to fall asleep. No one teaches you how to sleep.I have, over the years, developed a sleep technique that works reasonably well for me. It obviously depends on how well I have done "sleep prep"—the usual popular advice about timing when to eat, avoiding caffeine, wind-down rituals etc. But on a good day, my process of falling asleep takes around 15 minutes.This is roughly how it works:Sleep is not like a dog on a leash that you tug to get it to walk with you. Sleep is like a cat.…