According to the theory of Acupressure, there are three areas – on your wrist, your face, and the back of your head – that may be helpful if you’re having difficulty falling asleep.
Gently press on the specified points and surrounding areas using your fingertips, steadily or with a small circular massage motion, for approximately one minute. After a break, you can repeat alternating pressure and breaks until you feel a sort of release.
- The Hand: With your palm facing up, find the juncture where the wrist meets the hand with the thumb of your other hand; rub gently just below the first crease of the wrist.
- The Face: Using the tips of your index and third fingers, apply gentle pressure to the spot between your eyebrows, at the juncture of the bridge of your nose and your forehead.
- The Back of Your Head: Gently massage the pressure points at the indentation at the base of the skull on the back of the head; move outward an inch on both sides of the skull at the hairline.
How do you know whether you have the right spot? The pressure points “announce themselves with a feeling of tenderness, tingling, soreness, or minor discomfort,” explains Michael Castleman in Nature’s Cures.
Adapted from Sleep Soundly Tonight, by Barbara L. Heller (Storey Books, 2001).