# The military sleep method

> The military sleep method is a relaxation routine in two parts: loosen your face, shoulders, arms, chest and legs in turn, then spend about 10 seconds holding one calm image. It is traced to a 1981 book by the American sprint coach Bud Winter, not to a trial, and we could not find a study of the routine itself. Its parts have some evidence behind them. Its promise — asleep in 2 minutes — is the part to drop.

Source: https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/military-sleep-method
Published: 2026-10-14 · Updated: 2026-10-14

## What is the military sleep method?

A routine for letting go of the body one region at a time, then giving the mind something simple to hold for a few seconds. It can be done lying in bed or sitting back in a chair. The version that circulates — and it is the circulating version, for reasons the next section explains — runs like this:

1. *The face.* Let the forehead, the muscles around the eyes, the jaw and the tongue go slack.
2. *The shoulders and arms.* Drop your shoulders as low as they will go, then let each arm go heavy — upper arm, forearm, hand — one side and then the other.
3. *The chest.* Breathe out slowly and let your chest settle with the breath.
4. *The legs.* Let the thighs go loose, then the calves, then the feet.
5. *The mind, for about 10 seconds.* Picture one calm scene — usually lying in a canoe on a still lake under a clear sky, or in a black velvet hammock in a dark room — or repeat the words “don’t think” to yourself, over and over.

That is the whole method, and most of it is reasonable. The trouble is in the last step’s second option, and in the promise attached to the whole: that with practice you will be asleep within 2 minutes.

## Where does the military sleep method come from?

Every retelling traces it to a book about winning. *Relax and Win: Championship Performance in Whatever You Do* was published in 1981 by the American sprint coach Lloyd “Bud” Winter, and the library catalogues file it under relaxation, stress and the psychology of sport. The story that travels with the sleep routine is that Winter developed it during the Second World War, teaching relaxation to cadets at the US Navy’s Pre-Flight School, so that pilots could sleep anywhere, at any hour, even sitting up.

Part of that story can be checked. Relaxation training really was part of the Navy’s wartime pre-flight schools: the Naval History and Heritage Command holds a collection documenting the programme, with relaxation techniques for naval aviators among the activities it records. The rest we could not check. The book is easy to find in library catalogues, but the copies we could reach are lending-only, so the steps above are the version in circulation, and so is everything else this page says the book contains.

That includes the number. The figure that travels with the method is that after 6 weeks of practice “96 percent” of the pilots could fall asleep within 2 minutes — credited to Winter’s 1981 book in every retelling we found. Whatever the book says, it is a coach’s account of a training programme, not a study: no paper we could find reports how many pilots took part, how their sleep was timed, or what they were compared with.

## Does the military sleep method work?

As far as we can find, nobody has tested it. We could not find a published trial of the routine itself, in Europe PMC or on the wider web (searched October 2026); the only research paper we found that names it describes a school sleep programme that teaches it to teenagers, not a test of it. What can be said is what its ingredients have behind them, and they are not equal.

### Relaxing the body: guideline-backed, and modest

Relaxation therapy — structured exercises against tension in the body and arousal in the mind, such as abdominal breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery and meditation — is one of the treatments the American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests for chronic insomnia. Its 2021 guideline makes that a conditional recommendation, the weaker of its two grades (Edinger and colleagues, 2021).

The review behind that guideline shows what modest means. Pooled across 6 trials, relaxation shortened the time people took to fall asleep, by their sleep diaries, by about 7 minutes compared with control conditions — less than the task force counted as clinically significant — and it rated the overall quality of the evidence very low. The military routine is a short, informal cousin of these techniques, not one of the versions that was tested.

### The calm image: one good study

Picturing something absorbing has the strongest single study of the three steps. In 2002, Harvey and Payne gave 41 people with insomnia one of three sets of instructions for a night: occupy your mind with an interesting, engaging scene; distract yourself however you like; or nothing at all. The imagery group fell asleep sooner, and had fewer and less distressing unwanted thoughts, than the group given no instructions (Harvey and Payne, 2002).

It was one night in 41 people, and the academy’s 2006 practice parameters found too little evidence to recommend imagery training as a treatment on its own (Morgenthaler and colleagues, 2006). But of the three steps, this is the one with an experiment behind it.

### “Don’t think”: the step that works against you

The other version of the last step, repeating “don’t think”, asks for the thing minds do worst. In the classic experiment on suppressing a thought, people asked not to think of a white bear for 5 minutes could not manage it, and when they were then asked to think about the bear, they thought about it more often than people who had been asked to think about it from the start. Those given one specific thing to think about instead were less preoccupied with the bear later (Wegner and colleagues, 1987).

Harvey and Payne explained their own result the same way: their imagery task was a very specific job, which gave the mind something to look for rather than something to look out for — the kind of mental control that tends to work. So the method is two techniques with some evidence behind them, a third that the evidence argues against, and a deadline. Keep the first two.

## Why is “asleep in 2 minutes” the wrong goal?

Because a deadline is effort, and effort is what keeps a busy mind awake. Sleep is largely automatic, and it can be held off by paying attention to it and by trying to make it happen (Espie and colleagues, 2006).

In a 1996 experiment, people who normally slept well were asked to fall asleep either as fast as they could or whenever they liked. With calm music playing, hurrying helped. With rousing marches playing — a heavy mental load, of the kind a head full of tomorrow supplies — the people trying to be quick took longer to fall asleep than the people who were not trying (Ansfield, Wegner and Bowser, 1996).

A 2-minute target adds a second problem: it needs checking. Am I asleep yet? Was that 2 minutes? Each check is a small piece of the effort the routine was meant to remove. [Why trying to sleep keeps you awake](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/trying-to-sleep) goes further into why the harder you aim at sleep, the further it moves. And even on its own terms, the famous figure describes people who had practised for weeks, not a first night.

## How do you try the military method without trying too hard?

Think of it as a way to spend the first few minutes in bed, not as a test you pass by falling asleep.

- *Practise when nothing is at stake.* Run through the body steps once or twice in the day, sitting in a chair, so that at night they are familiar rather than a task to get right. Relaxation is a skill, and even the method’s own story assumes weeks of practice.
- *Go slowly, and don’t time it.* There is no prize for finishing the sequence quickly. If you lose your place, carry on from wherever you are.
- *Use the image, not the phrase.* Choose a scene that is calm and a little absorbing — the canoe, the hammock, or somewhere of your own where nothing is happening — and fill in its details slowly: the light, the sounds, the temperature of the air.
- *Let the image wander if it wants to.* If the lake becomes a harbour and the harbour becomes a kitchen, let it. Loose, disconnected pictures are what thought tends to look like on the way into sleep anyway ([hypnagogia](https://dreamsheeps.space/hypnagogia)), which is the idea behind [cognitive shuffling](https://dreamsheeps.space/cognitive-shuffling): one small, unrelated image after another, on purpose.
- *Keep the clock out of reach.* Checking the time turns the routine back into a deadline.
- *If you are still awake, that is fine.* Don’t start again with more effort. Let your body stay loose and your mind stay on its pictures. If lying there turns into a struggle, get up for a while: [what to do when you can’t sleep](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/what-to-do-when-you-cant-sleep) sets out how.

If you can’t picture things at all — some people can’t — the image step won’t work as written; [cognitive shuffling with aphantasia](https://dreamsheeps.space/cognitive-shuffling/aphantasia) covers what to use instead.

## Who is the military method for?

People who carry the day in their bodies — a clenched jaw, shoulders up by the ears — and who like a set routine to follow. Going through the body in the same order every night gives you something definite to do that is not trying to sleep, which is half the point.

It suits a racing mind less well. About 10 seconds of a calm image is a short time to hold a busy mind still. If your thoughts are the problem rather than your shoulders, spend longer on the picture and let it change as often as it likes, or go straight to [cognitive shuffling](https://dreamsheeps.space/cognitive-shuffling), which keeps the same instinct and fills more of the mind for longer. [Racing thoughts at night](https://dreamsheeps.space/racing-thoughts-at-night) covers the rest.

## What if the military method doesn’t work for you?

Then it is one technique that didn’t suit you, not a verdict on your sleep. The alternatives come at the same problem from different sides:

- [4-7-8 breathing](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/4-7-8-breathing) keeps the body-first approach and swaps the muscles for a slow breathing count — and, like this method, has no trial yet of whether it gets anyone to sleep sooner.
- [Paradoxical intention](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/paradoxical-intention) removes the deadline altogether: you lie in the dark and gently try to stay awake, which takes the effort out of the night.
- [Cognitive shuffling](https://dreamsheeps.space/cognitive-shuffling) takes the image step and makes it the whole technique.
- [How to fall asleep fast](https://dreamsheeps.space/how-to-fall-asleep) ranks all of these, and the rest, by the evidence behind each.

If trouble falling asleep has gone on for months and is affecting your days, see a doctor rather than trying another technique. For chronic insomnia, cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is the first treatment to try: the American College of Physicians recommends it as the initial treatment (Qaseem and colleagues, 2016), and it is the only behavioural or psychological treatment the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends strongly (Edinger and colleagues, 2021).

## Sources

1. [Winter (1981) — Relax & Win: Championship Performance in Whatever You Do. A.S. Barnes (San Diego) and Tantivy Press (London). Library record](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4258125M)
2. [Naval History and Heritage Command — Kit Hess Collection (2017.48): the Navy’s Second World War pre-flight training, including relaxation techniques for naval aviators](https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/alphabetical---donations0/h/2017-48-kit-hess-collection.html)
3. [Edinger et al. (2021) — Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine 17(2), 255–262](https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8986)
4. [Edinger et al. (2021) — Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine systematic review, meta-analysis, and GRADE assessment. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine 17(2), 263–298](https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8988)
5. [Morgenthaler et al. (2006) — Practice parameters for the psychological and behavioral treatment of insomnia: an update. An American Academy of Sleep Medicine report. Sleep 29(11), 1415–1419](https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/29.11.1415)
6. [Harvey & Payne (2002) — The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia: distraction with imagery versus general distraction. Behaviour Research and Therapy 40(3), 267–277](https://doi.org/10.1016/s0005-7967(01)00012-2)
7. [Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White (1987) — Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53(1), 5–13](https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.5)
8. [Ansfield, Wegner & Bowser (1996) — Ironic effects of sleep urgency. Behaviour Research and Therapy 34(7), 523–531](https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(96)00031-9)
9. [Espie et al. (2006) — The attention–intention–effort pathway in the development of psychophysiologic insomnia: a theoretical review. Sleep Medicine Reviews](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2006.03.002)
10. [Qaseem et al. (2016) — Management of chronic insomnia disorder in adults: a clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians. Annals of Internal Medicine](https://doi.org/10.7326/M15-2175)

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Sheeps doesn’t teach relaxation or breathing. What it does is the image step, for longer: a new plotless story, written for you, that gives a busy mind harmless, disconnected scenes to hold, so there is nothing to try at — and it ends in silence. Sheeps on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6749510901