By
Suzanne Zuppello
Sept. 5, 2019 3:13 pm ET
FOR DECADES, I’VE BEEN among the 35.2% of adults restlessly failing to get the recommended seven hours each night. I’ve tried burying myself under a weighted blanket and misting my room with sleep-inducing essential oils. My white-noise machine is no match for the blare of New York City traffic that only seems to grow more intrusive after sunset.
But maybe I’ve been trying too hard. According to
Dr. Lynelle Schneeberg, a Yale Medicine psychologist and author of “Become Your Child’s Sleep Coach,” achieving those blissful hours of slumber is just a two-step process: “You should have a quiet, dark room and something to distract your mind. The end.”
And the simplest distraction is one we likely last enjoyed as children: a bedtime story.
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What has worked best for you to fall asleep? Share your tips below.
Daily meditation—as steered by digital apps and tools meant to quiet addled adult minds—can sometimes feel more like a chore than a respite. But bedtime stories tell a different tale. They tap into the comforting experience of being read to as a child without requiring you to focus on your thoughts or your breathing, said Dr. Schneeberg. It’s distracting, it’s relaxing, it doesn’t require anything of you. And it’s just interesting enough to keep your brain from bringing up all the fretful thoughts that flood your mind when your eyes close.
Nicholas Head, executive producer of content at Calm, a popular meditation app, said an uptick of usage around bedtime witnessed by his team led him to introduce a Sleep Stories category—now with more than 140 recordings.
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Plenty of sleep-aiding podcasts and apps are available now. So which is right for you?
ILLUSTRATION: JAMES GULLIVER HANCOCK
If You Want a Storybook Slumber... Give a listen to “Beauty and the Beast,” read by British actor Abbe Opher on the Sleepiest app (free for iOS).
If You Want a Bedtime Story to Match Your Bed... Swedish IKEA staffers listing product names on the “IKEA Sleep Podcast” may work perfectly for you.
If Your Nighttime Routine Lacks Adventure...Seek out “The Lost City,” a curios tale read by Dan Jones on the Slumber app (free for iOS)
If Ken Burns Documentaries Put You to Sleep...Tune in to “Crossing Australia by Train,” narrated by Steen Bojsen-Møller on Calm (from $13/mo.,
calm.com).
If You Prefer to Sleep Under the Stars...Try “Woodcraft and Camping,” read by Teddy Sands on the “Bore you to Sleep” podcast
If You Usually Pass Out to the Syfy channel...Download “A Trip to Venus,” narrated by “Snoozecast” host Nicholas Bernat
“A big reason people have trouble sleeping is because they can’t stop their racing thoughts from the day,” he said. But Calm’s Sleep Stories aim to engross your senses, “so you can let go of the day’s stresses and drift off to sleep.” While most of Calm’s meditations are guided by instructor Tamara Levitt, Sleep Stories’s narrators come from all walks of fame.
Three months into my Calm subscription
(from $13/month, calm.com), I doze off easiest while listening to the dulcet tones of English comedian Stephen Fry or “The Wire” actor Clarke Peters. But with only three stories between them, I had to search for alternatives.
Insight Timer
(free, upgrades for $60/year, on Android and iOS) is another meditation-heavy app now dabbling in bedtime stories. Its narrators are less celebrated, but like Calm, it features a mix of classics including “The Velveteen Rabbit,” and lesser-known fiction like “Claire and the SageWoman.”
If scrolling through a smartphone to find a story each night seems too tedious, you can simply ask Alexa to read you a random tale. Or request that she play you a downloaded audiobook (Siri’s got you covered here, too) like “Bedtime Stories for Grownups” whose author and narrator, Ben Holden, quenched my thirst for sedating British accents.
Some popular podcasters also dose listeners with 30-ish-minute stories carefully selected for optimal zzzzzs. Kathryn Nicolai, host of “Nothing Much Happens,” writes and narrates her stories, but she’s not offended if you pass out before the final takeaway. “I want people to know you’re not going to miss anything. This is just a track to steer your mind to.”
On “Bore you to Sleep,” host Teddy Sands dully reads Jane Austen, Herman Melville and other public domain authors. “The speed of the reading is slow,” he said, “with the aim of keeping the heart rate and brain activity low.”
Victoria Lockard and Nicholas Bernat, sleep partners and two-thirds of “Snoozecast,” first test texts they select for the show—ranging from “Peter Pan” to Albert Einstein’s “The Meaning of Relativity”—on each other. Anything is fair game so long as it’s not too jarring like, say, “The Call of the Wild” by Jack London. “We were surprised by how disturbing and violent it was. But it was so gripping,” said Ms. Lockard, who eventually found a long, suitably boring passage befitting of bedtime.
