First I might mention the words "deep state". I don't know that we always want a "deep state". I mean, I'm sometimes a light sleeper, sometimes I zonk. So I'm not going to give, maybe, the best technique that guarantees a deep sleep. But as to general sleep, I can help you a bit with that. We recommend the Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation before going to sleep, as I said last night. But for some people, that stimulates the mind too much. Some people find using the breathing will work. Some other people find that it stimulates the mind too much. To a certain extent you've got to figure this one out yourself as to which technique helps you to relax while you're trying to go to sleep. Also, different physical relaxation techniques, like those that we teach during the stretching exercises at Wat Kow Tahm. Sometimes just running the attention through the body, and purposely relaxing each muscle as you do it helps people to fall asleep.
Different techniques like those may help and you may have to experiment, but what is also important to do is to actually separate not sleeping from the worry about not sleeping. This is often more the key when people can't sleep and they have a mind that starts to busy itself. It's really then, when the mind's in that state and busy, that the thoughts come up, "Oh, I'm not going to sleep. I've got to get to sleep. Oh, I'll be too tired and I'll..." Well, here is the worry. The worry is what is helpful to work on: to separate the worry about not sleeping from actually not sleeping. Personally I've never met a single person who ever died from lack of sleep. If you worry about not sleeping, you're guaranteed you won't sleep. So that's a real key: to separate the worry from the not sleeping. If you lay there and your body's as relaxed as can be and you're watching your mind and checking it, "No, that's just worry, that's just worry. It's OK, it's OK. I'll catch up." If you're continually reminding yourself in that way, generally, eventually you'll fall asleep.
Now, some things are just too important, right? You've got to do this, got to write something, got to do whatever. Well, by and large, almost nothing's that important. Granted, there may be on occasion, but most of it's not. If you're really uptight, one technique that helps with a lot of people is to take a little walk. Just get up and go do some walking meditation. On the rare occasions that I can't sleep, that's one of the things I personally use. I just get up, go out and do walking meditation. Fifteen or twenty minutes later I'm a bit tired. I'm just a bit physically tired, I come back in and I fall asleep. Sometimes I've found that simply getting up and going to the bathroom, even if I don't have to, actually breaks the rhythm of laying there worrying about everything. Just getting up, going to the bathroom, coming back, and often I'll fall straight to sleep.