Let's make mental cocktails!

All of us sleep but many people wish they could sleep better. In fact, most of us have experienced some difficulties in sleeping sometime in our lives. According to medical opinion, about 15 percent of patients complain of insomnia. Some patients and even some healthy people take sleeping tablets in order to have a sound sleep. This shows the magnitude of the problem.

Many parents complain that they cannot sleep well for various reasons such as family crises, children meeting with accidents, sickness in the family, and pressure of work at home and office. Without proper sleep, being awake can be a severe problem. Although a few sleepless nights will not damage your health, if you cannot sleep at all, that is going to be a serious malady.

Apart from physical discomfort, you can be prevented from getting a good night's sleep by other factors such as various noises of the city coming from cars, buses, trains, planes, trishaws and other vehicles.

As you know, every driver is in a hurry to go home or to reach their destination. So, they toot their horns, asking other motorists to get out of the way. While they struggle on the highway, some of us are tossing up in our beds.

As we are not in a position to control or eliminate such noises, we have to find a way to cope with them. One such method tried and tested by some psychologists is to mix a mental cocktail as a diversion when you find it difficult to sleep because of the noise coming from the streets. This cocktail is not meant to be drunk because its ingredients come from our own sensory organs and happy moments.

For sound, you can take the soothing melody of a song sung by your favourite singer. It can be Amaradeva, Michael Jackson, or Latha Mangeshkar. Although we may not be able to sing like them, we have no difficulty in remembering their songs. These are the songs people sing or hum to themselves while taking a bath or doing some other work. If you cannot recall such a song that appeals to you, you will have to take some interest in music. This will help you to cultivate the first ingredient required to make a mental cocktail.

For sight, think of a beautiful place you have visited in the past. As for me, I always go back to my childhood days spent in the salubrious climate of Kolonna surrounded by hills, and Wellawaya where I lived with my parents by a rivulet flowing through the jungle. I still see the virgin beauty of the forest and flowing waters of the rivulet with my mind's eye. Most of the jungle has been cleared for development projects and the rivulet now flows under a small bridge.

For taste, I use the remembrance of tree-ripe oranges I picked up in Bibile. Sixty years ago orange plantations were flourishing in the area but there was hardly any demand for oranges. Schoolchildren returning home, picking tree-ripe oranges fallen from trees and lying by the roadside was a common sight. It is unfortunate that we are compelled to import those yellow-coloured oranges today.

For smell, I still remember vividly the beautiful flowers and their fragrance in a certain home garden at Hingurakgoda. The smell of jasmine pervaded the whole area and even today it transports me into a world of romance. Anyone will have such fragrant memories from the past, I am sure.

For touch, the remembrance of the cool and refreshing water that came down a hill in Bandarawela is more than enough for my mental cocktail. Anyone can remember such events from their own experiences.

Slowly but steadily, I mix up these ingredients associated with peace, calm and relaxation. Round and round I stir them seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. When I do this, all the sounds in the asphalt jungle tend to die away. The mental cocktail is so potent that I fall asleep comfortably.

A person who was born and bred in the city may not find it easy to conjure up such ingredients easily. It all depends on your life experiences and where you live. If you happen to live near a river where you could see fish swimming in the water, it will be fine. If you live near a forest where birds sing incessantly, you are lucky. If you are fortunate enough to live in a valley or near a hill, where the atmosphere is calm and the air is clean, thank your stars!

Unfortunately, most of us are not lucky to be born in such surroundings. For a person born in the concrete jungle, making mental cocktails would be extremely difficult. Still you should not give up.

Having a beautiful painting on the wall of your bedroom can compensate for the loss of real experience. Meanwhile, there are many facilities to generate all kinds of music in your room. Today you can even listen to bird songs and the sound of flowing water because they have been recorded.

The same problem would arise as regards smells. Instead of the lingering fragrance of jasmine, we are compelled to breathe in noxious fumes of vehicles and the odour of garbage. This is one instance where you may have to use artificial air fresheners.

Whenever you look at a painting, simply focus on it for several minutes taking in everything you wish to remember. Make sure that everything you want to remember is contained in the picture frame. Now look again, and if things which you had not remembered appear, then your first exposure has not been accurate. So, look at the painting for some more time and try to remember the details. Now it will not fade away from memory. You can take it home and use it in your mental cocktail!

When you have trained your eyes, ears, and nose, you can easily make your mind a treasure-house of masterpieces full of sweet sounds, fragrant smells, and memorable visions. Then it is easy to make your mental cocktail and get rid of sleep-related problems. Reading good books, especially fiction and poetry, will also help you to fill your goblet with so many ingredients necessary to make mental cocktails!