Strange Anti-Insomnia Technique

I can't take myself too seriously, especially in Portuguese on a few hours' sleep.

Forty years after learning Portuguese, I was about to pat myself on the back for comprehending a supper conversation among a dozen of my favorite Brazilians, half of whom I'd known since I was a teenaged exchange student. With my rusty language skills and our common insomnia, we were talking about how to outwit our sleep demons. One person spoke of melatonin, another of tryptophan, and I mentioned my routine involving nighttime stretches, aromatherapy, and certain music geared to brainwaves. A Buddhist praised the benefits of meditation and a psychologist mentioned Bert Hellinger's phomenological Family Systems therapy. So when Nicolau -- a physician -- described a new therapy he'd just been trained in, I thought it sounded odd but not impossible.

A sleep therapist showed him this technique, he explained in Portuguese. First, he reclined on the bed on his back with enough light to see the ceiling. The therapist gently lifted his head and slipped underneath a camera covered with a soft rubber casing, about the size of a baseball, setting it carefully just above the nape. He put his head back, opened his eyes, and used the tip of his nose to "draw" a cross on the ceiling as if his nose emitted a laser beaming straight up. Up and down, slowly, then left to right, twice. The therapist told Nicolau that his head barely moved; yet Nicolau felt that it had to have moved as he'd traced a 50-centimeter cross above him, he explained. And then, in a moment, he'd fallen asleep.

Everyone started asking questions, which Nicolau answered, but no one posed my biggest question. Finally, I asked: How does the camera work through the skull? Were wires attached? The head must block any light from reaching the lens; could he explain whether the camera was capturing brain activity or some shadow on the ceiling? Everyone started to laugh. "Camera," it turns out, was not as I'd heard it. Indeed, in Portuguese the usual word for a camera is "máquina fotográfica" but "câmara" can mean innertube. Nicolau was talking about a cushion the size of a baseball, filled with a rubber innertube to stabilize the head and minimize its motion as the nose traces the cross. When I realized my linguistic error and explained that I thought they might have actually tried such a scheme because they've tried all sorts of other "weird therapies" in the past, we all laughed so hard that tears ran down our cheeks. In bed that night, I tried the nose trick. I laughed aloud again, grateful for the acceptance that meant I could be gullible, honest, and not the least self-conscious about my gaffe. And I fell asleep, súbito, which really does mean surprisingly fast.