Why Does Rocking Put People to Sleep Faster?

Andrew Huberman says rocking puts people to sleep faster because side-to-side motion makes the eyes generate compensatory movements under closed lids, and the movements tell the brain to let go of where the limbs are. Studies of sleep without drugs found that the pace parents already use with babies puts the babies to sleep, and a bed built to rock at a set frequency makes adults fall asleep very quickly. The frequency that works best is known. Eye movements signal through the brainstem to the cerebellum, the parts that handle balance and proprioception, the sense of limb position.

He has no rocking bed, and he does not know anyone large enough to hold and rock him. The method he describes for himself is to mimic the eye movements under closed lids, side to side, up and down, or in rolls, sometimes with a long exhale. The pattern, he says, confuses direction-selective cells in the retina, the accessory optic nuclei of the brainstem, and the cerebellum, so awareness of body position drops away. He has asked that the eye-movement piece not be clipped away from that circuit.