Cognitive shuffling can help disrupt the brain's thoughts and aid sleep transition. Photo / Getty Images
‘Cognitive shuffling’ is a mental distraction technique designed to deliberately mimic the mental drift into sleep. Here’s how to do it.
Until recently, I’d always been one of those irritating people who could sleep anywhere. Planes, trains, sofas with someone else’s dog snoring beside me, I’d be out cold in minutes. Friends with insomnia would eye me enviously as I boasted of eight-hour stretches, uninterrupted by even a mid-night toilet break.
And then, suddenly, I couldn’t.
It started with one rogue 5am wake-up, the kind where you’re alert and blinking into the dark and your brain starts narrating your entire to-do list. From there, it became a regular thing: early waking followed by sometimes hours of tossing and turning. Sometimes breathing techniques would send me back off to sleep, sometimes it would take over an hour and I’d fall asleep just before my alarm went off.
I didn’t want to take pills and other tips failed. I kept to a regular sleep schedule, took warm baths, sipped chamomile tea and ditched coffee after midday – but nothing worked.
Then I stumbled across a technique called “cognitive shuffling”. It sounded frankly ridiculous, like the mental equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your tummy. But one bleary-eyed morning, desperate, I tried it. One sign a technique is good is that you don’t remember any effort using it to get to sleep. I woke the next morning fresh and bright, forgetting I’d woken up in the middle of the night at all.
Cognitive shuffling is a form of mental distraction that involves thinking about random, emotionally neutral words or images. The idea is that by “shuffling” through these disconnected items (think: lettuce, ladder, leopard), you interrupt the stressful, looping thoughts that keep you awake.
It was developed by Dr Luc Beaudoin, a cognitive scientist and an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University. While struggling with Sunday-night insomnia as a graduate, Beaudoin became fascinated by the mental states involved in falling asleep. Could a technique be designed to deliberately mimic the mental drift into sleep?
“I began to read, think and experiment on myself,” Beaudoin says. “In the early 2000s, I perfected the technique. Eventually, I published a paper on my theory of sleep onset and described the method.”
Beaudoin’s theory suggests that the brain struggles to fall asleep when it’s engaged in structured, goal-oriented thinking, like worrying or planning, as this signals alertness and activates mental arousal. To fall asleep, the brain needs to disengage from coherent thought and shift toward random, emotionally neutral, and non-goal-directed mental activity.
His research, published in 2013, coined the term “serial diverse imagining,” – essentially what we now call cognitive shuffling. The technique disrupts linear, often anxiety-driven thought patterns and simulates the natural meandering of a sleepy brain.
Dr Eleni Kavaliotis, a psychologist from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has studied cognitive shuffling and says: “During the transition to sleep, brain activity slows. Your brain starts to generate disconnected images and fleeting scenes, known as hypnagogic hallucinations.
“By mimicking these scattered, disconnected thought patterns, cognitive shuffling can help you transition between wakefulness to sleep.”
Kavaliotis goes on to say: “It involves picking a random word, and focusing on the first letter of the word.
“Start listing all the words you can think of with that letter. You can also visualise the words as you go along. When you can’t think of any other words, move to the next letter and continue with each letter of the original word until you drift off to sleep. It’s important that you don’t try to relate one word with another or find a link between the words. They should be arbitrary.”
Beaudoin sees cognitive shuffling as a type of meditation, not just a mental trick, with the aim of both to quiet the mind and interrupt rumination.
Seeing it as meditation “might help more people see its value,” says the professor.
His method eventually led to the development of an app called mySleepButton, which reads out neutral words or scenes to help guide your mind through the shuffle. Beaudoin also shares sleep advice and updates on his research via Substack and X, formerly Twitter.
And it’s not just academic. More recently, cognitive shuffling has gone viral on TikTok, thanks to one doctor’s personal video.
“I myself sometimes have trouble falling asleep,” says Dr Scott Walter, a Denver-based dermatologist known as @denverskindoc. “After trying this method, I was impressed with how well it worked, and has continued to work. So I shared it.”
Walter’s video explaining the method has now been viewed over six million times. He describes cognitive shuffling as “a mental technique to engage your brain in a way that encourages sleep rather than preventing it”.
“When trying to fall asleep we often think in linear patterns, often focused on stress or the day ahead,” Walter explains. “Cognitive shuffling disrupts these patterns. It calms the brain.”
While research is still emerging, early studies show promise. In one trial comparing cognitive shuffling with structured journaling, where you write down your worries or to-do list before bed to clear the mind, both improved sleep – but participants found shuffling easier to stick to.
“A study of 150 university students found that the technique helped them to lower arousal before sleep, improve sleep quality and reduce the effort involved in falling asleep,” says Dr Kavaliotis.
Ease of use is key, according to Beaudoin. “That may explain why so many people use the technique.”
Still, he’s quick to stress that no technique is a silver bullet. “It does not work for everyone,” he says. “We encourage people to experiment with scientifically studied techniques and see what works for them.”
Cognitive shuffling is also gaining traction among sleep professionals.
“It can certainly work long-term,” says Dr Allie Hare, a consultant in sleep medicine and President of the British Sleep Society.
“We often use this strategy in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi) alongside other tools like Progressive Muscle Relaxation.” CBTi is available on the NHS and helps people change unhelpful thoughts and behaviours to improve their sleep.
Cognitive shuffling is essentially a mindfulness-style attention exercise: by guiding your focus through a neutral sequence of simple, unrelated images, it interrupts rumination and quiets the brain. Studies on mindfulness show this shift helps quiet the amygdala, the brain’s stress centre, and activates the parasympathetic ‘rest-and-digest’ state, the body’s natural calming system, making it easier to fall asleep.
Lisa Artis, deputy CEO of The Sleep Charity, says “it’s especially helpful for people who suffer from racing thoughts, anxiety, or find traditional mindfulness challenging”.
However, a friend warned me my brain would soon “get used to it,” and sure enough, the very next night, my trusty new sleep aid seemed suddenly ineffective.
Beaudoin explains this phenomenon succinctly: “A major cause of insomnia is fear of not falling asleep. Suggestions you won’t sleep can indeed make it more difficult.” His advice? “Try technology-assisted cognitive shuffling” and approach it with fresh eyes and minimal pressure.
“Like with every new strategy, patience makes perfect,” advises Kavaliotis. “Think of it like a muscle, the more you work a muscle the stronger it gets – many cognitive strategies are like that too.”
However, Artis suggests mixing it up to avoid repetition. “Use different categories, animals, tools, colours. Try nonsense words or make it visual. It’s not necessarily a permanent fix, but a great technique to have in your sleep toolkit.
“That “toolkit” approach is important,” she adds. “Sleep isn’t something you force, it’s something you invite. And the more ways you have to coax your brain into letting go, the better.”
As I lay awake once more at 5am, remembering Dr Kavaliotis’ advice, I gave cognitive shuffling another chance. Within minutes, images of apples, clouds and random household objects flickered pleasantly through my mind. I didn’t even notice myself drifting off.
If you find yourself staring at the ceiling tonight, perhaps your best bet isn’t counting sheep. It’s cognitive shuffling. It’s not a miracle and it won’t suit everyone, but for me, and apparently millions of TikTok viewers, it’s a tiny trick with outsized impact. No pills. No rituals. Just a sleepy little shuffle, back toward dreams.