The steps are real; the two-minute promise is not.
The routine is sequential muscle release plus a calming mental image, and those ingredients do resemble relaxation techniques that sleep medicine recognizes as a treatment in their own right [1]. What the Military Sleep Method will not do is always put you to sleep on a two-minute timer. And if your nights have been bad for months, relaxation is the mildest of the tools available to you.
Where the Military Sleep Method Came From
Not a sleep lab. Lloyd "Bud" Winter was a track coach at San Jose State who, during World War II, was assigned by the Navy to build a relaxation course for aviators at the Del Monte Pre-Flight School. In his account, cadets were "cracking" under combat fatigue, and men and planes were being lost [2]. One of the program's stated goals, in his words, was to teach combat aviators "to be able to go to sleep in two minutes any time, day or night, under any and all conditions" [2]. He reported that after six weeks of the course, cadets could do it with a simulated cannon blast booming in the room. He wrote the whole thing up in 1981, in a book called Relax & Win.
So the two minutes was a training target, hit by fit young pilots after a month and a half of daily drilling, described by the coach who designed the course. It is not a trial result. The "96% of pilots" figure that travels with the method online has no published study behind it either, and no clinical trial appears to have tested Winter's complete routine, in the general population or in people with insomnia.
What Is the Military Sleep Method?
You let go of one area at a time:
Your face first: forehead, eyes, jaw, tongue.
Your shoulders, dropped as far as they will go, then each arm, one segment at a time.
Breathe out, and let your chest and midriff go with it.
Each leg, one segment at a time.
Then about ten seconds of clearing your mind, holding one still image or repeating a single phrase.
Winter's advice for the opposite problem, fighting off sleep, is to "tense up all the muscles of your body" [2].
What Is Actually Backed
Strip the branding and you have two recognizable ingredients: muscle relaxation and calming imagery. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine lists both among its examples of relaxation therapy, and its 2021 guideline suggests clinicians can use relaxation as a single-component treatment for chronic insomnia in adults [1]. That is a conditional recommendation, resting on five trials of low-quality evidence, which did show meaningful improvement in sleep quality and in how many people responded [1].
Two things are worth holding onto. The evidence is for the category, not for this routine: none of those trials tested Winter's sequence. And in that same guideline, multicomponent CBT-I earns a strong recommendation while relaxation on its own earns a conditional one [1]. The useful part of the military sleep method is real, modest, and the least exciting part of it.
What Relaxation Does Not Reach
Relaxation works on arousal, which is one of the things keeping you awake. It does not reach the other two.
After months of lying awake, the bed itself has become a cue for being alert rather than for sleep, which is why lying awake in bed feels worse the longer you stay there, and no breathing sequence undoes that pairing [3]. Relaxation also does nothing to rebuild the sleep pressure that makes falling asleep quick in the first place. Both of those have their own treatments, stimulus control and sleep restriction, and they are the other components of CBT-I.
The Trap in It
Running the routine while you lie there checking whether it is working turns relaxation into one more thing you are trying to pull off. That is a well-described way for sleep to go wrong. Falling asleep runs by itself, and attention, intention and effort aimed at it interfere with the very thing that is supposed to be automatic [4]. Trying is the problem, and a two-minute timer is an invitation to try.
How to Use It Without It Backfiring
Learn it during the day, when nothing is riding on it, the way Winter's cadets did: six weeks of practice, not one desperate attempt at 2am. Use it at bedtime if it feels calming. Judge it on whether you are less wound up, not on whether you beat the clock.
And if you are already in bed, fully awake and getting annoyed, the answer is not a better breathing pattern. Get up, keep the lights low, do something dull, and go back only when you feel sleepy [3]. That is stimulus control, and unlike relaxation it goes straight at the association between your bed and being awake.
Full guide: How to Fall Asleep Fast: What Actually Works.
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Citations
Edinger, J. D., Arnedt, J. T., Bertisch, S. M., et al. (2021). Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 17(2), 255–262. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8986 — Recommendation 5: "We suggest that clinicians use relaxation therapy as a single-component therapy for the treatment of chronic insomnia disorder in adults" (CONDITIONAL), versus a STRONG recommendation for multicomponent cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. The guideline defines relaxation therapy as structured exercises that reduce somatic tension (e.g. abdominal breathing, progressive muscle relaxation) and cognitive arousal (e.g. guided imagery training, meditation). Five RCTs supplied usable data, showing clinically significant improvement in sleep quality and responder rate; overall quality of evidence low, from risk of bias and imprecision. The evidence is for relaxation therapy as a category — no trial in it tested Winter's routine.
Winter, L. C. ("Bud") (1981). Relax & Win: Championship Performance in Whatever You Do. San Diego: A.S. Barnes & Company. ISBN 0-498-02541-1. — Primary source for the routine and for the two-minute standard, verified against the text. Winter lists "the need to teach combat aviators to be able to go to sleep in two minutes any time, day or night, under any and all conditions" among the goals of the Navy Pre-Flight relaxation program he was assigned to build, and reports that "after six weeks of the relaxation course" cadets "not only could get to sleep in two minutes, they could do it with a simulated cannon blast booming in the room." His account of the wartime problem is that aviators "cracked" under combat fatigue and that "we lost the man and the plane." His physical sequence is progressive release — face, shoulders, arms, chest, legs — and he prescribes tensing the muscles as the way to stay awake, not to fall asleep. A coach's account of his own course, not a controlled trial.
Perlis, M. L., Smith, M. T., Benson-Jungquist, C., & Posner, D. A. (2005). Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Insomnia: A Session-by-Session Guide. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29180-6 — Stimulus control and conditioned arousal; get out of bed once clearly awake, and return only when sleepy.
Espie, C. A., Broomfield, N. M., MacMahon, K. M. A., Macphee, L. M., & Taylor, L. M. (2006). The attention-intention-effort pathway in the development of psychophysiologic insomnia: A theoretical review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 10(4), 215–245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2006.03.002 — Theoretical review proposing the attention-intention-effort pathway: "sleep normalcy is a relatively automatic process" and is therefore "vulnerable, and may be inhibited, by focused attention and by direct attempts to control its expression." The mechanism by which trying to fall asleep, and monitoring whether it is working, extends wakefulness.