Like about 60 million other Americans, I am sometimes prone to insomnia, which may have to do with my affection for caffeine, overall stressiness, and/or the fact that my cat is a big jerk who always wants to hang out and talk a lot at 4 a.m. To minimize my time spent staring at the ceiling for hours on end, I sleep with a lavender-stuffed teddy bear. You stick him in the microwave to warm him up, and the herbs inside (rosebud and hyssop and rosemary and so on, in addition to the lovely lavender) release their calming scent and gently help you drift off to dreamland. The whole nuking-the-teddy-bear ritual always feels a bit odd, but it works and generally keeps me from having to wake up at some dreadful hour and invariably end up contemplating the meaning of life (ick).

So many ThisNexters have their own inventive sleep solutions, a few of which are even more high-tech than my teddy bear. Like the Sleeptracker recommended by Jean and Ivar Zantinge: Worn like a watch, the device picks up on physical signals from your body, determines your best possible waking time, and then rouses you from sleep at just the right moment. And, having owned Select Comfort beds for two decades, Eric Hammond “can’t imagine going back to the other kind” (“No more sagging in the middle as the bed gets older and my wife and I each have our own ‘sleep number’ to adjust our sides of the bed to different firmness levels,” says Eric of his Select Comfort Air Bed).

If you’re in the market for a new mattress, consider upgrading to one that’s formaldehyde-free and far healthier than your current model. Josh Dorfman promises that the “totally comfortable, completely non-toxic and eco-friendly” the Organic Naturlatex EcoHaven Mattresses by Natura will give you “the best night’s sleep you could dream of.”

To help get rid of that “crunched-neck feeling,” Pam Cohn suggests the Contour Cloud Pillow, an ergonomically designed, memory-foam-layered support that “helps tremendously in getting truly restful sleep.” Pam also catches her ZZZs with the help of Badger’s Sleep Enhancer Massage Oil, a blend of tension-easing essential oils that our shopcaster dubs “the anti-pharmaceutical way to go” for deep sleep.

Those natural sleep solutions abound in the blogosphere, where Everything Yoga talks up the DVD Yoga in Bed: 20 Asanas to Do in Pajamas. Offering “10-minute morning and evening routines that are easy to work into your daily routine,” Yoga In Bed can help you wind down before – or, rather, after - hitting the sack.

Over at Blinking Lights, blogger Andy has found “the best sleep I’ve had in recent memory” by drinking honey-sweetened chamomile tea every night before bed. For a gorgeously flavored chamomile blend, try Herb & Fruited Chamomile Citrus from Mighty Leaf, an eco-friendly San Francisco-based company that specializes artisan-crafted, whole leaf teas. Added bonus: “The bags are like lingerie for tea,” ThisNext member Kara very brilliantly points out.