Description

Right now i am so sleepy so i will explaintoyou later. 1 sheep, 2 sheep, 3 sheep ＿ﾉ乙(､ﾝ､)_ zZZZzz

Counting sheep is a mental exercise used in some cultures asameans of putting oneself to sleep.

In most depictions of the activity, the practitioner envisionsanendless series of identical white sheep jumping over a fence,whilecounting them as they do so. The idea, presumably, is toinduceboredom while occupying the mind with something simple,repetitive,and rhythmic, all of which are known to help humanssleep.

Although the practice is largely a stereotype, and rarely usedasa solution for insomnia, it has been so commonly referencedbycartoons, comic strips, and other mass media, that it hasbecomedeeply engrained into popular culture's notion of sleep. Theterm"counting sheep" has entered the English language as anidiomaticterm for insomnia. Sheep themselves have become associatedwithsleep, or lack thereof.

According to an experiment conducted by researchers atOxfordUniversity, counting sheep is actually an inferior meansofinducing sleep. Subjects who instead imagined "a beach orawaterfall" were forced to expend more mental energy, andfellasleep faster than those asked to "simply distract fromthoughts,worries and concerns." In contrast to news reports abouttheexperiment, the experiment and the resulting scholarly articledidnot explicitly address counting sheep.[1] Sleep could beachievedby any number of complex activities that expend mentalenergy.

An early reference to counting sheep as a means ofattainingsleep can be found in Illustrations of Political Economyby HarrietMartineau, from 1832:

"It was a sight of monotony to behold one sheep afteranotherfollow the adventurous one, each in turn placing itsfore-feet onthe breach in the fence, bringing up its hind legsafter it,looking around for an instant from the summit, and thenmaking theplunge into the dry ditch, tufted with locks of wool. Theprocessmight have been more composing if the field might have beenanotherman's property, or if the flock had making its way outinstead ofin; but the recollection of the scene of transit servedto send thelandowner to sleep more than once, when occurring at theend of thetrain of anxious thoughts which had kept him awake."(p.355–356)

An even earlier reference can be found in "Don Quixote" byMiguelde Cervantes, from 1605 (the exception being Cervantessubstituting"goats" for "sheep"):

"Let your worship keep count of the goats the fisherman istakingacross, for if one escapes the memory there will be an endof thestory, and it will be impossible to tell another word ofit."

Cervantes probably adapted the story of counting goats fromastory of counting sheep in the early twelfth-century SpanishworkDisciplina Clericalis. The section The King and hisStory-teller(section 12) uses the idea of counting sheephumorously.[2]Disciplina Clericalis draws mainly on literarysources from theIslamic world. Counting sheep was probably a widelyrecognizedpractice in the Islamic world before the early twelfthcentury.

Sheep Sheep Sleep Sleep. Help Sleep.