Counting sheep

Counting sheep is a mental exercise used in some Anglophonecultures as a means of lulling oneself to sleep. It most likely arose from the practice of sheep counting, a traditional numbering system used by some Britishshepherdsto count their flocks.

In most depictions of the activity, the practitioner envisions an endless series of identical white sheep jumping over a fence, while counting the number that do so. The idea, presumably, is to induce boredom while occupying the mind with something simple, repetitive, and rhythmic, all of which are known to help humans sleep.

Although the practice is largely a stereotype, and rarely used as a solution for insomnia, it has been so commonly referencedby cartoons, comic strips, and other mass media, that it has become deeply engrained into popular culture's notion of sleep. The term "counting sheep" has entered the English languageas an idiomaticterm for insomnia. Sheep themselves have become associated with sleep, or lack thereof. For example, an ad campaignof the Sertamattresscompany features the Serta Counting Sheep, a flock of animatedsheep who resent said company's mattresses for supposedly rendering their services unnecessary.

According to an experimentconducted by researchers at Oxford University, counting sheep is actually an inferior means of inducing sleep. Subjects who instead imagined "a beach or a waterfall" were forced to expend more mental energy, and fell asleep faster than those asked to simply count sheep.

It has also been whimsically suggested that the phrase originates from a Hebrewpun on the Latinphrase "sopor sond" (literally, sleep deeply/soundly). The Hebrew pun is ???? ??? (sopwor tsoan), an imperative that means "count sheep!". However, this is most likely a folk etymology.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting+sheep Wikipedia article Counting sheep.