Finding yourself wide awake after a few hours of sleep, or waking often during the night, is called "parasomnia" or "sleep maintenance insomnia", and it's much more common than people think. A 2005 US National Sleep Foundation poll found that 75 per cent of adults frequently experience symptoms of sleep dysfunction, including waking during the night.

Just as the victims in slasher flicks make fatal errors (why are you running up the stairs?), we're often our own worst enemies when it comes to a solid night of sleep. "People think that because they're able to fall asleep, they'll stay asleep, even if they've had too much caffeine," says Dr Rubin Naiman, a sleep and dream specialist and author of Healing Night: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming, and Awakening.

But for most of us, the culprit's not that ill-conceived 5pm espresso. "The root of most sleep problems is stress," says Jeffrey Thompson, creator of an audio sleeping aid called the Delta Sleep System.

We're overloaded, over-stimulated and overwhelming our bodies' ability to relax. "Our nervous system is built for a sprint, but we're living in a stress marathon," he says. "If you go to bed worried, you're probably going to wake up in the middle of the night," adds Dr Naiman. And when that happens, as you probably know, the next day is pretty much shot.

A new generation of sleep scientists are overturning the conventional wisdom about parasomnia. (Counting sheep? Out.) The doctors say: You can do it. With a few simple changes in your routine, a little visualisation, a couple of surprisingly counter-intuitive moves, and perhaps an attitude adjustment, a peaceful night of slumber can be yours.

Here's their best advice:

Throw out your definition of a good night's sleep

Just as three meals a day has given way to all-day grazing and smaller portions, "what's good for you" has changed here, too.

"Thinking it's necessary to stay asleep for eight hours straight may be unrealistic," says Dr David Neubauer, co-author of Understanding Sleeplessness (amazon.com). "Just as we experience a dip in alertness mid-afternoon, the inverse is a dip in sleepiness in the middle of the night. There's strong evidence that there's a kind of awakening that's totally normal." History supports this take, Dr Naiman says. "Before the industrial revolution, people had their first sleep for three to four hours, awoke for an hour or two, then slept for another three or four hours."

Even waking every 60 to 90 minutes can be part of a healthy sleep pattern. The deeper stages of sleep, or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, occur about every 90 minutes and get longer as the night goes on, so your brain might become more alert between those cycles.

Since we're conditioned to think that waking during the night is a problem, when it happens, we panic. That reaction causes our brains to awaken even further, Dr Neubauer explains.

If you find yourself awake in pre-dawn hours, Dr Naiman advises first assessing your physical state. Do you have an ache, a cramp, or need to go to the bathroom? If so, take care of it.

If you don't have a physical complaint, then chances are you're experiencing a normal stage of the sleep cycle. Knowing this "helps replace worries that you'll be useless without eight solid hours of sleep with more neutral thoughts," suggests Dr Sat Bir Khalsa, instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School in the US. "The useful thought is: 'I can handle the disruption and still feel rested.'"