Here are a few things that I've found about my same problems:
1.) Do you injest any caffeine after 3 or 4pm? I go to bed around 9pm and if I've had any caffiene after 5pm, at the latest, I will toss and turn. I will wake up at every little instance. In my younger days (20's) I could take diet pills and go to bed, but those days are over.
2.) Do you find yourself waking up with troubles on your mind? You need to learn to let things go. Stop fretting about things you can't do anything about while you sleep. I have to pray quite a bit when I start doing that. I can't fix it in my sleep so I have to tell myself to not worry about it until tomorrow. I pray for the Lord to shut my over-active brain down and help me deal with those things that are troubling me and accept those things I can't do anything about. For me it is having just a bit of faith to hand things over. I have trouble doing that and tend to fret.
3.) Do you have unresolved fears? Our house was broken into three years ago in broad daylight (when I should have been home, but stepped out). I came home in the middle of the robbery but for some reason changed my routine that day and didn't walk in the house to put my purse down. I instead go the kids all out of their seats and then searched for a toy that rolled out of the van and under the carriage. To this day I have no idea how the toy got up to the front of the van and then roll out that door. (God was looking out for me) At any rate, I sometimes can't sleep because of it. For the first year it was horrible. I heard every noise. They caught the young man that did it because he left his fingerprints all over the house. He spent a few months in a detention center, but now he's out. Security is a big issue for me as well.
4.) Do you worry about your child when it sleeps? My neighbor gave me this Angel monitor that you put under the mattress. It will sound an alarm if your baby does move a little every so often. Babies move alot when they sleep. That helped with my fear of SIDS. I also have a three way monitor from Safety 1st that scans each of my children's rooms during the night. I listen to each room for about 10 or 20 seconds and then it goes to the next. I can't hear my children at night and that helps me. Unfortunately I haven't found a replacement for it and I now have to listen to shorts in the circuitry on occasion.
I suppose after all that I would say that for me it is the ability to shut my brain off. To concentrate on having and remembering a little faith in the Lord that he's there watching over me and my family. Trying to handle things that trouble me in an efficient way and then let things go that I can't do anything about. Telling myself at night that my sleep is very important to my well being and I need to relax.
Make sure you are comfortable...your mattress is a good one, your jammies are comfortable (I get real hot when I sleep so I sleep with warm jammies and a sheet....then I don't freeze when I have to get up in the night with the kids).
I hope some of that helped.