Split Sleep
I know, you don't get enough. Sleep, that it. It's epidemic in proportion with nearly a third of adults getting less than 6 hours. Besides being blamed on your uber-cool, addicting laptops, pads and play stations, it started with the incandescent light. Bedtime used to be when the sun went down or the candle faded. You can credit Thomas Edison with messing with our sleep cycles. Since the introduction of the light bulb, man's natural biorhythms have been artificially altered.
But, you know all of this. What is interesting to me is some new research suggesting that the 8-hour recommendation is fairly recent. It turns out other cultures in the world sleep in many different ways. We're familiar with Mexican siestas and the 2-hour Spanish lunch breaks. Napping is common in many countries, including China, India and Spain.
David K. Randall in his New York Times article entitled Rethinking Sleep(1) reports that: "[G]iven a chance to be free of modern life, the body would naturally settle into a split sleep schedule." This follows some historical records and early works of literature that suggested that there were two "sleeps". A first sleep and second sleep. The gap between the two can be a pristine time for thoughts, reflections, meditation, ritual, study and the like.
Subjects of a study were deprived of artificial light, like light bulbs, televisions or computers. The subjects slept through the night, but then began to wake up after midnight for a couple of hours, then returned to sleep. In the study, the:
"Subjects grew to like experiencing nighttime in a new way. Once they broke their conception of what form sleep should come in, they looked forward to the time in the middle of the night as a chance for deep thinking of all kinds, whether in the form of self-reflection, getting a jump on the next day or amorous activity."
This doesn't delight the Big Pharma who in 2008 benefitted almost $19 billion from direct-to-consumer prescription sleep medications. Our culture is not set up for a 2 hour gap of sleep in the middle of the night. Most people (now more than 92%) have jobs that do not allow for the afternoon "nap". However, like Google(3), there is widening acceptance of the necessity for smarter sleep for high-level job performances and napping and "alternative daily schedules" are being more tolerated. There's lots more in Randall's article.
The next time you find yourself awake in the middle of the night, shift your attitude. Instead of fretting (and creating anxiety) over being awake, take the opportunity to journal or meditate or contemplate or knit or pray. Avoid the reflex(4) to reach for your iPad.
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-sleep.html?pagewanted=all
(2) http://adage.com/article/news/antidepressant-sleeping-pill-sales-rest-recession/135037/
(3) Employees at Google are offered the chance to nap at work because the company believes it may increase productivity.
(4) I do believe it is becoming a patterned reflex, but that's a discussion for another time.
