Recently, my sister and I spoke about our sleep patterns when we were young. I was a rock. The kind of kid who needed hours and hours of sleep. I slept so heavily that I once fell on the floor, woke up and decided to keep sleeping.
My sister was a little more sensitive to noise and light and the smell of popcorn, which our parents seemed to make often. She would find her way into the parent’s bedroom most nights, then back into hers.
We both grew up to be functional, kind adults, so one might wonder if the type of sleep really matters (although I became a writer, so you might want to question my lifestyle choices).
The type of sleep most of us consider “normal” as adults is also known as monophasic sleep. This became popular in the industrial age, when working hours increased. (1)
Other countries have made biphasic sleep the norm, and some would argue that this is the more natural way to sleep. (Too late for me with my nine hour a night habit. You can’t take that away from me!)
Biphasic involves a longer period of rest at night, say 5-6 hours and then a siesta mid-day for the length of one sleep cycle (around 90 minutes). Some also take segmented sleep, which is just as it sounds, with a wakeful period right in the center of the night.
Some wonder, if segmented sleep is a healthy way to get your zz’s, is insomnia just a regular part of the sleep-wake cycle?
Food for thought.
While insomnia can breed anxiety, those who have tried biphasic sleep have said that the wakeful time was deeply relaxing. It is all in the perspective. If you expect to wake up in the middle of the night and used that time to tap into your divine inspiration, would it be nearly as stressful?
In order to have this feel truly relaxing and to get your 8 hours, this may mean hitting the hay a little earlier than usual (one experimenter put himself to bed at 7pm). (2)
Children often have a biphasic sleep cycle (as a mom of a toddler, let me tell you, naps are everything). We condition ourselves to sleep once a day and many of us drag through the day with limited energy, trying to perk ourselves up with caffeine.
What if it were socially acceptable for you to just have a nap?
Some forward thinking companies encourage sleeping at the office. A nap a day can reduce stress levels and increase alertness. Google has the EnergyPod chair for its employees, which feature a privacy visor and built-in music to wake you from slumber. (3) The Huffington Post has “nap rooms.” Even NASA has the EnergyPod system to encourage “creative problem solving.”
If you don’t work for such a forward thinking-company, but you tend to wake in the middle of the night, you might want to consider biphasic sleep. You can think of dividing your sleep into “first sleep” and “second sleep.” This is a very natural way to sleep, even though our circadian rhythms have been greatly disturbed by inventions such as the lightbulb and the Smartphone. It is recommended that you use your awake time for other endeavors other than feeding yourself a steady stream of cute kitten videos.
Biphasic sleep can help to reduce insomnia anxiety, enable flexible scheduling (ahem, parenting) and yield the benefits of power napping.
It might not be for everyone, but it is certainly a way to consider boosting your cognitive function. (4)