Night time activities

What do you do when you wake in the night?

Seems like a strange question and I am guessing that most people would say that they lie in bed, tossing and turning and trying to get back to sleep - all the while stressing about not sleeping.

I had a new client recently and she wanted to find the final piece of the puzzle to help her sleep through the night. She had had insomnia for years and done a lot of work in improving it, but would still wake in the night. During this time she would play on-line games and work with clients on the other side of the world. that combined with exercising late at night meant that she was doing 3 activities that were stimulating her brain and not helping herself to get into a relaxed state in which to fall asleep.

My initial reaction was to encourage her to stop these activities and go through new ideas to help her relax and start sleeping through the night. However the more I listened to her, the more I realised that actually she had worked out a lifestyle that suited her.

I have mentioned in a previous post that in the past we had segmented sleep and this idea is still a big talking point in the sleep community and are we going against nature to try and sleep through the night? While we know it is possible to sleep in 8 hours blocks, most people actually do wake in the night and then fall straight back to sleep again and have no recollection of waking, therefore believe they have slept through. For some people, waking in the night means waking in the night and staying awake a while (for some a long while!)

What this girl had done was to build a lifestyle round segmented sleep. She would sleep for a while, then wake - do some work, play games etc then go back to sleep again - her second sleep. Luckily for her, she is self employed and has international clients, so actually this lifestyle works well for her.

I have also found that a some barworkers and 'graveyard' shift workers have insomnia and difficulty going to sleep - now this could be a reflection on their lifestyle, but could it also be that they have found a lifestyle that suits their sleeping patterns. When I have talked with them, they often say that they had poor sleeping habits before they started their work and again, when you talk to them of ways to change it, they don't really want to as it doesn't really bother them that much; they know that if they go to sleep late that they can sleep in during the morning.

In the end I only had a couple of sessions with this client and she left feeling more confident that actually her seep pattern, though strange, did actually work. When totaling up her sleep hours she was getting enough sleep and was not feeling tired or exhausted (common complaints of insomnia). By allowing her to have this pattern also meant that she stopped worrying about sleep and therefore slept better, she also allowed herself to sleep later in the mornings and restructured her day slightly to allow herself enough time to sleep in these two blocks.

So what do you get up to in the night? Are you like my client and can use your insomnia constructively? Or do you prefer to be able to sleep through the night? Rest assured that whatever your sleep style preferences there are ways available to help you achieve them!

Sweet dreams.

The second sleep

Do you often wake in the night and find it difficult to go back to sleep straight away?
Maybe it's not because you're a freak or different but because we are genetically programmed to do this!

There has been a lot of interest recently (with articles by the BBC, the Times and The Guardian amongst others) about 'the second sleep' and it seems that the human brain is actually programmed to sleep in two four hour chunks.

Research in the 1990's took volunteers and put them in 14 hours of darkness each day. After a few weeks the volunteers had started to sleep in two 4 hour blocks with a one to two hour period of being awake in the middle. despite being of great interest to sleep scientists, the belief that an eight hour block of sleep being the norm has persisted.

Then 2005, historian Roger Ekirch published a book called At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, where he draws on his research where he found over 500 references to segmented sleep in books, in diaries, court records, medical books and literature. what he found interesting was the way in which the references to this sleep pattern were made - as if it was totally normal and that everyone did it.

It seems that the labourers would come home from the work, have something to eat then go to bed - usually because they were really tired! Then approx 4 hours later they would wake up and do things! It was a time for conversation, for prayer, visiting the neighbours, having sex etc. Then they would go to bed and have a second sleep, and wake at dawn ready for another days work.
A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".

Ekirch found that references to the segmented sleep dwindle from the 17th Century onwards and links this to social change, the shift to living in cities and eventually the increase in street and domestic lighting, which helped develop a leaning towards socialising in the evening and pushed sleep into one later block of up to 8 hours.

Though the majority of people have adapted to sleeping in one 8 hour block, sleep researchers now think that this could be the root cause of sleep maintenance insomnia, where sufferers wake during the night. It is helpful to realise that most people do wake in the night but that most do not remember it, whereas an insomnia suffer, who is already stressed about lack of sleep, may become more anxious at waking and take longer to fall back asleep. For these people it the realisation that it is not some abnormality but in fact genetic programming may help them and their anxieties around sleep.

In fact, if we look there is still evidence of this segmented sleep around us. Babies who need to wake in the night for feeding, toddlers who still need an afternoon nap, and in hotter climates - an afternoon siesta during the heat of the day, followed by working later in the cool of the evening. The modern world with 24 hour electricity and an unbroken day work ethic actually is encroaching on our sleep patterns even more.

So maybe for those of us who do wake in the night, we need to be celebrating this fact - that we are more in tune with nature and our bodies, that we can use this period of wakefulness for contemplation, meditation and destress (just like our forefathers used the time for prayer and relaxation). Since I found out about segmented sleep a few months ago, I am more relaxed about waking in the night and call it my 'throwback'. Ironically, since being more relaxed about night time waking, I sleep better!

Please comment below if you are a segmented sleeper or have issues around night time waking, I'd love to know your thoughts.

Sweet dreams!