Sleeping by stages
There are 5 stages of sleep through which you should pass several times each night. The initial stages see you starting to drift off, beginning to relax, loosening your grip on the realities of consciousness.
These are the stages out of which you can easily be awoken by even minor noises (and why is it that people who snore always seem to fall asleep first?) or sudden thoughts about things you need to do tomorrow.
The next two stages see your body switching off its conscious faculties and sinking into blessed oblivion. You really don’t want to wake someone from these stages, as they’ll be confused and groggy, not to say grumpy.
Don’t wake the bear. The person who slumbers happily through a fire alarm or crying child has successfully reached stage three or four. Your body is repairing and restoring on a physical level during this time.
Once you reach stage five, you’ve joined the sleep committee in their lair and can start to benefit from their activities.
The pathways to success
Scientists have confirmed that the gloriously productive and creative work of the sleep committee is only available during REM sleep.
Non-REM sleep and quiet thinking time just don’t produce the same effects. They think that REM sleep allows the brain to form new connections without the interference of other thought pathways that occur when we are awake or in non-dream-state sleep.1 New information is assimilated into existing experiences, creating rich deposits of associations for future use.
The sleep committee is quietly but triumphantly effective – it is well worth prioritising good quality, uninterrupted sleep in order to make their acquaintance. Slumber soundly to think profoundly!
- Have a period of at least half an hour when you calm down and start to switch off before going to bed – don’t hurl yourself under the duvet after a frenetic evening of activity and expect to fall into peaceful sleep at once
- Don’t work in bed – bed needs to be associated with sleep, not the hassle of mental stimulation. The sleep committee can do all the brainwork for you, but only if you turn in and turn off
- Avoid caffeine in the evenings, or even all day if you find it hard to sleep soundly
- Try sleeping herbs such as valerian and hops if you have got into a pattern of poor sleep, or feel that you don’t make it to that helpful committee room frequently enough.
1Cai DJ et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009; 106(25): 10130–10134
