For the past few weeks I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night. I’m usually awake for an hour or two, but I usually fall back asleep until I need to wake up for the day around 5 or 5:30. This pattern has been starting to frustrate me, as it sometimes makes me tired in the afternoon. And, as anyone knows who works in a cubicle at an office job, sleepy afternoons = sugar cravings & trips to the vending machine.
I ran across this post on MarksDailyApple.com this morning, though, that made me look at this sleep cycle in a different way. Evidently, it was common for our ancestors to wake up in the middle of the night. This hour of wakefulness was used for meditation and contemplation. I love this quote from the article:
Robert Louis Stevenson liked the idea, too. Sleep historian (awesome-sounding job!) Roger Ekirch writes of Stevenson who, in the fall of 1878, while trekking through the French highlands on foot, alone, made a remarkable discovery. As anyone who backpacks or spends time outdoors will corroborate, Stevenson found himself drifting off to sleep shortly after sunset. He awoke around midnight, smoked a cigarette, and, only after “enjoying an hour’s contemplation,” fell back asleep. That hour, that “one stirring hour” moved him; Stevenson had never before experienced a “more perfect hour.” He had awoken not because of an interloper, a night terror, or any other external actor, but because of what he later described as a “wakeful influence [that] goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere” and is unknown to “those who dwell in houses.”
Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/biphasic-sleep/#ixzz1vyifI7dM
The article goes on to say that like most things, perception affects your reality, or makes your new reality. If, instead of getting frustrated and worked up about the 2 or 3AM wakeups, you view it as an opportunity to relax in a different way, the interruption in your sleep can actually be a good thing.
I’m going to have to try this approach when I wake up tonight at 3AM again.
