Sleep Program Main PageOur ideas of normal sleep may be wrong. There is research that indicates that normal mammalian sleep involves both periods of what we experience as ordinary sleep alternating with periods of “quiet repose” (which is explained below). It has been shown that humans tend to adopt this sleep rhythm if free from artificial light sources for several weeks or months. Some people experimented with sleep rhythms and found that we may normally enter a state of quiet repose before falling asleep that lasts for about 2 hours. Then the person sleeps for about 4 hours, has two hours of quiet repose, then sleeps for another 4 hours, has another two hours of quiet repose. This was done on a 14 hour winter sleep schedule, it should be adjusted for the differing amounts of natural light in other seasons.
Quiet repose is a state of consciousness between full awakening and the unconsciousness of usual sleep. It even has physiological differences from sleep and waking states. What this means is that there may be periods of quiet repose which are completely natural, but people assume it is time to “rev up” the mind and start thinking/worrying about something. Another option would be just letting the mind wander gently while just kicking back and watching with equanimity trusting that sleep will come again soon enough.
Because most people are conditioned to believe that if they are sleeping they should be unconscious, they tend to reach this state of quiet repose and instead of resting there tranquilly, letting their minds float, they panic. They may have thoughts start floating through their minds such as... “Oh, gosh, I should be asleep! I’m not! Oh what if I don’t get back to sleep then tomorrow will be awful?! If tomorrow is awful then the things and people I’ve been counting on will not happen well and then I’ll have more work or feel unhappy...” and they work themselves into a fine tizzy. These thoughts make perfect sense if one has the belief that people have to stay totally unconscious for 8 hours straight. Fortunately for us, researchers are discovering that staying unconscious for eight hours in a row is not necessarily natural to human beings (even though we’ve been accustomed to trying it for many generations).
So, for the sake of good rational attempts to solve problems it may be worth experimenting with the attitude that being slightly awake at night may be just fine. People who have waking periods may do well to either accept the waking period as a time of quiet wakefulness (hard to do with our supercharged culture) or wonder about who is calling when we awake (see Who is Calling article).
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