Sleep Cycles, Explained
And two ways we can work with them.
“So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you’re in a science fiction movie. And whisper, ‘The creature is regenerating itself.” — George Carlin
We spend a third of our lives asleep, without really knowing why it happens, or what it is.
Can you imagine spending a third of your life at work, without ever learning what your job was? You’d go into each day expecting its failure or success to be a total gamble, beyond your control.
Don’t treat your sleep like Russian roulette.
The science of sleep has made leaps and bounds over the last half a century. It’s made up some of my favourite neuroscience and psychology papers in the U.K.
I’m going to cut out the jargon, and share the good, essential stuff.
Let’s have a look at our brains on sleep — what’s happening, why it happens, and how we can use this to rest more deeply.
The Sleep Cycle
There are 3 distinct stages of dreamless sleep. (Stages 3 and 4 are sometimes separated, but bear a strong similarity.)
These 3 stages are easy to grasp, because they follow on from one another in a logical order. You can’t skip from Stage 1 to Stage 3, or vice-versa…
