Perchance to Dream

New Light on Segmented Sleep

Previously I’ve written about segmented sleep. It seems that in olden times, before the advent of artificial lighting, human beings typically went to sleep soon after sunset, and slept in two shifts—"first sleep" and "second sleep"—with a period of waking in between. Our ancestors welcomed that mid-night waking period, known as "the nightwatch" as a time to stoke the fire, check on children or animals, pray, meditate, make love, or gaze at the stars. This “segmented” pattern of sleep was considered normal, natural, and pleasurable. It can still be observed in many other mammalian species, and in humans living in pre-industrial societies.

Roger Ekirch is a professor of history at Virginia Tech and the author of "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past." His writings have helped me form my own ideas and opinions about sleep and society. The New York Times recently ran a brief, eloquent piece of his entitled Dreams Deferred, well worth reading, in which he sheds new light on the historical phenomenon of segmented sleep. He has an interesting story to tell.

Ekirch feels that, contrary to much of the current wisdom on the near universality of insomnia and sleep deprivation (and which, incidentally, is in part fueled by a pharmaceutical industry intent on marketing drugs to those sleep deprived masses), we really are enjoying a kind of Golden Age of sleep right now. True, the advent of artificial lighting, television, and computers, plus the scheduling demands of modern industry, have shortened our hours of sleep considerably. But Ekirch believes that the quality of our sleep is probably better than ever before. He cites the prevalence of lice, noxious chamber pots, and tempestuous weather, as well as untreatable, chronic respiratory illnesses like influenza, pulmonary tuberculosis and asthma, as factors likely to have kept our forebears tossing and turning on their beds of straw and listlessly dragging their knuckles through the countless eons prior to the advent of double-hung windows, Tempur-Pedic mattresses, and penicillin.

Curiously, to my mind, Ekirch cites segmented or "broken" sleep as another factor contributing to poor sleep quality in former times. That's odd, especially since almost all the contemporary accounts he cites seems to sing the praises of this slower, more leisurely sleep pattern. For example, he cites a 16th-century doctor who lauds the nightwatch as the best time for sexual intimacy, because the well rested couples have "more enjoyment" and "do it better.” And he cites the 17th-century moralist Francis Quarles, who urged his readers to “Let the end of thy first sleep raise thee from thy repose: then hath the body the best temper; then hath thy soul the least encumbrance.” That hardly sounds like the raving of a cranky insomniac, does it?

Furthermore, I haven't seen any evidence indicating that dividing a night's sleep into two segments with an hour of quiet wakefulness in between does anything to detract from the quality of sleep, and I suspect there isn't any. Segmented sleep presents a problem only when there is a strict limitation on the number of hours available for nightly rest. If you need eight hours sleep and you've only got eight hours (or less!) in which to get them, then you'd darn well better go to sleep on time and stay that way until the alarm clock jumps off the nightstand. Under those circumstances, sleep is as rigidly regimented as any production line, and any interruption of those precious hours is going to be cause for great frustration and disappointment, emotions which are themselves bound to produce excess arousal delaying the return to sleep. But if instead you turned in at eight or eight thirty, not long after sundown, and were at your ease until sunrise at five-thirty or six in the morning, that would give you a good nine or nine and a half hours in which to go gentle into that good first half of the night, awaken for a self-nurturing hour of meditation, sex, or astronomy and, finally, to savor a deep, dream-dappled second sleep 'til the cock crowed.

As if to further undermine his own argument, Ekirch cites some fascinating research conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health, previously unknown to me, in which human subjects deprived of nighttime illumination exhibited just that pattern of segmented sleep that is suggested by the historical sources. The research found that during their periods of wakefulness these subject secreted significantly higher levels of prolactin, “the same hormone that allows hens to sit happily on their eggs for long periods.” Ekirch, or perhaps it was the researchers themselves, speculates that those higher prolactin levels probably explain the feelings of peace and complacency associated with “first waking” in the historical sources, and that prolactin is what makes the difference between a storm tossed night of insomnia and the “non-anxious wakefulness” typifying the nightwatch.

Setting these quibbles aside, there is still much to recommend Ekirch’s article and his book. To his great credit, he cites Dr. Thomas Wehr, the scientist who conducted the NIMH experiments, opining that “some common sleep disorders may nothing more than sleep’s older, primal pattern trying to assert itself—‘breaking through,’ as Dr. Wehr has put it, into today’s “artificial world.” What a blessing to hear this from someone else’s lips, for this is exactly what I have been saying to anyone who would listen for several years now. In that case, the most effective course of therapy is simply to allow more time in that busy schedule of yours for introspection, contemplation, rest, relaxation, and sleep, sleep, sleep.

Pleasure and Correct Action

A recent thread on Feldyforum, the on-line discussion group for practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method, addresses one of the key assumptions of the Feldenkrais Method, and I suppose of somatic education in general. The assumption is that a human being, given several options for action, can be relied on to choose the one that is most efficient, effective, and well organized.

As I read this thread, I notice the omission of one important element, and that is PLEASURE. Pleasure to my mind is our greatest, surest guide to optimal function. Any organism is drawn instinctively to the manner of action or expression which is most pleasurable. And the most pleasurable way is invariably the most effective, the most efficient, the most conserving of our vital energies.

This relationship between pleasure and optimal function was made explicit by neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp in his book Affective Neuroscience. He wrote:

"A general scientific definition of the ineffable concept we call pleasure can start with the supposition that pleasure indicates something that is biologically useful....Useful stimuli are those that inform the brain of their potential to restore the body toward homeostatic equilibrium when it has deviated from its biologically dictated "set-point" level."

Recognizing the biological importance of pleasure can help us to understand and explain the assumption that we always choose the best way. It suggests that if we can, first, discover for ourselves one or several ways of action that are different than what we already know and, second, come to feel and acknowledge which those different ways are indeed more pleasurable, then we are on the way to meaningful change. After all, without pleasure, where is the incentive to change?

Long-time students of the Feldenkrais Method are well acquainted with this principle: Correct action feels exquisitely pleasurable—no matter that we may sometimes experience frustration, even pain, in the process of discovering it. (Some of you will share my fond memory of the blissful expression on Feldenkrais master Gaby Yaron's face, and in her entire being, when she used to pronounce some movement, "Genau Genug!"—exactly enough.) Overly forceful, misdirected action always lacks that pleasurable element.

To the extent that this ability to discover the correct action and to feel the pleasurable feelings that accompany it is generalized, so that we can go on to achieve it in any situation, we begin to enjoy full spontaneity, and full freedom of thought, action, and expression. IMHO, that's what keeps us and our students coming back to the FM year after year.

Drawing On Your Feet

When I was in art school we were taught to use large, flowing S-curves to define the figure, and tight little "joyous noodling" (sic!) for shading and tone. The teachers never said a word about how to move your body to produce those figures, but when you watched them demonstrate, all the movement was distal, in the fingers, hand, arm, maybe the shoulder. It was "all in the wrist!"

Later, I studied Chinese calligraphy with a Taoist master. He would stand by as you wielded the brush, and if you moved from your hand or arm alone, he would slap your arm and say, "No good!" He insisted that the movement of the brush had to come from the feet, through the pelvis and spine, to the hand. Well, he was certainly no Feldenkrais teacher--but the message was a good one! I remember a huge painting he did with several large, sinuous characters dancing across the page. I asked for a translation and he said, "When the whole body is spacious, the true self emerges spontaneously." I never forgot that!

Many years ago I created a Feldenkrais lesson that illustrates this principle. Here it is in a nutshell:

1) First the student stands, turning slowly to the right and left, gauging the range of movement--how far can you see to the right, to the left? Is the movement perfectly smooth and fluid, or not?

2) Then, standing, turning the pelvis right and left. Then shifting weight right and left. Then combining turning and shifting into a single easy movement. Of course we'll introduce lots of nice non-habitual variations at each stage to make this easy and pleasurable.

3) Then repeat the original turning movement--how do you do it now?

4) Next, the student stands at a table with a large sheet of paper pinned to it. In their (preferably non-dominant) hand they hold a soft conte crayon or charcoal, lightly touching the paper. The idea is to continue those global movements of the pelvis to generate movements of the crayon on the paper, without allowing the cortex or the hand itself, to interfere. Hold the crayon with varying grips. Let the movements become more and more smooth and natural. Try it with one or both eyes closed; while singing or humming; while rolling your eyes; while laughing. And yes, try it with the dominant hand as well!

The AHA! part--the revelatory aspect of this lesson--is that, with some practice, those seemingly aimless movements of the pelvis start to produce some very distinctive, repeating figures on the page--large, sweeping, sideways figure-eights or infinity symbols. The drawing becomes a very accurate map of the pelvic movement. You come to understand that while the detail of drawing may come from the hand-eye coordination, it is the free movements of the pelvis that give it its underlying orderliness, rhythm, and power.

5) Finally, repeat the original turning movement--how do you do it now?

Try it, you'll like it!