Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and panicked? It’s 3am, your mind’s racing and you can’t get back to sleep. In Australia today, 22% of 18-24 year olds report frequently waking up in the middle of the night. Everyone I talk to seems to be anxious about how much sleep they’re getting, when they’re waking up, and if it’s all enough.
But did you know that what we might actually need is multiple sleeps? Nocturnal biphasic sleep, the segmentation of sleep across two different periods of the night, is a phenomenon which some academics say might once have been widespread among our ancestors.
Roger Ekirch, an American historian and one of the main contributors to writing about nocturnal biphasic sleep, published a book in 2004 about worldwide sleeping habits which explored this phenomenon. In it, he claimed that in Western Europe before the modern era, most people experienced sleep in two shifts of roughly the same length between dusk and dawn, with an hour or more’s “quiet wakefulness” in between. People would do chores, pray, quietly socialise, and many other activities under low light.
But could this idea of nocturnal biphasic sleep work as a solution to the anxiety that we have about lying in bed, unable to doze back off? I gave it a go myself.
I got a candle to use as a source of natural light. To wake myself up, I’d set an alarm for 2:30am. I’m not religious, and my mum wasn’t all that keen to socialise at 3 in the morning, so I decided to do the dishes, read a little bit, and collect my thoughts for about an hour, before going back to bed for my second sleep.
I sort of enjoyed it. I’ve always had a tendency to revenge procrastinate, even if it affects my sleep. But it was great to go to bed earlier and still get the time for myself. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I felt productive instead of anxious.
Nocturnal biphasic sleep isn’t a one size fits all solution to sleeping problems, and it might not suit everyone. But it’s comforting to remember if you find yourself frequently waking up in the middle of the night, as almost a quarter of young people seem to do. What I’ve learned from it is not to panic if it happens – just remember your ancestors and get up and do something useful.
Hear the full story about nocturnal biphasic sleep on the health episode of AFTRS FM!
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