Festival of Sleep Day

In this post, we'll take a look at how to get good, quality sleep at night, what you can do during your evening routine to make things better & the benefits of biphasic sleep.

Why? Because it's Festival of Sleep Day! :)

Climb into your PJ’s, jump into bed and relax, or even take a nap if you are able! The Festival of Sleep Day was encouraged so that people could enjoy some relaxation and much-needed “shut-eye” after the holiday period. - DaysoftheYear.com

According to research, 1 out of 3 Americans are sleep-deprived because they don't get enough sleep and/or the quality of their sleep is impaired. How about you?

​Are you getting enough sleep? If not, here are ways that changing your evening routine may help...
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Does Your Evening Routine Need Tweaking? Take the Quiz

True or False...

(1) You often eat dinner later than you intended, and on those nights, you often go to bed later, too.

(2) When dinner is over, you're already exhausted, so the dishes-and-wipe-down routine happens on fumes, and there's no energy left for a me-time evening routine.

(3) You like the idea dedicating time for simple pleasures or restful self-care, but more often than you'd like, that time never gets added to the schedule.

(4) You often go to bed later than you planned, because completing what's on your to-do list takes longer than you anticipated.

(5) You go to bed on time, but can't sleep because your mind is still spinning.

If you are the type to keep running all the time, perhaps the first step on your Sabbath Simplicity journey is to begin to see the evening as a time to take a small rest, to reconnect relationally, to stop.
- Rest: Living in Sabbath Simplicity​

Maybe aromatherapy can help you to wind down, and let go of all of the tension or stress the day handed you, so you can get to sleep & wake up refreshed the next morning.

Lavender is a great essential oil for all three purposes.

It can help you relax and can hug away your stress and tension. It can help you surrender to sleep when it's time to go to bed. And it's soothing properties may make the entire wind down process easier than it would be otherwise.

Lavender calms the nervous system by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and skin temperature – all processes which take place during the body’s natural transition to sleep. - Tuck.com

Benefits of Biphasic Sleep

Would a split sleep schedule help you?

​Almost all of us do all of our sleeping during one period of time each day. But is that really the best way?

Let's look at how biphasic sleep could benefit you.

 Biphasic sleep is the idea of breaking
up the sleep period into 2 distinct
and separate time periods.

Some studies suggest that humans would naturally adopt this style of sleeping when they're deprived of clocks and external time cues like the sun. 

Typically, biphasic sleep consists of...

• A core sleep period of 3 – 4.5 hours
• A secondary sleep period of 90 minutes.

Many people think of this second period of sleep as a "nap." The 90-minute time frame is important because most people have a sleep cycle of 90 minutes.

Your greatest challenge is likely to be fitting the nap into your schedule.

Ideally, you could nap when you're most tired. This seems to be in the afternoon for many of us.

If you don't work outside the home, 3pm maybe an easy time to take your nap. 

But for women who would be at work then, taking a nap just before or after dinner seems to be the best way to fit one in during the day.

Benefits of Biphasic Sleep

Here are the biggest potential benefits of biphasic sleep...

• Reduced total time spent sleeping. Biphasic sleepers don't seem to need to 7 or 8 recommended hours.
• Improved quality of sleep. Biphasic sleepers report that their sleep quality is deeper and better.
• More dream recall. For those who like to analyze their dreams, these decreased periods of sleep appear to making remembering their dreams easier.

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Starting a Biphasic Sleep Practice

You may find that starting a biphasic sleep practice is easy. Just take a nap for 90 minutes in the early evening and then go to bed three to four hours later than you usually do.

Expect to be tired for the first week. And give yourself 21-28 days to really evaluate if biphasic sleep is for you. If all is well, after that time, you'll know that this sleep practice works well for you.

Do you take a planned nap each day? Would aiming for less nighttime sleep, but scheduling or taking an afternoon nap work for you?

My take - I'd like to try it, because I think it would make it easier to get up early in the morning. But I think I would want my nap to happen around late morning or early afternoon.

See you tomorrow!

Love, Jeanine