Session 7: Sleep Part 2

Beds

Given that we spend about a third of our lifetimes in bed, this period undoubtedly has a significant impact on our bodies. What factors make a bed healthy? What’s the best sleep position? How can you adjust your sleep set up to encourage better whole-body health? Let’s explore these topics.

The History of Beds

The earliest known beds consisted of grass mats piled on the ground. In the days when humans lived in the wild, the point of beds was to have a layer between your body and the earth for increased warmth and to deter bugs. For most of our existence, beds have been as simple as that.

Eventually, wealthy people distinguished themselves by sleeping in beds that looked more like the set up most of us imagine: soft and squishy mattresses and pillows raised up on a bed frame. Since the Industrial Revolution changed the availability of materials, beds that were soft and squishy became much more ubiquitous. Why? Firstly, if wealthy people were doing it, it must have been a good thing. Additionally, we are drawn to the comfort of soft surfaces in the same way that we are drawn to the comfort of eating sugar. And finally, a bed raised off the ground is a clean, dry, hygienic, safe place to sleep.

What Makes a Healthy Bed?

The primary thing one needs in a bed is a clean, dry, hygienic, and safe place to sleep. That’s what those grass mats in the old caves were all about.

The secondary but also important aspect of a bed is for it to comfortable. A bed should be a sleep surface that allows for the rejuvenation of the whole body. Sleep is a critical time for the body to repair and restore tissues. We need a sleep surface that allows this to happen, and this is the issue this article seeks to address.

Firmness

If you are living in the wild, being naturally attracted to things like sugar and softness is generally helpful to your survival. The instinct to sleep on the softest surface possible is beneficial when choosing a spot on your family’s cave floor. In nature, it’s hard to find a surface that’s too soft. However, like sugar, our problems have been reversed in modern times. Many of us now suffer due to an overabundance of softness, whether we’re aware of it or not.

Pressure against our bodies from our external environment stimulates cell growth. The frequency and amount of pressure matters. Too much pressure is obviously going to cause damage, but too little pressure also causes damage. Our bones, muscles, and fascia are strengthened by pressures they experience, like the ground under your feet, a chair under your sitz bones, or a tool you grip in your hand. If you lie on a surface that is firm enough to not yield under your weight, the surface will push back, so to speak, against your tissues. Sleeping on a firmer surface can increase bone density and trains your body to handle firmer pressures in other aspects.

Sleeping on a firm surface also tends to support better body alignment. Sleeping in a prone position—with belly down—is often portrayed as unhealthy. The common reason for this is that traditional mattresses sag in the middle under your body’s weight, which can compress the spine over time. However, the firmer the surface, the less it will sag. In fact, there are several potential health benefits from lying on your belly, such as the pressure to your ribcage encouraging breath and movement in the posterior rib spaces. Getting better feedback from the surface it’s on, the body can explore more sleep positions more readily.

Having a firmer bed might feel less comfortable at first but results in more comfort over time. Some of the discomfort will result from your body not being used to lying on something that hard. With time, this discomfort will go away, and you will probably start to feel more comfortable on harder surfaces of all kinds. This is handy if you like to travel or camp, sleeping on surfaces other than your bed at home. The remaining discomfort will be similar to the discomfort of sitting for long periods in a chair. Your body aches to move to a new position, and luckily, you can.

Sleeping in the bed in the Magic Bus, Alaska was easy because we were so, so tired.

Sleep Position

There does not exist a “best” sleep position, just as there is no perfect position to do anything in. Bodies are made to be moving often, and this includes the time we spend sleeping.

People commonly use the terms “side-sleeper” or “back sleeper,” but there are infinitely more than four sleep positions. This is where you get to explore the endless possibilities—how many different ways can you rest, relax, release? Perhaps you lie partially on your side and partially on your back, in a bit of a twist. You might bend your leg out at an angle, or have it straight. How are your arms placed, and can they be happy in another configuration as well? Does your body always gravitate towards the same shape, and can you encourage any alternatives?

If you sleep on a firm enough surface, the pressure against your body in only a few areas will eventually prompt you to shift, moving the pressure elsewhere. Sometimes your discomfort, whether from the bed or from existing body issues, will be enough to disturb your sleep. Hopefully over time, you can reach a state where your body prompts you to switch positions frequently but without fully waking you each time.

Our cultural tendency is to seek the one great position in which to do all things. The one ergonomic workstation, the one backpack or child-carrying set up, the one arrangement of pillows and bolsters so you can get a good night’s sleep. That’s simply not how the body works. When you allow yourself to be uncomfortable with staying in one position too long, you nurture long-term comfort by moving your body more regularly throughout the night.

 Image: Variable sleep positioning options as demonstrated by sleep experts.

Floor Sleeping

If you take a look around your home, you may notice a similarity to all the furniture. Your chairs, tables, sofas, countertops, and beds raise everything up off the floor so that less bending is required. However, bending and squatting down to the floor and back up again is an essential category of movement and closely tied to our ability to live independently. When we take away the need to get up and down, our bodies lose the ability to do so. This usually happens very slowly over years, so we often don’t notice how we’re changing until one day you have a grandson whose playing on the floor, and you find your knees don’t have the strength to carry you down there to join him.

The alternative option is to keep getting up and down from the floor regularly. You can do this by sitting on the floor while you socialize, knit, or do computer work. You can store items you use daily on shelves low to the ground, requiring you to bend or squat as you fetch your phone, coffee mug, or a stack of dinner plates. And, you can sleep on the floor.

When you sleep on the floor, you’ll have to get up and down each day at least once. Making your bed or folding laundry on the bed also provide bending opportunities. Taking your hips, knees, and ankles through fuller ranges of movement every single day adds up over time. Having your bed down on the floor requires your body to maintain more flexibility, no daily gym class required.

Co-Sleeping

Sleeping on a firmer surface on the floor has additional benefits when you sleep with others. If you’re sleeping with children, a firmer bed means your baby won’t roll into your body because the mattress won’t sag under your heavier weight. It also makes it easier for you to move about without jostling them. Sleeping on the floor means you don’t have to fear your baby rolling off the side of the bed since there’s nowhere to fall.

Transitioning children to their own bed can be easier as well. When my children were younger, we started putting them in their own bed, which was right next to our bed, both of which were on the floor. It gave them the sense of sleeping separately while keeping us close for security. Bonus: I didn’t have to crawl out of my warm covers to comfort them in the night. Once they were well adjusted to being in their own bed, we moved that same bed into their own bedroom.

How To Switch It Up

Our bodies crave variety, something most of us are lacking when it comes to how we sleep. The following are some ideas on introducing more variety to your sleep routine. We spend a lot of time sleeping, so small changes can have big effects. For this reason, it’s best to take things slow, making any shifts to your usual sleep set-up in increments over a period of months to years. A lot of factors play in to what’s going to be most appropriate for you, so consider your history, how sensitive your body is to switching things up, and keep listening to yourself each step of the way.

a.       Switch sides of the bed.

Do we share the bed with them, or do they share it with us?

Many couples have fixed sides of the bed that they sleep on every night. Having a person next to you will influence how you sleep. Even if you don’t share your bed with another person, you might have a pet, wall, or window that affects how you tend to position yourself. If you make it a routine to frequently switch sides of the bed with your partner or pets, you will automatically invite variation into your sleeping habits. You can have a habit of always sleeping in the same way, or you can make it a habit to always change things up.

Beds stacked three-high and three-across in a youth hostel in London

b.      Move your bed.

You can rotate your bed to a new orientation in your room, or try out sleeping in a different room in your house. If you have a guest bed, sleep there once in a while.

c.       Keep changing your position.

Make it a habit to try out different positions to sleep in. You don’t have to have “side sleeper” or “back sleeper” as part of your identity. Even if you always end up in a certain position once you are asleep, you can keep switching it up when you are conscious. Your body is adapting to what you do each moment.

d.      Lower the height of your bed.

While in school at the Soma Institute, I opted for the floor rather than the hip-high mattress.

Are there ways you can bring your current bed closer to the floor? Start there. Eventually, you might consider sleeping on a different bed altogether, which can be whatever height you choose.

e.       Take naps on the floor.

If being on a firmer surface all night seems like too much for your body right now, you can take short naps during the day. Spread a comfy blanket on the floor and start with some restful yoga poses. Bring any pillows or bolsters you need to help you rest there for a few minutes to an hour.

Practice spending time on the floor in other areas of your life. You can sit on the floor while you chat on the phone, watch TV, or play with your dog. Spend a few minutes lying on the floor when you get home from work. When getting up and down off the floor becomes something you do a few times a day, it won’t feel so strange to sleep there, too.

f.        Look into bedding alternatives.

While there are very expensive mattresses out there that cater to those seeking a firmer sleeping surface, the solution to your sleep set-up doesn’t need to be fancy or technical. Humans have been sleeping restfully for thousands of years. If you’re reading this, you most likely don’t need to worry about raising your bed above the vermin, bugs, and cold dirt floor.

Some bedding alternatives include futons, mattress toppers, tatami mats, sheep skins, or simply a big sheet or blanket on top of a carpet or rug. If you live in a place with any amount of humidity, you will want to have air flow under your bed or pick your bed up to air out during the day.

For my bed, I have a tatami mat on the floor and a thin wool pad on top. During the day, I hang the wool pad up and fold all my bedding up in a pile. This allows everything to air out and stay mold free and keeps the bedding cleaner. Making my bed in the morning and evening takes more bending and squatting, which feels like a great way for me to warm up my joints at the beginning and end of the day.

Small Changes with Big Impact

Our bodies are always adapting—learning, growing, or breaking apart—based on what we are doing every single moment. If we carve out time especially to stretch in the morning, go to yoga class, or exercise our tissues through the movements they need, we’ll never make the same impact as the activities that make up the bulk of our time—things like working, home up-keep, or sleeping. Making changes to your sleep set-up, even small changes, can have very big effects in time.