I Tried the Forgotten Habit of "Two Sleeps"（原声文稿）

Are we sleeping all wrong?

That was the question in my head after I read an article about the forgotten medieval habit of two sleeps.

See, apparently people in the past used to sleep in two separate blocks.

The first sleep, as it was called, started anywhere between 9 and 11 p .m.

Then people would wake up for a few hours to do chores, to socialize, and to have sex.

Then they would go back to bed and initiate their second sleep, which would then last until dawn.

This of course sounds very, very odd to the modern human, but just a few hundred years ago it seems to have been the norm references to this weird sleep schedule are abundant in the literature and some people think that this midnight awakening would be prime time for creative thinking and others have reported that these midnight hours can produce benign states of altered consciousness so naturally i had to try this i devised a simple five day experiment i would track my sleep with a wolf band not sponsored i would go to bed at at 4 a .m.

and then sleep until morning.

Each night I would try a different activity and try to answer a different question. Questions such as is this sleep schedule even possible? Does it actually increase creativity? Does it really produce benign states of altered consciousness? And do you get sleep deprived?

My hypothesis was that this was not gonna work. I mean, come on.

Everyone knows how important it is to get a solid 8 -hour block of sleep. So something like this could not possibly work.

I'm gonna stick to a specific evening routine every night first of all I'm gonna eat my last meal before 10 p .m.

Then half past 10 I'm gonna go to the sauna and I do that take a cold shower my aim is to be in bed before 11 p .m.

And just start my first sleep I'll see you soon morning I guess According to whoop I got two hours and four minutes of sleep and only 59 minutes of that was restorative sleep For this first night, I'm just gonna try and stay awake, there's nothing to eat.

Everything feels very still.

I do feel very alone. That's my first observation.

At first my body probably thought that I'm just taking a roll of piss, but then realized that no, this fuck dude actually woke up at 2 am And I'm just going to be awake for no rational reason at all and show them now Time for the second sleep.

Let's see how long I'll sleep without no arm So I slept six hours, but I only got an hour and 42 minutes of restorative sleep.

Oh, I look fresh But what I did not expect is how well I've recovered my HRV was 135 and a high HRV means Usually that you are pretty well recovered, resting heart rate 43, a low resting heart rate means you're recovered pretty well And my total recovery was 97 % which is 14 % higher than my recent average What?

That's interesting Let me just take a quick three hour power up.

I don't feel that fresh I do have to say I had one of the most vivid dreams in a long while.

It was very much like I was right there.

I remember reading about polyphasic sleep and I think it's pretty common that if you take shorter sleeps or naps your dreams tend to get more vivid.

I think your brain is trying to crank as much REM sleep into that short period as it can or something like that. I'm just speculating here.

I think these sort of mindless tasks or chores might be the best thing to do during these awakenings because at least until now I've been pretty sleepy and lacking brain power during these awakenings.

I feel like I can't do much more than mindless tasks like this. That is a solid block of work.

I think one reason why you tend to get a lot done if you do anything in the morning hours is because you have this feeling of not needing to be anywhere else and then you can just focus on the task at hand.

But right now my task is definitely getting back through bed show you know I'm kind of enjoying this at the moment so out of the ordinary kind of gives you a different perspective on sleep and it kind of breaks you from the rigid schedule of society which is you know pretty cool for for a week or so maybe I don't know I'm feeling pretty fresh even though I look like that.

Damn 91 % quite high HRV, lowish resting heart rate.

I mean if I would not be able to see that I actually slept five hours and 23 minutes all the other metrics would look like just my regular metrics.

He's waking up for it all his stuff.

I'm gonna try and come up with as many content ideas as I can.

I'm not feeling particularly creative at the moment. Maybe I'll just ease into it or something.

Not feeling any more creative than normal. If anything, I feel a bit less creative. And I feel like creativity cannot be forced.

The best strategy I've found is to just always keep a notebook or something to write on with me. And then when the idea comes, you write it down.

But like waking up at 2 a .m., trying to come up with ideas. And...

And what do you know? My recovery's still good.

but my HRV is slowly dropping but as of now still looking good but even though whoop keeps telling me that I'm well recovered not once have I actually felt refreshed when I woke up so I'm gonna spend this mid -sleep awakening scrolling through social media and watching Netflix and then we'll see whether my sleep is worse than on the other nights.

What the hell? My recovery is still very good.

83%. HRV is higher than yesterday.

Resting hard rate is the same. That is so weird.

Maybe I could use this midget. So tonight I'm going to try and answer two questions.

One, can I finish an intense workout at 2 .49am? Two, how will that affect my second sleep.

I'm gonna start off with an interval workout on the bike. It's actually feeling pretty good.

Beginning was sort of tougher than normally but when I got warmed up it felt pretty us the same as normally.

It's weird how your body can just function even with routines like this. Very adaptable. Your body is a machine.

Just a little creepy.

This is so weird. Pitch black. Very quiet though.

Well this was quite the adventure.

Finally we have an effect on my recovery.

57 % but my recovery would probably be the same if I did an intense workout during the day so it's nothing out of the normal after intense workouts.

I had an alarm but then I was so tired that I fell asleep again and woke up at 3.

I feel like this is taking a toll on my body. Mindfulness.

So let's try to get to the deepest meditative state I've ever been in.

First I'm gonna do some meditation and breath work.

And after I've cleared my head I'm gonna journal.

Just flow of thought journaling and we'll see if I reach a level of clarity that I've never experienced before.

All this felt pretty much the same as it would during data.

With the exception that it's maybe easier to find your calm, your head feels a bit less cluttered.

Still I wouldn't wake up to AM to do this.

We'll probably get the same benefits from just waking up pretty early to do this And again my recovery is in the green 91 % very good HRV very good resting heart rate One more experiment. So I'm gonna start sleeping.

I'm gonna get a full night of sleep I'm gonna wake up without an alarm so naturally and if I sleep for a very long time It kind of indicates that my body is craving for sleep and that I'm sleep -deprived, so I slept about eight hours, so I'm not even that sleep -deprived