After months of waking up and feeling like I hadn’t really slept, I downloaded an app that records sleep patterns. The results were disquieting — and not just because it seems I sleep talk non-stop, and hearing that back was pretty creepy, but also because it transpired that while I was spending seven hours in bed on average, I was only achieving around four-and-a-half hours of sleep, with a mere one-hour-and-fifteen-minutes of all-important deep sleep.
I’m not the only Brit who’s not getting what they need in the sleep department. A YouGov survey found that 13 per cent of us are tired pretty much all the time. I am told by Dr Guy Meadows, co-founder and clinical lead of Sleep School, that this daytime drowsiness is only one of the symptoms of being sleep-deprived, so the percentage of those of us sleeping too little is in all likelihood higher.
In case you fall into the sleep-deprived category and fancy feeling additionally stressed about it, Dr Meadows' list of the potential outcomes from an insufficient night's rest should do it: "cognitive impairment with memory and concentration problems, mood changes, increased risk of physical health issues like blood pressure, obesity, and weakened immunity, disrupted hormonal balance, impaired motor skills…”. The effects go on and on, but I suspect you've by now correctly deduced that sleep is key to being a useful and happy human when awake.
The problem is that I quite frankly just don't have the time to sleep more at night - and if I nap during the day, I wake up groggy and feeling more, not less, tired. Keen to find an answer, I was curious about Google CEO Sundar Pichai's recent assertion in the Wall Street Journal that he uses Non-Sleep Deep Rest to relax.
In a nutshell, the practise, which professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, Andrew Huberman, dubbed Non-Sleep Deep Rest, involves listening to a guided meditation while focussing on breathing slowly and rhythmically, scanning your body to make sure it's not tense in any area.
It takes around 20-30 minutes, breathing and listening and, crucially, staying awake, albeit perhaps feeling a bit like you're in a daydream; the idea is to slow down and to enter that very relaxed hazy state that for some feels like that moment right before falling asleep when everything simmers down and becomes a bit fuzzy at the edges. Afterwards, you're meant to feel rested and refreshed, ready to face the day, rather than wanting to crawl back under a duvet as you might after a short snooze.
If you're a yogi, the whole thing might sound familiar; NSDR is broadly similar to yoga Nidra, which is often referred to as 'yogic sleep' i.e. the state where you aren't awake and aren't asleep, while listening to a guided meditation.
The benefits of NSDR as with yoga Nidra are said to include being able to tune out stress, tap into calm, and the ability to rest. You don’t need to be ‘good’ at it, or to have mastered meditation, and there are plenty of guided practises online to follow which means all you have to do to achieve some NSDR is to find somewhere comfy to take a break when you have the time to practise it, then either follow the below steps or pop your headphones in to listen to a guided meditation, and begin.
I came out of the twenty minutes I allowed myself to try it feeling like the fog in my head had lifted
While NSDR is very much rest during the day and not a substitute for getting a good night's sleep, sleep scientist Sophie Bostock emphasises to me that NSDR might pay a role in upping the quality of standard night sleep overall: "if you’re in a state of chronic stress, anything you can do to re-train the brain and body to switch out of ‘fight or flight’ and into ‘rest or digest’ mode, is going to have benefits.”
Sounds promising, but I decide I want to learn if I'm doing NSDR right from an expert, so my next port of call is the renewed yoga teacher and author Nadia Narain. She explains that the process is quite simple, involving these steps:
1. Make sure you’re very comfortable so you don’t move around or fidget.
2. Ensure you have everything around you to keep you warm and comfortable.
3. Choose an intention that’s in the present tense (I.e. “I am relaxed and safe.”).
4. Next, systematically run through every part of the body, relaxing it as you go. You could, for example, start at your feet, clenching them and then releasing, then gradually make your way up to your thighs, your bottom, your stomach, and keep going all the way up to your brows, tensing then releasing.
5. Return to your intention whenever needed, making sure you pay attention to your breath and to your muscles remaining unclenched.
Does that sound painfully simple? It did to me, so I gave it a go and liked that I didn’t fall asleep, despite being tired, then emerged from it feeling much less frazzled without any of the lightheadedness I sometimes experience when waking from a nap, which I suspect means I was doing it right.
I’ll definitely add it to my repertoire for when I haven't had enough sleep but a nap would probably make matters worse - and if that sounds a familiar dichotomy, maybe you should, too.
