New Normal Sleep Pattern – Segmented Sleep

“And the night coming on, we will lead you to their Bed Chambers and shew you how they sleep. About which they are not very curious….They are so little given to sleep, that they do rise many times in the night and eat Betel and take Tobacco. Which done they lay them down and sing songs until they fall asleep again.”

That’s Robert Knox (1641 – 1720) in his An historical relation of Ceylon giving us info on how the villagers and even higher ups in Eladetta, the Kandyan village of his house imprisonment, slept at night or kept awake. He was lured to the Kandyan kingdom when his father’s trading ship was wrecked and the sailors landed in Lanka. This was during the reign of Rajasinghe II of the Kandyan Kingdom who had a penchant for keeping prisoner many a white person, One is never sure however, when reading Knox, whether he is reporting accurately or stretching a point or two with tongue in cheek.

I am surprised he did not say the villagers were un-industrious and given to much sleep during daytime too, since in those parts of the island, being blessed with even climatic conditions, food was plentiful with the least amount of time and energy expended on its production.

New Theory – segmented sleep

A recent article I read quoted professor of history, A. Roger Ekirch at Virginia Tech., who noted that in the Middle Ages and through the early 19^th C, a sleep cycle believed to be standard in multiple cultures was ‘segmented sleep’ which meant that people went early to bed, probably at sundown and woke three to four hours later. They did not toss around in frustration; rather did they awaken and socialize, read books, had small meals, made love and then went back for a second sleep for another four hours. It was only when artificial light was available widely that people forced themselves to sleep through the night,

Professor Ekirch, who has studied segmented sleep for the past 35 years, said there are more than 2,000 references to it from literary sources: everything from letters to diaries to court records to newspapers, plays, novels and poetry, from Homer to Chaucer to Dickens.

I add that maybe in our Island of today, people may resort to segmented sleep – go to bed and actually sleep when power cuts are on as they seem to be at peak time of electricity use between 6.00 and 9.00 pm.

How it was in our childhood

We had to keep in mind the slogan ‘Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’ This of course had a corollary maxim: ‘Satan finds evil for idle hands’ so once homework and dinner were over – off went the kids to bed. We could of course sleep the moment innocent heads touched kapu pullung home made pillows. Equally certain were nightmares and shouting at night.

Never forgotten were incidents when I was in the Hillwood College Middlewood Hostel (pre-teens but not the very young) for a year. The Upper Lake Road, sinister even in daytime, was just above the dormitory. One girl would shout and then a chorus of screaming voices. I remember clearly I did not know the reason for the screaming that woke me up but joined the chorus lustily. Maybe the ulterior aim of the wicked kids was to see Miss Rat appear from her room in her skimpy see-through nightie silhouetted against the night light!

You still have the battle of the rigid bed time, epitomized by cartoon strip Calvin when he is sent to bed at the correct time according to his long suffering parents but far too early for him and Hobbes who want to watch TV comics or more likely, create renewed mayhem.

Remembered also is my maternal grandmother’s segmented sleep pattern. When sent on short holidays to the Mahagedera in Boyagama, Peradeniya, my sister and I would decide to pull a mattress into the pantry to sleep close to Aththa who seemed to abhor bedrooms. Grandfather slept in splendor in the huge curtained double bed. She deserted it no sooner the family of many children was complete. She opted to sleep close to the kitchen with its ever smouldering fireplace of rice husks over which hung permanently a kettle for instant hot water. Aththa would suddenly shout “Kelle, pol gediyak vatuna’ to the little servant girl asleep near her, and identify the place accurately – bona watura linda lange; pan watte, enasal kele. We loved it but had to suppress our bursting laughter in case the Brownie points gained by sleeping on the ground near her were cancelled out by our laughing at her.

Changes

Benjamin Reiss, a professor of English at Emory University and the author of ‘Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World’ has said that rather than sleep broken into segments being a choice at the time, it was simply something that people did, as it fit agricultural and artisanal patterns of labor.

Everything changed with the Industrial Revolution, emphasizing profit and productivity; with the belief that people who confined their sleep to a single interval gained an advantage. The growing prevalence of artificial lights permitted later bedtimes, leading to sleep compression.

And now

“Thirty percent of people report waking up with sleeplessness at least three nights per week, according to one study published in 2010 in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, and 25 percent of adults suffer from insomnia each year, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. For some people, the pandemic has spurred more flexible schedules, which has led to experiments with the old-fashioned sleep method.”

Here is the reported case of a 52-year-old finance manager. In the last 20 years, he didn’t remember a time when he slept completely through the night. “I always woke up halfway through the night and just lay there,” he said. “Physically, I wanted to get up, but I needed more sleep.”

So in August 2021, he started segmented sleeping, going to bed at 10 p.m. and waking up naturally at 2 a.m. He gets up for one and a half to two hours to read and to pray. Then he goes back to bed around 3:30 or 4 a.m. and sleeps until his wife wakes him at 6:30 or 7 a.m.

“This is what my body was trying to do, even when I had never heard of segmented sleep,” he said. “I finally got to a place where I have a healthy sleep pattern.”

Oldies have the added problem of wanting to visit the toilet at least once or twice in the night. Most get back to sleep easily, but once in a while, if the mind is stressed, often over trivia, sleep proves elusive. The best remedy then, instead of tossing and turning and cursing, is to switch on the bedside light and read, or much better, sit up in the dark and meditate or just sit in reflection. A calmed mind is a mind ready to go to deep sleep.

Less of a heavy dinner too helps in continuous sleep. I remember the excellent sleep enjoyed and benefited when at Dhamma Kuta, Hindagala, meditation retreats. A tumbler of fruit juice or tea at 5.30 pm and nothing else but cool water and I slept so well to wake up bright at 4.00 am. Those taking medicines were offered biscuits and a plantain in the evening.

New work schedules

Working from home and left to one’s own time tables, it is noted that some have reverted to the practice of segmented sleep. It may be a consequence of stress induced by the fears and restrictions of the pandemic.

So are we simply reverting to our long forgotten, natural sleep cycle? And could this be the cure for those deemed middle-of-the-night insomniacs? It is reported that doctors are conflicted about how healthy segmented sleep is.

Robert Knox for 19 years starting in 1658 recorded every habit and nuance of behaviour of the Sinhalese villager of the Kandyan Kingdom. Using oil lamps and torches made from dried coconut leaves (hulu athu), naturally had them resorting to segmented sleep patterns, which he

recorded in his An Historical……