JULY : SLEEPS

The 12 Abstinences’ rhyme scheme continues with SLEEPS.

Of course, I didn’t give up sleep. That’d be criminal… a textbook form of torture. They use sleep deprivation to break down detainees to get information. No need... I’ll tell you everything.

My actual abstinence in July was beds. I gave up sleeping in a bed for a month. I still can’t believe I did it.

My original intent was to give up all furniture (SEATS). For the first two days of July, I stood at my desk, sat or kneeled on the floor to eat, and slept on the ground. At the time, I was still mending a foot injury, so after a day or two, I could tell my foot wasn’t going to heal well if I spent a month standing at my desk. Anna suggested I split the abstinence: give up beds in July and then give up other furniture later in the year.

Why furniture?

Giving up furniture was one of the ideas that seeded this whole thing. Last year, Anna was finishing her yoga instructor training and sharing concepts she’d been learning about dynamic aging. Most of the world doesn’t rely on furniture the way we do in the West. Billions of people eat, sleep, work, and relax on the floor. They get up and down from the ground with ease. They maintain a squat without bursting their knees. In America, we grunt even when we lower ourselves onto the couch. We invent chairs that stand us up when we get old. We squat so infrequently that when someone does it more than a couple of times, they immediately feel compelled to tell their friends about it.

After a conversation around this topic at the dinner table one night, I wondered aloud what it would be like to eat dinner on the ground for a month. I said, “I could probably give it up for a month… anyone can give up anything for a month… it’s not that long.”

And here we are.

Why beds?

I thought it was an interesting idea to sleep on the ground for a month and see how I felt. Would I get accustomed to it in such a short time? Would my body adapt, or would I just hate life for 30 days? It seemed silly to jeopardize my sleep for this experiment, but I wanted to figure it out. I also wanted to add this to my sleeping skills because, well… I miss camping.

What are you talking about?

As a family, we don’t camp. We haven’t camped out for years, partially because I have come to value sleep so much. We spend a ton of time outdoors, and we’ve had a few overnight adventures here and there, but for the most part, we don’t camp out as a family. We went camping once when the kids were super little. Back in those days, we barely got sleep in our own house, so packing up that madness and sticking it in a tent? Great idea. Two tired parents, two kids (at the time), and an anxious dog… all in one tent… on a hot, humid summer night… it was a tiny taste of damnation. It turned me away from tent camping as a family.

It’s too bad, really, because I actually love camping.

At this point in my life, now that I’ve really learned how to sleep, I was hoping a month without a bed would get me comfortable sleeping on the ground.

You recently learned how to sleep? What?! You’ve slept almost every day of your life.

Yes, but not well.

I was a terrible sleeper for most of my life, and it wasn’t fixing itself, so for the last ten years or so, I’ve been learning how to sleep. Some people have hobbies, others have sports…

Me? I’ve honed the skill of sleep.

It has been a journey.

I don’t remember having trouble sleeping before I was in high school. Those years were no picnic (Tobie, meet Anxiety; Anxiety, Tobie), and I’m sure my sleep routines were garbage all the way through college. During young adulthood and the early years of raising kids, I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and that was it. I was awake. My head would spin up, and there was no stopping it. Emotions would be outsized until the sun came up. I’d toss, turn, huff, and fuss until it was time to get up. It wore me down.

Throughout my life, I also experienced some pretty awesome, awful, crazy, and comical waking dreams. Sometimes, I’d wake up and be certain someone was hiding in the corner, waiting to jump out and scare me. Other times, I’d rearrange my bedding in bizarre ways, convinced it was the only way to stay alive. It was one thing to say funny things to my friends at sleepovers when I was a kid, but it’s a totally different thing to throw myself across the bed to “rescue” Anna from rolling off the edge. Once I had a wife, there was a witness. She saw some funny stuff when we first got married. My dreams took on a new dimension… a subconscious need to protect my family shaped my dreams. One particular night, I thought someone had entered our apartment. Little did the intruder know… I was a ninja. I slowly worked myself into a crouch at the corner of the bed and perched there like a bird of prey. Then I launched myself to the door of the bedroom, stealthily crossing the apartment and sliding into the kitchen. As the dream started to fade, I came into consciousness with my body wedged between the oven and the wall. I chuckled, called myself an idiot, and went back to bed.

That was a funny one. Not all of them were funny.

For most of my life, I was deeply tired. I’d fall asleep in class. A lot. In high school, it was kind of funny and a little embarrassing. In college, it was a bummer. I actually wanted to learn in those classes, and I cared what those teachers thought of me. If I was sitting down and remotely comfortable, I was only a few big blinks away from a nap. If I wasn’t driving, and the ride was longer than ten minutes, I’d start to rest my eyes. Church was always a struggle… I’d ask Anna to pinch me. Long movies without explosions? Good night.

This was just what I thought life was like.

It wasn’t until my mid-thirties, when a therapist asked me, “What does your sleep hygiene look like?”

I had never been asked that. I had never even heard that term before.

My sheets get washed regularly, doc, thank you.

Why did he ask me that?

Sleep hygiene was how he referred to the whole practice of healthy sleep. That question was a turning point in my life.

And it’s a turning point in this article. I will now recount my learnings from the journey to becoming a better sleeper. I am not a doctor, take what you will; this is what has worked for me.

Breathing.

Not long after he asked me that question, I went in for a sleep study. They discovered some mild apnea, so I tried a CPAP. It was difficult to get used to. After a few nights of trying, I actually slept through the night wearing it, and I woke up feeling like someone had plugged me into a socket. I felt supercharged. “Is this what everyone else feels like when they wake up?” I said to Anna. Although it was a truly eye-opening difference, I couldn’t get past the awkwardness of the machine. The sound, the weight, the restriction—it was all too much. Sometimes, it would blow air into my stomach, and I’d wake up feeling like a balloon (with absolutely cartoonish effects to follow). The bad nights outnumbered the good ones. Even though I’d wake up like Superman once a week, I couldn’t live life as a farty Mr. Snuffleupagus.

In the end, using a breathing strip on my nose helped get me the oxygen I needed. I’ll circle back to breathing in a minute, though, because there are a few other elements to sleep hygiene that I needed to learn about first.

Routine.

Routine is an important part of sleep. I had to get used to going to bed and getting up at the same time every day. This took some time, but it’s been really healthy for me. Not only when you go to bed but how you go to bed. Find the process that puts you in the mindset for sleeping. Make a checklist and work through it in the same order every night.

Exercise.

Being tired really helps.

Dark.

It’s gotta be dark. Real dark.

Quiet.

But not too quiet. A little white noise goes a long way.

Bed(ding).  

Weighted blankets, heated blankets, decent sheets, precise pillow placement, and a giant bed have all contributed to better sleep for me, too. Getting a bigger bed and giving each other the space to move around without jostling the other person was a true life upgrade.

Booze.

Drink a lot of booze. Just kidding. Giving up alcohol a few years ago made another positive leap in the quality of my sleep. Alcohol does some funny things to your body when you go to bed, and none of them are good. My 3 a.m. anxiety avalanches were deeply tied to drinking alcohol (in any amount). Sans booze, those midnight episodes have all but disappeared.

Drugs.

There are heaps of sleep aids out there. I steer away from the hard stuff. I’m not a big fan of big pharma, and a new addiction never sounded like a good idea. But there are other aids that can help. For a while, I was taking melatonin, but that didn’t help much. An ibuprofen PM was a little more effective but took me a minute to shake off in the morning. My current aid of choice is an herbal supplement with L-Theanine, GABA, Passion Flower, Chamomile, and some other natural goodness.

Snoring.

If you snore, buy a mouthguard. If your partner snores, buy them a mouthguard. If I could go back in time, I’d bring myself a mouthguard. Snoring is self-sabotage for your sleep. Find a guard that holds your jaw forward so your tongue can’t slide back and block your breathing. I can’t rely on my nose to allow enough air, so I need to be able to breathe through my mouth. A good mouthguard can help keep your airway open while keeping your tongue in place. It’s not an understatement to say that my mouthguard has been good for my marriage. Buy a mouthguard.

Focus.

The last piece to my sleeping puzzle has been giving myself something to focus on so my mind doesn’t run amok. This can happen as soon as I turn out the light, or if something wakes me up in the night. If my mind starts working, it’s hard to get it back to rest. At different times of life, I’d try to count, list things, pray, meditate, body scan, or even navigate mental maps of places I’ve been. In the last couple of years, I’ve started putting one earbud in and turning on a calm audiobook. This has been the most effective thing for me because I’m not the one driving the distraction—I’m focusing on the story. The book is typically one I’ve read before, but I also like biographies that I can listen to again and again. I’ve also started finding narrators I enjoy and just listening to anything they read because I like the sound of their voice. I’ll turn it on at the lowest volume I can follow and set a timer for 30 minutes. I rarely hear it turn off. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I turn it back on before my mind knows I’m awake. It works surprisingly well for me.

Let me tell you... a mouthguard, a nasal strip and one earbud... I make a real hot dish at bedtime. Nothin' is sexier than sanity, though, so I stand by the accoutrements.

So—you can see, after developing such a methodology around sleep, it was difficult for me to willingly negate it by sleeping on the ground, but if I could learn to be comfortable, I’d have another tool in my belt.

It's time to get down.

At first, I slept next to the bed on the floor. Our house is weird, and our bedroom floor is concrete, so I put down a yoga mat and a sleeping pad.

It wasn’t great.

It was okay, but the first few nights were rough. The bonier corners of your body make themselves known. The air is different down there. (Why IS the air different down there?) I did sleep, though, so I was hopeful that the month would go well. A few nights in, I awoke to an odd tremor. I felt a slight shudder beneath me, a slight pop, and why are my feet rising? I sat up slightly, only to hear a louder pop and see my feet rise even further. My inflatable sleep pad was defecting at that exact moment. The inner structure was separating and all the air was rushing toward the cavity near my feet, causing the whole mat to get thinner and thinner. It was the strangest feeling. I was bummed… that Nemo pad was great. Luckily, Nemo has a lifetime warranty, so while I waited for a replacement, I switched to a different pad. That pad, while fairly comfortable, made some not-so-subtle balloon sounds when I moved, so I transferred myself to another room for the rest of the month. That part wasn’t great, but it was just another facet of the learning experience.

Midway through the month, I decided to set up a tent and sleep outside for a few nights. Since there wasn’t a flat spot in our yard that wasn’t next to the road, I opted to sleep on the flat section of our roof, adding a fun carnival aspect to the campout experience. Those nights were the highlight of the month. The temperature was perfect, the wind was just right, and by that time, I was sleeping pretty well on the mat. I was delighted to have my daughter Lily join me up there for a night, too.

After a month, I did feel like I’d become more skilled at sleeping on the ground. My body adapted to getting up and down from the floor and getting comfortable. It was a great exercise.

Getting back into my bed after thirty days away was… magical. It felt like a marshmallow. It was soft, quiet, and there was this wonderful person right on the other side of the bed. Amazing.

As with all the abstinences this year (and the closing insights of these articles), I came away from this abstinence with a new appreciation for something I’d typically take for granted. This one was one of the more extreme abstinences, but I think it was one of the most productive. Now that I’ve overcome my reticence to sleep on the floor, I’m eager for more opportunities to sleep on the ground in the coming years.

Thanks for reading.

Goodnight.