Sleeping is my jam. I don’t want to brag or anything but I’m a champion sleeper and always have been*. (Are there extreme sleeping contests like there are extreme eating contests? I’m not sure what that would look like – hanging in a climbing tent off the face of Half Dome? – but I’d be up for it.) No matter what other issues are going on in my life, I’ve never had insomnia or random night wakings and other than a few bad bouts of PTSD (leftover from being sexually assaulted), no major nightmares either. Although I do have lots of dreams and generally remember them after waking – which sounds cooler than it is since I usually dream really lame-o stuff. Take last night for instance, I dreamt I was talking to some old coworkers from several jobs ago who ended up being just as boring in my dreams as they were in real life. Freudian acolytes, make of that what you will.
But despite my ability to fall asleep nearly anytime anywhere, I do have my preferences. IDEALLY:
– I’m in my bedroom. (Other places have weird noises like ticking clocks or running toilets or creepy porcelain dolls with those wide unblinking-yet-unseeing eyes. And hotels always have that incessantly blaring air conditioning no matter what time of year it is causing me to crash around in the dark looking for the off switch which is usually conveniently located somewhere like under a panel stapled to the underside of the bed. You know how fans make my HSP spidey senses tingle!)
– All white sheets, tightly tucked in, with one white down comforter. I like stuff simple and in-line in my bedroom decor, what can I say?
– Windows open. I need to see sky, people!
– Laying on my side facing the door, on the side of the bed nearest the door. (I tell my husband it’s so I can get up easier with the kids since I’m the only one who usually hears them when they wake up but even when we didn’t have kids, I still had to face the door. The wall creeps me out. Irrational fear.)
But it’s that last one I’m trying to change. It turns out that according to new research, side sleeping may not be the ideal snoozing situation. So which position is best? When it comes to people in generally good health, apparently back sleeping is the winner. Yep, just like all those newborn posters in the hospital tell parents to always put their babies “back to sleep”, what’s good for the tiny human is also good for the big human. Not that adults need to worry about SIDS or rolling into their bedding and smothering but it turns out that back sleeping is better for your spine, getting rid of back pain, eliminating headaches, reducing wrinkles and even helping your boobs to be perkier. (Yeah, someone did research on how perky women’s boobs are in different sleep positions. I would have loved to see the creepy grant proposal for that one!)
Anyhow, I was first alerted to the error of my sleeping ways by a doctor I interviewed. One of the perks of my job covering health for different magazines is all the cool experts I get to talk to (in some cases that can also be a curse, more on that another time) and about 6 months ago, I interviewed a spine expert for a story about… I can’t even remember now. It wasn’t sleeping. But as we chatted we ended up at sleeping because that’s his secondary area of expertise. When I proudly told him I used one of those ergonomic foam pillows “designed to fit the natural curve of your neck and spine” (too many infomercials: see above), he burst out laughing. “Well thank you for keeping me in business, I guess!” he finally said.
“They’re not good for you?” I sighed, already regretting that pricey purchase.
“The worst!” he exclaimed. “They lock your neck into one position all night long and it’s usually not all that natural. Also, those really expensive pillow top mattresses. They’re the major source of back pain I see.”
“Well what IS the best way to sleep then?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” he answered.
“Yes I do! I really do!” I begged.
“You don’t,” he replied. “Nobody does. Because it’s not comfortable.”
He went on to explain that based on his sleep lab research and spinal studies, the human body reposes best in what yoga-ites know as Savasana, or more affectionately – Corpse Pose. Because dead is exactly the look you’re going for with sleeping. You lay flat on your back with your arms loosely by your sides, your face upwards and legs together but feet kind of flopping out to the sides. (Your welcome for that super technical definition). Here’s a picture:
Anyhow, the doc pointed out the reason the pose has been so popular for centuries. It keeps everything in alignment without putting undue pressure on joints or facial skin. He even agreed with the yoga method saying that ideally everyone should sleep flat on their backs on a thin mat – he recommended a tatami mat, the traditional sleeping pads used by the Japanese – in a cool room with a single blanket and either no pillow or a very thin pillow. (He added that if at first it strains your back to lay that straight you can place a pillow or rolled blanket under your knees.)
And he’s not the only proponent of this way of sleeping – people who do the Paleo/Primal diet as a whole lifestyle encompassing more than the food, often advocate ground or mat sleeping. There are lots of great testimonials about ground sleeping curing everything from back pain to heartburn.
Ay yi yi. I’ve fallen asleep on many floors but I can’t say I find them comfy and usually I’ll stumble into an actual bed at some point. Even when we go camping I bring a cushy foam pad if not a full-on cot. “That sounds miserable!” I said.
“Oh it is!” he answered cheerily. “At least until you get used to it. And you will… eventually.”
When I asked him about the common adage to turn a snorer over, he said that was true and if snoring or sleep apnea is a major problem for you then he would recommend side sleeping. “But you’ll get lots of premature wrinkling on that side of your face!” he warned ominously. Plus, your boobs will sag. So I suppose if you are in that situation you’ll have to decide which is more important to you: breathing or looking younger. Priorities!
So of course I had to try it! Immediately! That very night!
I think I lasted 5 minutes on our floor before slinking back into bed with my husband (who had wisely declined not to participate in my little experiment saying that spooning on the floor made his arm go numb). And that might have been where things ended except that lately things have been getting kinky in my bedroom – and by kinky I mean “neck kink”. Since I’ve been sleeping more (depression makes me practically narcoleptic), I’ve been waking up lots of mornings with a really sore neck. Like can’t-check-your-blindspot sore. I’ve tried everything I can think of with my bedding arrangement. But it still hurts. I don’t think I’m ready for full-on floor sleeping but if I can just train myself to sleep on my back I think that would help. (Plus my boobs need all the help they can get in the anti-gravity department!)
So now the problem is how to do that. Every night I fall asleep on my back. And wake up on my side, facing the door. I’m not alone in my side-sleeping either. According to the Mayo Clinic 63% of Americans sleep on their side. Only 14% sleep on their back and 16% on their stomach. People would rather sleep on their stomach than their backs?! I can’t even.
How do you guys like to sleep, ideally? Any ground or tatami mat sleepers out there? Have you ever changed your default sleep position to something else?? I need tips!
*Except for the last month of pregnancy. That’s the 7th circle of sleeping hell. NOTHING is comfortable. I usually spend most nights by that point watching infomercials, eating boxes of popsicles, and threatening to name my kid Dorcas if they dare go overdue.
*Don’t forget! There’s still time to enter my Whirlpool $100 giveaway!
“Any ground or tatami mat sleepers out there?”
Yes, for decades now. I can sleep on a concrete slab if I have to, remarkably comfortably, although I prefer a thin mat of some sort, if only for the insulation. A yoga mat will do, but I use a Therma-Rest camp pad as my futon base these days. Stores out of the way very nicely when I’m not sleeping, effectively making the room a lot bigger. Impervious to bed critters, which is nice as well. Not what you would call a strong point of traditional tatami. That’s why most of it these days is actually made from styrofoam rather than grass.
I didn’t come by it naturally, I had to learn it. I was inspired in part by being a bit of a Japanophile back in the day when that was definitely not a popular thing to be, what with the war and “cheap Jap junk” and all.
But mostly I was inspired by cats (beware the leopard); the way they just sleep anywhere, on anything. I thought that might well be a nifty skill to have. It took remarkably little time to get comfy on a bare, hard floor. A couple of nights really.
There is one place I have trouble sleeping these days though – in a bed. Horrid things. I don’t know how you people manage them, or why you bother.
I have neck problems and have really been trying to sleep on my back too. I always end up rolled onto my stomach. Its tough!
Side sleeper, born and bred. My mom is a side sleeper, too. But both my father and my husband prefer back sleeping. And they both snore. I elbow my husband and roll him onto his belly, where he can sleep great without a pillow. His pillow is a flimsy ancient downy thing.
If my mind is racing and I can’t fall asleep, the only sure fire way I can get my body to relax and drift off is laying on my back with my arms and legs straight. I never choose to sleep that way, but it seems in desperate times this position “resets” my brain.
I was considering one of those fancy pillows after seeing it roaming around on the Internets, but maybe my regular ole pillow is just fine.
I prefer sleeping on my left side. But sometimes one of my cats comes up and wants to sleep between my legs or on my belly… in which case I will lay on my back so they can do that. But ONLY for the cat. 🙂
This is me, exactly.
I start off on my side, but always end up on my back. I blame this on my cat – he likes to sleep on my stomach/legs, and he will poke me until I roll over. My husband has watched Zappa do this, he found it quite funny. At this point, Zappa’s got me well trained and I usually end up sleeping on my back even when I don’t have the cat sleeping on me. I guess that’s not much help to you though.
Also, I can’t sleep if I don’t have a decent pillow. At home I use a cervical pillow and I love it. Not giving it up no matter what the fancy sleep doctor says. 🙂
I always sleep on my side, left side actually with my arm under my head, I can’t get to sleep in any other position. I’ve wondered about that, because as a child I didn’t think about it, I just went to sleep.
And now off course I want to learn to sleep on my back, only I don’t know how I’m going to manage that.
Thanks for the article, I’ve learned something I didn’t know before.
I think I have been a side sleeper all my life, and how do you change something so engrained? I do try to ‘curl up’ less because I’m sure it is bad for my posture. I did read long ago that supermodels sleep with satin pillowcases to prevent wrinkling.
I had thoracic outlet compression in college, and I was told to stop sleeping on my stomach with my arms under my pillow because that compressed the bundle of nerves that goes through the shoulder (the armpit fat location), and preferably to sleep on my back. I tried to change, and I had some success putting a rolled towel between my shoulder blades, but I relapsed to my stomach, and now in my late 30s I still struggle with it. Maybe I don’t make it enough of a priority. That said, I don’t buy the thing about wrinkles. Just yesterday, I was teaching med students for a special event, and the administrator who came in with the attendance sheet thought that I was a med student, so apparently I can still pass for 15 years younger.
I’m a stomach sleeper withy legs bent all funny with a pillow fortress. Maybe I need more scaring about the dangers of stomach sleeping…
Sleeping is my jam! hahaha… Love this as I too am a fantastic sleeper!
I’ve found that to get the “ideal” position of sleep and actually make it comfy cozy, to toss a pillow under my knees and a rolled up towel under my neck. Seems to help but I LOVE side sleeping!!!
Glad to have found you, Charlotte. I’ll be in touch! 🙂
Patrick
I was a right side sleeper as a kid with my right arm under my head… now my shoulder (rotator cuff) is stuck and I have limited range of motion in my right shoulder.
A few (many?) years ago, i heard about the danger of premature wrikles (LOL, vanity) and “trained” myself to sleep on my back… unfortunately, I got un trained during pregnancy, as we are told to sleep on the left side, and now I have a hrader tme staying on my back… but I always try. Hope I get re-trained…
No pillows for me, i keep them around my head for comfort…
I always try to start out on my back but almost always end up on my side. I find that when I sleep on my back that my head falls to the side, which doesn’t feel great on my neck
I transitioned from being a side sleeper to a back sleeper…and I’ve noticed how much better my back feels. I also got rid of my foam contoured pillow and got a water pillow that I fill up just enough to somewhat cradle my head (I have an old neck injury and laying with no support causes pain). I made the transition by sleeping in a confined space (smushed between two little kids who took to sleeping with me after I got divorced) that was hard (nearly impossible) for me to roll over. I definitely would NOT recommend divorcing your awesome hubby, but maybe try sleeping in a snug sleeping bag or between two firm body pillows or whatnot.
I like to sleep on my back with nobody touching me – at all. I always wonder how people sleep cuddling. I just can’t!
Sleeping during pregnancy is a nightmare. Literally! Pain in the joints, reflux, and a baby who kicks… blah.
I can not fall asleep on my back even if I am exhausted. I have to be on my side. If I wake up on my back it always makes my arms fall asleep. Oh and I am currently more than 40 weeks pregnant and thus can’t get comfortable anyway. My husband likes to sleep on his back on the floor though, he says it is good on his back.
Ooo. Hang in there dear! The first nap you get after baby comes is the best cause you can roll over no problem. That is such a liberating feeling. Good luck on your impending labor and delivery. May it be swift (but not so swift you don’t get to the hospital) and painless!
Many years ago, before we had kids, Hubby & I slept on the floor. It was quite comfy! But then I got pregnant, and my parents, bless them, bought us a bed. Absolutely vital for those last few months, IMHO, as I’m not sure i would’ve been able to get up off the floor. And getting up to pee is a frequent occurance during that time.
Since then we’ve slept in a bed. I’m also a side sleeper, but will try to re-orient myself to sleep on my back.
Because I (and my boobs), too, need all the help I can get.
After being pregnant for 3 years. Almost, seriously! I had this weird need to sleep on my belly. It started in the hospital after delivering my third baby. I have usually been a back sleeper until then and now often am only comfortable on my belly. Wrinkles have inspired me to try and transition back to my back but I think our bed is waaaay too soft and its just not as comfy.
I’m a stomach sleeper. I try and sleep on my back sometimes, and it just doesn’t work, but maybe I’ll give it a try again. There are a lot of things that are really awesome for me if I can get past the torturous beginning.
Left side hugging a giant pillow with a cat in the crook of my arm.
🙂
I’m awesome at sleeping too! Sometimes too awesome. Getting my ideal 10 hours of sleep a night doesn’t fit so well into the real world.
I think any benefit of our super firm mattress (I HATE those squishy pillow-top things. The only time I ever have back pain is after I sleep on one of those.) is negated by my love of sleeping with 2 pillows under my head. One is just so… flat. I like to have my head elevated. And then I sleep mostly on my stomach. I used to only be a side-sleeper but during the period where I was too thin and it hurt my hips to sleep on my side, I started sleeping on my stomach with my hands under my hip bones and now I can’t stop. But I flip on my sides in the lead-up to falling asleep. And then one of the cats gets on the bed between me and my husband after we fall asleep. It’s the reason we got a Queen size bed. He got tired of being shoved to the edge by the 2 of us since I’m a heavy sleeper.
I think the only way I’d have insomnia would be if I tried to make myself sleep on my back. That sounds miserable.
I used to sleep on my stomach with my hands under my hips, too. It kept my hips from bruising at the time. Glad that’s over. I was a stomach sleeper, but now after kid number three I got used to side sleeping.
By preference I’m a back sleeper, but I’m co sleeping with an infant right now & the word is that you’re supposed to curl up around them on your side? So I try, but I usually end up on my back again except to let the baby nurse.
I trained myself to sleep on my back after always being a side or stomach sleeper (start on side, wake up flipped over to be starfish-style on my stomach). It took a week or two to get it right, but now I can sleep on my back pretty easily. The biggest trick I learned from a lot of online research was that if you start out by putting a pillow under your knees (or even two depending on how thick they are), it helps to keep you in a position where it’s harder to roll over, so you’re more likely to stay there. You can then gradually take the pillows away, and voila – you’ll be a back sleeper! 🙂
I start out on my side but wake up on my back, also facing the more open side of the bed. I´ve developed what I call the “Klimt position” since co-sleeping with babies, where I use the inside of my shoulder as a pillow and hold my arm up, over and around their little heads. TERRIBLE for neck strain – do not try this at home. We are trying to wean ourselves off pillows, and I have had moderate success going to a folded towel in a pillowcase, inspired by the very persuasive Katy Bowman of Alignment Matters and the Katy Says blog (go there!). When this mattress dies I will replace it with something futon-esque, but a camping mat is too far for us. That said, my son is almost 14 months and still sleeps in a wood-bottomed playpen, and neither of my kids have (or will have) any real pillow, so I know it´s a habituation problem.
I am a hardcore stomach sleeper. I can fall asleep on my back but only if I’m EXHAUSTED. And then I always wake up on my stomach. I know it’s not good for my back but, really, actually sleeping conquers all. At least at this point.
I fall asleep in any position EXCEPT my back – either side, stomach, or, my favorite, a stomach-side combination. I move around a lot during the night, though, so I never wake up in the same position, nor do I have a preferred side. (So at least my wrinkles will be spread around evenly!) I don’t think back sleeping is for me. The few times I’ve fallen asleep on my back, I always seem to wake up out of a nightmare or even sleep terror. I guess it feels too much like falling? Too vulnerable, anyway.
I take comfort in the fact that my cat, a very accomplished sleeper, also sleeps in any position except on her back.
I’m a side sleeper all the way. And after trying many pillows with resulting years of neck and shoulder pain, the one that works for me is a latex foam pillow. Great support and doesn’t compress.
I’m the opposite of you in that I fall asleep on my side and often wake up on my back. When I was younger, though, I used to fall asleep on my stomach until I started having neck troubles. And I was able to train myself to sleep on my side, it just takes a little while. So there are some sleepless nights, but then your body just gets used to it.
I’ve tried, but I CANNOT fall asleep on my back. But I toss from side to side all night, so at least my wrinkles will be symmetric.
I tend to sleep half on my stomach, and half on my side… leg kicked up, arm up under the pillow… according to my massage therapist, basically the worst possible position for me to sleep in. She suggest the same as you’ve mentioned here… on your back with arms at your sides… I’ll lay that way for a little while, but I always end up rolling over before I’ll really sleep well.
(My massage therapist mentioned that she had another client with the same issue, and he slept with his arms in his pajama top to keep him from putting his arms up… just the thought makes me claustrophobic!)
I had back surgery as a teen and talked to a few orthopaedic back surgeons about sleep. They told me best position is back, with pillow under your knees and under head/neck. However, side sleeping was ok, with a pillow between your knees and legs bent. They also told me no floor sleeping ever, but a firm mattress was really important. Soft mattresses and water beds are a disaster apparently. But I’m an awesome sleeper too and could fall asleep anywhere in any position!
I’m lucky if I can sleep on a comfortable bed in my preferred sleeping position (curled up on my side.) There is no way I’d even try sleeping on the floor, but good for you, Charlotte, for giving it a shot!
We went to NYC for a night to join my husband on a business trip. He was staying in one of those tiny boutique hotels (read: fancy) and we put our five year old on the floor in a sleeping bag. Even he meandered on our bed at some point in the night. I awoke at 3am to find him at the foot of our bed.
I suppose you can get used to anything, but I can’t hack the break-in period on that one!