Insomnia affects one in three French people. The pillow also suffers from the imperatives that we impose on ourselves: we need to sleep effectively, but not too much.
Don’t miss anything, stay “sharp”, the brain is spinning, but recover to stay ready. How can you learn to sleep (better) under these conditions? Doctors have answers. English poetry researcher and specialist Chloe Thomas (University of Angers). In its original form Because at night(ed. Payot Rivages), he dissects our collective experience of sleep deprivation, exploring scientific archives, but also philosophy, artwork, and children’s stories.
Everyone is concerned
In a text published in 1934. awake or asleepFrancis Scott Fitzgerald recounts the beginnings of chronic insomnia in his life. Only thirty years old, the author The Great Gatsby explains that “suddenly our seven precious hours of sleep are divided into two […] and between the two there appears an inauspicious interval, the length of which never ceases to increase.” Sleeping like a log, a dream often out of reach in adulthood? “We are all fascinated by the sleep of a child, which would be absolute and peaceful, it is a parable that we keep and remain faithful to,” emphasizes Chloe Thomas. Finding sleep or losing it is a terrible struggle, and all weapons are good for coming out victorious. ten million of us will use sleeping pills and hypnotics. The game is worth a candle, because sleep is recognized by all health authorities as a guarantee of good health, but also of good productivity during the day. “Ultimately, the issue of insomnia affects everyone at some point in their lives,” adds the author. But what is also interesting is that there is a danger of complacency. We can console ourselves, even flatter ourselves, to be sleepless because it can motivate us to think too much, that we are more aware than someone who stupidly sleeps on both ears,” he says.
good sleep
Collected in a number of studies The great transformation of sleep (Amsterdam Publications, 2001), the historian Roger Ekirch threw a stone into the pond, explaining that continuous night did not exist in Antiquity as in the Middle Ages. The first sleep was followed by a waking phase lasting several hours, then a second sleep until sunrise. According to the testimonies, during this hour we discussed, went for a walk, it was the hour of the muses, the creative insomnia praised by Musset or Hugo.
According to the historian, chronobiology (the biological rhythms of sleep, from light to deep to paradoxical stages) had not yet been stifled by the constraints of the eight-hour day in the factory, shop or school. “My book is mainly about our relationship with sleep,” continues Chloe Thomas. We only really consider its value when we lose it. Hence the obsession with efficient sleeping in the capitalist world. we equip ourselves with connected watches to check that we are sleeping well. It creates pressure, it sets a standard that is not binding.” Following this, we understand that sleep, or the lack of it, is not a monolithic thing, but a changing experience. So it collects the experience of Michel Sifre, who in 1962 spent two months in the Skarason Abyss, without time markers, to study his sleep cycles. Before he knew it, he had gone into hibernation.
There is no such thing as a perfect night
Chloe Thomas conquers another ordinary thing. we used to sleep better. Before blue light screens, before apocalyptic announcements, triple days and WhatsApp notifications. “The thousand chasms of modern life prevent us from closing our eyes, but in the past it was something else,” he says. the night was restless, we were hungry and cold, the insects swarmed, the cows gave birth in the middle. at night they shared the beds of hostels and families with several people. That is why the pictures show the villagers sleeping with their mouths open under the big sun of the harvest days. In 2023, all that remains is to convince companies of the enormous merits of the siesta…
In the video: Night awakening. four tips for getting back to sleep
Source: Le Figaro
