I’ve always been a late adopter when it comes to the world of smart watches with their multi-layered health technologies. Really the most I want from my watch is to be able to tell the time and keep a check on my step count. On the days when I’m ferrying the kids around, juggling work and keeping all the plates spinning it’s genuinely helpful to have a device that keeps a track of my movement.
But recently I upgraded to a watch which had far more bells and whistles. While I’m still not on board with most of its features – being a rather simple creature and not particularly tech savvy – one feature in particular caught my attention: sleep tracking. I didn’t have to programme anything, but each morning I got a “sleep score”, complete with a breakdown of my night in neat little timestamps. My curiosity was piqued by the breakdown of my night’s sleep into three main component parts – deep sleep, light sleep and REM sleep.
It got me thinking about what actually constitutes a good night’s sleep and why does it matter?
Sleep has always been something of a mystery. Where do we go when we sleep? What happens to our waking selves — our personality, our persona, our sense of being? In ancient times it was believed that our spirits travelled to another realm to be replenished while our bodies lay inert, awaiting the soul’s return. This was an attempt to explain sleep and dreaming long before science stepped in.
Modern sleep science tells us that we cycle through four distinct phases of sleep, repeating them four to six times per night:
Stage 1 is the lightest phase, marking the brief transition from wakefulness into sleep. Stage 2 is also light sleep and is the longest stage, during which the heart rate slows and body temperature drops. Stage 3, known as deep or slow-wave sleep, is particularly important for immune function, physical repair and recovery. Stage 4 is REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the main dreaming phase, when brain activity becomes more similar to that seen during wakefulness.
Deep sleep is prioritised in the first half of the night, when the body focuses on physical repair. Slow delta waves dominate, growth hormones are released, and when this stage is sufficient, we wake feeling refreshed and restored. As we age, however, our deep sleep phases shorten while our lighter phases lengthen.
REM sleep, meanwhile, is vital for the brain. It’s during this stage that we consolidate memories, process emotions, and make sense of the day’s experiences. Entire schools of thought have been built around dream interpretation, exploring how the unconscious mind communicates symbolically through our dream world. Creativity has long been linked to REM sleep – Einstein famously claimed that the inspiration for his theory of relativity came to him in a dream.
Most of us could benefit from improving our sleep and particularly our deep sleep – so how do we do that?
Consistency is key: going to bed and waking at the same time each day helps regulate your internal clock (bad news for weekend lie-ins). Make your bedroom as cavelike as possible – cool, dark, and free from screens or bright lights, this will stimulate melatonin, our sleep hormone, which is rapidly coming on board now as the evenings shorten.
Regular exercise and time outdoors support deeper sleep. Avoid caffeine after lunch and be mindful of alcohol late in the evening; while it may feel sedating at first, its thermogenic effect can raise body temperature and wake you during the night.
Try to get natural light within the first hour of waking, which will suppress melatonin and boost cortisol in a healthy way, and most importantly if you are addressing a poor sleep pattern, it will set your sleep timer for the night ahead. Ten minutes outdoors is enough.
And if sleep still feels elusive, here’s a practice you can try. Counting sheep has long been shown to do little for a busy mind, but recalling a familiar walk – one your body knows as well as your thoughts do – can be surprisingly soothing. Choose a route you love and follow it in your imagination: involve all your senses, the way the air feels at the start, the small sounds that accompany you, the scent of the trees or the sea, or the feel of the earth beneath your feet. This helps your mind begins to loosen its grip on the day and it’s interesting to see how far along your path you make it before sleep overtakes you.
Our biology is ancient – shaped by sunlight, darkness, temperature, and the rhythm of the of the seasons – yet our daily modern environment couldn’t be more different.
Where is our time for quiet reflection and rest, where we can drop into our parasympathetic nervous system and rest as nature intended? Light, noise, notifications, deadlines, responsibilities, and the relentless hum of doing make can make us feel both wired and tired. Even when we stop moving, our minds churn and turn, tilting at windmills as we effort to rest.
Our stress response is activated far more often than it was ever meant to be, and cortisol – which should gently decline in the evening – often stays stubbornly high. A body that thinks it’s under threat cannot prioritise deep sleep.
Much as I have appreciated the sleep data provided by my humble smart watch, I am mindful of the trap it sets – where something as natural and intimate as sleep becomes yet another objective to fulfil. And so, while grateful for the initial information it offered, I’ve stopped using it to track my nights.
Instead, I’ve returned to something simpler: giving myself thirty minutes each evening to experience the luxury of dark, empty quietude – the stillness within that invites sleep. Turn down the lights, switch off your screen, light a candle if you feel called to, and rest in the enveloping quiet as the autumn evenings draw in.
Sleep, after all, is not a performance, nor should it be a chore. It’s a return – to ourselves, to our bodies, to the deep rhythms that have always carried us where our spirits can be replenished, our bodies restored.
