The Art of Lying Down (4 page)

Whether we are asleep or awake, a mysterious impulse can suddenly signal that it’s time to change positions. What triggers this need to move? The most important factor is the pressure that a particular position exerts on certain parts of the body. Gravity and one’s weight compress the body at the points where it contacts the surface below. If we’re on our backs, we feel the pressure most in the shoulder blades, pelvis, and heels, whereas if we’re on our sides, the pressure is more apparent in the shoulder and elbow joints, the outside of the hip, and the knee. The pressure is most evenly distributed when we sleep on the stomach or on the back, because these positions maximize the area resting on the underlying surface. If part of the body is subjected to significant pressure over a long period, blood circulates there less freely. The resulting lack of oxygen creates an unpleasant sensation, causing us to correct the imbalance by changing position. This biomechanical response is not under our rational control. Without this regular release, the compressed soft tissues would develop serious circulatory problems that could, in severe cases, lead to bedsores. Sleepers are at risk of these consequences
if the number of spontaneous movements they make drops to three or fewer per hour. The sleeping body also tends to seek a position in which the arm and leg joints are centered, allowing the opposing muscles to relax. It’s easier to find this balance when we lie on our sides. We can get a better sense of the physiological need to change position by consciously resisting it for a few moments, so that we feel how the affected part of the body “falls asleep.”

By letting the feet fall slightly outward and turning the palms of the hands up, a supine yogi brings the spine into a naturally comfortable position. This relaxation spreads throughout the entire body, and the shoulder blades drop to the ground. Although yoga practitioners call this position
savasana
—the corpse pose—they rarely give a thought to the name’s macabre connotations.

In most cases, we end up sleeping in whatever position is most comfortable. The postures we assume while sleeping are not under our conscious control, but they aren’t random either. If we pay attention to the body, we can sense our own patterns of movement. These factors, in addition to pressure points and spatial orientation, also play a role in whether we feel comfortable. Sometimes it feels pleasanter if the thighs touch each other, while at other times we avoid this contact and the friction it produces. Or we pull a blanket over our heads to
ward off a draft or the cold but then have a need for fresh air.

For some people, the act of lying down brings a highly attuned consciousness of the dimensions of their bodies or even of their very selves. The German writer Hermann Broch vividly describes this process in his celebrated novel
The Death of Virgil
:

Not only have attempts been made to draw conclusions about people’s personalities from the way they sleep, but entire typologies have been drawn up. According to one popular tabloid paper, the sourpuss sleeps on his stomach with his arms slightly bent over his head, so that his fingers are spread like the toes of a frog. In this analysis, such bed frogs are burdened with problems and rarely willing to take the advice of others. Manager types, on the other hand, lie on their backs and require lots of room for their arms and legs. The obvious conclusion is that such an individual is used to being in charge and giving orders. Shy people are said to sleep on their side, with their legs drawn up, in a position that resembles an embryo in the womb; rolled into a ball, they stubbornly wait for their personalities to unfold.

Fortunate souls free of all angst sleep completely relaxed on their side, and self-confident people supposedly toss and turn less while sleeping. Such theories emerge in the gray area between serious science and pop psychology. Chris Idzikowski, from the Edinburgh Sleep Centre and Advisory Service, claims that the widespread fetal position—sleeping on
the side while pulling up the legs—indicates a hard shell and a sensitive core. When meeting a stranger, such a person first seems reserved but then warms up quickly. In contrast, those who lie on their backs with their arms at their sides in the soldier position are quiet, reserved, and known for their strong principles. Yearners, on the other hand, sleep on their side and stretch out their arms in front of them. Idzikowski claims that this position indicates distrust, and that once such a person has made up his or her mind it is unlikely to change. Lying on your side with your arms against your body is the sign of the typical log sleeper, an easygoing but gullible character.

Things look quite different for free-fall sleepers, who lie on the stomach and hug their pillows. They are nervous and thin-skinned. But be warned from diagnosing your fellow man or woman on the basis of such evidence. No empirical proof of these connections exists, and serious researchers refrain from such speculations.

The subject of children and lying down has long been a playground for heavy-handed theorists. The famous anatomist Andreas Vesalius, who was also the court physician for Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, voiced a most remarkable hypothesis. The otherwise highly regarded Vesalius suggested that the “typical” German head shape—flat at the back and thus relatively short—was due to the fact that German mothers placed their infants on their backs. Belgians, he further reasoned, had long heads because their mothers placed them on their sides. General wisdom cautioned against laying children in bed next to their mothers. The danger that they could be smothered was too great, and horrendous statistics show that these fears were well justified.

The designers of the Children’s Pavilion at the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair wanted to provide a definitive answer to the question of the ideal way for children to lie down. Realistically sculptured models illustrated a clear set of oppositions. One child lies flat on his back with his head slightly raised on a pillow, legs straight, arms stretched out against his sides. The other lies on his side with his arms under
his head so that, in the words of the physician H. Plass, “the lungs cannot freely expand when breathing, the circulation is inhibited, the back is hunched and all the limbs are displaced.”

While the first child oozes good health and smiles in his comfortable sleep, the other wears the pained expression of someone plagued by bad dreams. Concerned parents are said to have stood in front of the exhibit and admonished their children: “You have to lie like this one, stretched out, and not huddled together like the other one!” At the same time, Plass insisted that “sustained lying in a horizontal position” was damaging for children and drew a comparison to the practice of fattening up animals by preventing them from moving. Other experts even claimed that the high incidence of child mortality was due to children’s lying excessively still. Recommended countermeasures included wicker beds with fixed legs or wooden or steel beds with movable side panels. The point was to allow children to move without falling to the floor. In the nineteenth century, it was a great sign of progress that parents could be admonished to provide “a separate bed for every child!”

A Sami hanging bassinet

Other cultures took different and occasionally surprising approaches. George Catlin, a lawyer who became a painter, began traveling through the American wilderness in 1830. During his journeys he observed how a group of Native Americans had tied their children stretched out on boards, with their heads supported on bolsters so that their chins could not sink and their lips would remain closed as they slept. Elsewhere, he saw babies in basketlike devices hung on tree branches. In many parts of the world children were often laid down on soft grass, animal skins, or the bare ground, sometimes with an extra support for the head. Parents in South Africa supposedly scooped out depressions in the ashes from fires and placed the children, wrapped in animal pelts, in these hollows to protect them from the night cold.

We are rarely so alone as we are in our sleep and in our dreams. When two people lie down and sleep in the same bed, they express a profound closeness. Choosing to share a bed is a ritual of coupling that symbolizes togetherness. Nothing is as intimate as pillow talk, the conversations we have in bed while lying beside each other. A double bed with a single blanket for both partners makes it easy to sleep side by side.

In bed, a couple’s struggle to find the right mix of distance and closeness takes a practical form. No matter what the outcome, their bodies speak a clear language. In her book
The Secret Language of Sleep
, Evany Thomas identifies no fewer than thirty-nine possible sleep positions, from the classic Spoon to the Tandem Cyclists to Excalibur, in which the partners are almost inextricably entwined. Other options include the Zipper, in which the couple lie back to back, with their offset lower bodies touching, and the extreme Bread and Spread, in which one partner lies directly on top of the other (who somehow manages to avoid being crushed or suffocated).

It is ill advised to make hasty conclusions
about the quality or psychological characteristics of a relationship based on a particular sleep position. Whether your partner turns his or her back to you when sleeping has more to do with how comfortable this position is than anything else. Yet the practice of sleeping together as a couple does raise all sorts of interesting questions. How much physical contact—stomach on back, leg on leg—can and should we tolerate? Does the level of shared proximity in bed say anything about the state of a relationship? Does sleeping in separate beds mean that deep down, a couple has given up on their relationship? Is it a signal that the end has already begun? There are no simple answers.

Some lucky people never have to worry about such thoughts keeping them awake. For them, sharing a bed becomes a habit they never question. For others, sleeping in the same bed is more problematic because of snoring (which can reach one hundred decibels, approaching the sound of an engine starting), sleeptalking, rhythmic flailing of the limbs, or restless legs syndrome. These problems are sometimes triggered by inner compulsions the sleeper cannot control. In such cases, a wider bed or separate blankets can sometimes help. Some couples also decide to stop sharing the bed as they get older so they don’t disturb each other’s sleep.

Gerhard Klösch, an Austrian sleep researcher, has notoriously claimed that women sleep worse with a man at their side because they feel responsible for him, and that men sleep better next to a woman for the same reason. There may be some truth to this observation; it’s not uncommon for heart attack sufferers to get help more quickly because their partners noticed their distress in bed.

The question of whether it’s better to sleep alone or together is answerable only on a case-by-case basis. Many people can’t imagine doing without this physical closeness. But even when spending the night in the same bed leads to problems, a willingness to compromise can allow couples to still enjoy falling asleep next to each other. For example, one
partner can switch to a separate bed or room during the night. Zip and link beds are also an option. These are single beds that can be joined with a zipper to create a large bed when a couple craves intimacy and later separated when they prefer to have some space. For some couples, the solution is simply to sleep in the same bed but face in opposite directions. In the early 1920s, the architect Otto Bartning designed a bedroom that sounds like the setup to a joke: the beds were separated by a wall of clear glass that allowed the happy couple to sleep side by side without suffering any resulting inconvenience.