The Secret To Thriving on Less Sleep

How much sleep do we really need?

I went to a talk by Dr John Demartini today at the Vitality, Genius, Longevity Conference. An amazing speaker, John has dedicated his whole life to studying, teaching and travelling around the world inspiring and teaching others. At the Conference he spoke about vitality and illness. There were many takeaways but one of the things that struck out for me is how much sleep he has.

He didn’t say how many hours he sleeps but he did suggest that at times in the past sleep wasn’t a big deal for him and he delegates that out.. When you love what you do you don’t need much sleep.

However when you look at sleep research we are told that we need to have 8 hours sleep. So How much do we really need?

If you ask most people how much sleep we should get, the common answer will be eight hours. This is a generally established paradigm accepted by most people in western society.

However many successful people have lived on fewer than eight hours of sleep – Margaret Thatcher only slept five hours each night; Napoleon slept only four hours; and Buckminster Fuller followed a polyphasic sleeping pattern, sleeping 30 minutes every six hours, which he continued for two years. Perhaps sleeping less hours are for leaders and extraordinary people.

You point me to a sleep study that says we need 8 hours, I’ll point you to one that says we need 6-7 hours of sleep.

Now we could argue that in the case of World leaders (Margaret Thatcher and Napoleon) they have less sleep and tend to look haggard as a result. They sleep less because they are stressed. This also could be true.

In the case of Demartini he looks younger than his age but his secret is

1) he doesn’t have the fate of a nation waiting for him to screw up. 2) he eats very well and 3) he loves what he does.

He’s been studying health form over 30 years now so knows how to eat well. He loves what he does so is able to tap into an enormous reservoir of energy that comes when you are living in alignment with your values and you love what you do.

Perhaps this is why sleep studies haven’t shown that we can get less sleep. They are for the average person. When you go beyond the average person into the high achiever catergory perhaps the rules no longer apply.

So with this in mind I see there are two routes.

1. The sensible route. This is take the conventional advice have 7-8 hours sleep a night and adhere to this. This is fine and works. If you’re not going to do anything useful by reducing the amount of sleep you have, you can’t go wrong by spending that time sleeping. In other words if you are reducing sleep for the sake of it but aren’t doing anything worthwhile with the time they you’re probably not doing yourself a service.

2. The Experimental route. If you want to go the experimental route here are my observations of what works:

The amount of sleep you need is correlated to the degree you are enjoying life. When we are happy we sleep less. When we are depressed we need more sleep. Therefore have fun, do what you love and be happy and you’ll need less sleep
Some people are evening people and have trouble waking up in the morning. But if you find yourself working, enjoying yourself and looking forward to the next moment then you’re on the right track.
Eating well and exercising will make a big
Listen to your body but know that your mind has an influence on the body. You can sleep 8 hours and feel just as tired as if you slept 6 hours. The trick is to stop worrying about being tired. Be like a baby. When a baby is tired it sleeps when it’s not tired it is awake. Adults do clever things like check the clock before bed calculate how much sleep they will have and then decide how tired they will feel in the morning. Then hey presto they are tired in the morning.
There are different levels of tiredness but when you are truly knackered listen to your body. Check in with your body observe the signs. What is your heart rate like, how do your eyes feel, are you feeling any tension anywhere?