Sleeping in a Hammock

For the past several months I have slept overnight, indoors, in a hammock.

It isn’t a typical sleeping arrangement for my culture. Nearly everyone who learns of my mattress-less condition asks me more or less the same two questions:

1. Isn’t it bad for your back?

2. My goodness, why?

   
   

First, I am not a doctor. Sleeping in a hammock is probably not a good idea for everyone. Waking up sore and damaging the spinal cord are not fun thoughts. It has, however, worked for me. I find that how I lay in the hammock determines whether I wake up stiff or ready to do cartwheels. Remember, it is possible to incorrectly sleep on a mattress and wake up sore and stiff there too.

I paid approximately sixty dollars for my Brazilian hammock, and I sleep with three pillows and a blanket. They’re not luxury items designed for the perfect night’s sleep, which is how many mattress companies justify exorbitantly high prices, but I do sleep amazingly well in my inexpensive getup.

It took me a good while to figure out how to best orient myself in my hammock. I read a lot of anecdotal pieces about the “proper” way to sleep in these hammocks. There was a lot of diagonal-praising and pillow-condemning. I tried those. I really did. For several weeks I went through every prescribed position, and I was not sleeping well at all. I nearly gave up on the venture, but then I tried pulling the hammock very tightly, laying out three pillows along the length of the hammock, and sleeping parallel to the hanging direction. It was luxurious and I have woken up refreshed and limber for several months (limber is the opposite of stiff, right?). The hammock contoured to my body and the pillows softened the taut fabric. I could sleep on my side or back and the pillows, being approximately the width of my body, parted the sides of the hammock so the cloth wouldn’t cave into the center so easily. I know this isn’t the “right” way to sleep in a hammock, but here’s the thing; it works. It works well. At least for me. If you’re trying out hammock sleeping, do whatever you want. The hammock police haven’t arrested me for my crimes yet.

The second question is much more fascinating to answer since I have several reasons for trying out a hammock. The top reasons are:

Minimalism

I enjoy being thrifty with my space, and while a stretched out hammock may occupy a lot of space when in use, I can quickly and easily roll it up and pack it away in my closet (something I do nearly daily). I suppose an air-mattress can do this as well, but a hammock seems like less of a hassle.

Expense

A cheap mattress is often uncomfortable, but a comfortable mattress is often costly. My setup is both inexpensive and comfortable.

Dust

I am allergic to dust. Unfortunately most mattresses are absolute magnets for all kinds of dander, dirt, and debris. I’m not the cleanest person on the planet, more of a gremlin really, but I deeply appreciate the simplicity of removing dust from my bed by putting it into the washing machine.

Comfort

I have experienced improved physical comfort during sleep from resting on a bed that contours to my body. I will concede that this incentive is very subjective.

Rocking While Asleep

An experiment carried out by a Swiss research team revealed a bed that gently rocks increases the depth and quality of deep sleep [1, p 118]. It wasn’t a hammock, but by suspending a bed from ropes and attaching a rotating pulley to slowly sway the bed, the scientists were able to increase the quality of slow brainwaves and more than double the number of sleep spindles experienced by the test subjects relative to the control participants [1, p 118].

Sleep Spindles are fast trills of brain wave activity occurring at the end of slow waves during NREM sleep [1, p 49]. They do not necessarily occur at the end of all slow waves of NREM sleep, but they do not occur elsewhere. The more powerful and frequent these spindles are in a subject’s sleep, the less likely it is that external stimuli will rouse the sleeper [1, p 49].

Additionally, sleep spindles in stage 2 NREM sleep are responsible for desaturating the hippocampus of the short term memories it stores [1, p 110]. An increased number of sleep spindles during a sleep session leads to an increased learning ability upon waking [1, p 110]. This is different from innate learning aptitude, as this measures relative learning from before to after sleep.

So naturally I want to deepen my sleep and maximize the amount of sleep spindles I experience.

My hammock does a great job of rocking while I fall asleep, and makes me fall asleep faster. Yet I am certain the rocking stops after some hours of my lying still. I have been playing with the idea of creating a driver to keep the hammock rocking long after I have fallen asleep. There are so many ways to go about doing this. Currently I am weighing out the difficulties and advantages of the different methods. As a theoretical physicist, the results of my engineering efforts are often frail, fickle machines. Still, it is fun to tinker. Using a motor and Arduino seems like a lot of fun to code, but so does the more steam-punk version that would come from bits of a grandfather or cuckoo clock. If I get to play with this I am sure you will hear about it.

I may not sleep in a hammock forever, but so far I have been loving it, and see no need to switch back to a mattress anytime soon.

 

References:

[1] Walker, M. (2017). Why we sleep. Scribner.