Sleep Orientation

[Corngold]

Peaters and health skeptics,

This is not a traditional experimental log, but an observation of sorts. It has interested me for some time the question of which direction the body points during sleep. This is more in the realm of eastern medicine and/or superstition, but it is nonetheless interesting.

Of course, finding a comfortable sleeping position depends on the space and flow. Feng shui often comes up when researching this. Reddit has several threads on the topic and other social media, now, too. Similar ideas: try not to sleep facing a door or entrance; nothing over your head (shelves); where you are most comfortable. There is a spatial component to this comfort, but I've often wondered how that ties to direction. I think direction is downstream of the physical structure, and comfort downstream from this. So, direction may be "random" to the extent that our buildings favor certain length-wise orientations and flows.

Below is a log of sleep orientations. The direction is where my head was pointing.

Current Residence: South-East
Trip A: South-West
Trip B: South
Trip C : South / SE
Previous Residence: East
Previous 1: East and South
Previous 2: East
Previous 3: NE
Previous 4: West
Previous 5: East
Previous 6: N / NE
Previous 7: North
Previous 8: North
Previous 9: West

This is as far as I can remember, with incidental trips and shorter periods excluded except for a recent trip with three locations. The recent trip I included because I believed that I was sleeping with my head pointed South at various places - and, I was correct within a small margin of error.

Otherwise, I've gone back to my childhood home at #9 which I believe was West and probably East. I find it interesting that I've often switched my bed direction based on the dynamic of the room or sense that I wasn't sleeping well. There was a period at my last long-term residence when I tried to rotate my bed in the four cardinal directions to gauge which is best. Of course, this is effected by the room more than Sun/dark, air flow, and/or theoretical "magnetic" meridians that flow north-south etc. For that space East was best.

Anyways, this is speculative stuff, which I can't really make heads or tails of in an objective way. My own speculation is the South may be good to counter our natural upright position. The head is pointing "skyward" i.e. "north" when we're upright on the northern hemisphere (generally) so, in sleep, which is opposed to wakefulness, our head pairs with geographic south while our feet point north. At the same time, room orientation and type really is determinative. That said, I remain skeptical that room / space is everything. When I was a kid I would sometimes wake up in the opposite direction - once again I think the simple idea of opposites may factor into this. If I slept in the opposite direction currently, it would be awful, expose myself to the doorway, windows, etc.

Here's a bizarre and lengthy study on these ideas:

https://www.eneuro.org/content/6/2/ENEURO.0483-18.2019

Another thing: I live in the northern hemisphere, so on the "north" side or "top" side of Earth. Earth rotates counter-clockwise (West to East) once every 24 hours. In sleep orientation, in the northern hemisphere, lying with head northward would be to rotate from right to left. The opposite is lying southward and moving left to right. So I wonder if this also has some effect? Anecdotally, to lay head northward in the northern hemisphere is like being on the top of a clock, but, lying southward is like being a pendulum tugged around by momentum. Further, to lie head pointing eastward is like sitting on a train facing the opposite direction of the train's movement. To lie westward is like driving a car / steering, because you're facing the direction of movement. In some ways this also means that south in the northern hemi. and north in the southern hemi. would be akin to a hammock or "suspension" type of gravity, where we are being pulled. Similar idea for sleeping eastward, where rotation is pulling us from west to east.

Whatever the case, optimizing for the best sleep is probably 80-90% a function of environment and space. If comfort is possible in all four cardinal directions, I think this would be a fun experiment for anyone trying to gauge sleep type and quality.