Sleep Matters: Stages of Sleep

If you are too busy or suffer from insomnia, you need to implement a strategy to get more sleep. You could try putting on some soothing sleeping music to help, as sleep deprivation can have harmful consequences.

There are two basic sleep stages that you need to go through several times during the night to have an effective rest period.

The first kind of sleep is rapid eye movement (REM sleep), and it is characterized by your eyes moving rapidly behind your eyelids from side to side. Your brain wave activity is like that of your wakeful self, as is your heart rate and blood pressure. Dreaming most frequently happens during this phase.

There is also non-REM sleep. It occurs in phases, including a switch from wakefulness to sleep, a period of light rest, and a period of deep sleep, which is the one that helps you to feel refreshed.