Kin 1600

Wellness Philosophy/ KIN 1600-2 Spring 2015 –Sleep Schedule Ever since I have begun life at college, I have found going to bed on a decent time each night a very troublesome task. I wake up feeling very tired the next morning, and I always seem in a rush to get my day started. Because of staying up so late and then not waking up on time, I am sometimes late to work or class. In addition, I find myself very tired and stressed throughout the day. This in effect makes me often irritable toward other people. I am tired of living my life in a constant flurry every morning. Thus, the behavioral change that I would like to alter is my sleeping schedule. Being tired after a night of sleep just leads to anxiety and causes even more problems for me. I am determined to fix this issue for myself by setting some goals and planning. Throughout the course of history, people did not always struggle with their sleep schedule. Virginia Tech History Professor Roger Ekirch conducted some research to study the sleeping schedule of humans in the 18th century. Before the 1800s, acquiring the recommended 8 hours of sleep per night was accomplished in two separate four-hour cycles per night. Ekirch discovered that people would actually sleep for a four-hour period, followed by a 2 to 3 hour period of wakefulness, and then another four-hour sleep cycle. This was in fact the common method of sleeping during these times. In the period between the four-hour sleep cycles, people would engage in certain activities such as meditation, prayer, or reading. However, shortly after the end of the 20th century, this sleeping schedule method became obsolete. In the present day, the norm is for people to acquire sleep over a continuous 8-hour cycle. Unfortunately, the following statistics prove that humans domestically and globally are struggling to get a full night of rest.