The Practical, Easy To Understand Guide on Sleep Stages and Sleep Cycles
As a child, all I was ever taught about sleep was that you go to bed at night and wake up 8 hours later feeling better.
As an adult, I felt like I lost all that basic knowledge because I would go to bed at night, but not fall asleep for a long time, and feel attacked by something whenever I did fall asleep, and then struggle the rest of the night until I hit snooze seven times before waking up.
If that’s you, then you are like many of my clients and email subscribers that also lost their way, somewhere between childhood and now, with their sleep.Was it parenthood? Increased life responsibilities? A traumatic event?
The answer could be some, none, or all.
Regardless, I feel it’s helpful to at least understand the basics of sleep, starting with sleep stages and sleep cycles, along with some helpful, practical tips on how to improve your sleep quality.
I present this information not just as a certified sleep science coach, but someone who suffered from sleep paralysis, sleep anxiety, and insomnia for more than two decades, solving my sleep problems, and THEN becoming a sleep coach!
Truth be told, science still doesn’t have all the answers as to everything that happens during sleep.
But they do have a pretty firm grasp in knowing there are stages to it, based on the thousands upon thousands of sleep studies from the past few centuries.
One of the first things to understand is that sleep isn’t a singular event that should take place for 6 to 8 hours at night.
It’s actually made up of stages and cycles. Each stage has a function that benefits your body and brain with recovery and long term benefits.
Stage 1 of Sleep: Initial Sleep
Stage 1 is the initial stage of sleep. It lasts approximately 5 minutes (PMID:30252388). This is where you are preparing for the following stages.
You are ready to close your eyes and snuggle up somewhere for the night at this point.
The yawns are setting in.
Your body craves a horizontal, relaxed position, with something under your neck to keep your spine aligned.
During stage 1, your senses are still active! Hot is hot, cold is cold. Someone could tap you on the shoulder and you’d notice. Someone could call your name and you’ll hear it the first few times.
Stage 1 sleep is also, in my opinion, the stage where you have the most control in making it happen. You can set up your room to minimize distractions, stop eating/drinking things that would disrupt this stage, and even pick the time when you want it to happen!
Here’s a little parenting hack.
If you have toddlers and they are starting to nod off, give them about 10 uninterrupted minutes of sleep before you attempt to relocate them to bed.
Set the bed up first (pulling any blankets back). Keep the lights off. And instead of carrying them over your shoulder to bed, see if you can hold them horizontally and closer to the bed’s height. This can minimize any movements, changes in center of gravity, and other sensory distractions as you tuck them in.
Stage 2 Sleep
In Stage 2, your body starts preparing you for the long-term healing, restoring, and recovery that should take place for the next six to eight hours.
At this point, your body’s core temperature starts to drop a degree or two. Remember how I said in stage 1 your senses are still active? Well, now they are dulled, for the most part. Something extreme like a loud burst of noise or intense heat/cold could wake you. But in most cases, your brain has created sleep spindles to block out all background noise.
This lasts up to a half hour during the first cycle, and gets longer as the night goes on.
Your heart rate and blood pressure drop.
Breathing slows down and becomes more regulated. If you’ve ever listened to my season 3 podcast episodes, you’ll notice that I include regulated breathing exercises at the end of each episode for this reason! We’re trying to transition you into this stage.
Your body becomes less mobile, but not completely paralyzed. I believe that this happens as a safety measure so that you don’t roll over and fall!
Stage 2 Sleep Optimizing and safety hacks
Your senses are dulled, but not completely shut off.
Your sense of smell is probably the least responsive during Stage 2 sleep (PMID: 15164891).
This is why it’s important to have multi-sensory fire alarms, such as ones with lights and sounds.
While you can’t go straight into stage 2 of your sleep, you can certainly work to prevent significant triggers that can take you out of it.
If you sleep with other people in the home and they are on a different sleep schedule, they should be aware of significant lights and sounds that could wake you based on your bedtime. In my night owl days, I had to be extra careful not to enter the room with someone sleeping until they were at least 45 minutes into it.
Also be mindful of your diet. Eating and drinking too close to bedtime might trigger a necessary bowel movement a half hour or so later. Why risk having to get up when your body is starting to shut down for Stage 3, where the big healing happens?
Stage 3 Sleep: The Healing Stage
You started the sleep process with Stage 1. Your body went into full shut down in Stage 2. And now we’re onto stage 3, where the real purpose of sleep begins!
Stage 3 packs a punch in up to 40 minutes of each cycle. The most growth hormone release happens here, cycling to any tissues that need repair, and growing muscle.
Your immune system’s cytokine cells also produce during this period and have a boot camp. They take this time to train against foreign enemies by enhancing memory of illnesses and infections. These cells even recruit others to join the cause! This immune system training is active enough to generate body heat. Your body starts to warm back up to normal temperature.
Sleep and Weight Loss
Trying to burn off any excess weight? Stage 3 sleep can happen. That heat generation from the immune system is a calorie burner. Getting eight hours of restorative sleep can burn off up to 500 calories a night (PMID: 37369712)!
Your brain is also at its lowest level of measurable activity. If you had an EEG hooked up to your brain during sleep, you could see “slow waves”, or very low electrical pulses compared to other sleep stages.
Now that the immune system’s memory has formed, it’s time to work on consolidating the rest of your brain’s memory, which happens in Stage 4.
Stage 4 of Sleep: REM Sleep
Is a mix of deep and light sleep. Your memories are consolidated during this stage. The brain looks at experiences and interactions you had all day and determines what you need to keep for long term memory and what can be tossed out.
Those tossed out cells go into your brain cavities, which are basically the roads and highways for your neurotransmitters to send signals and commands throughout the body.
We can’t have those highways clogged, or your processing slows down.
Fortunately, there is a “brain washing” that takes place during stage 4, where your spinal fluid mixes with water to clean out the cavities from dead cells and plaque build up (PMID: 36917314).
After this stage, your body returns to Stage 1 sleep, and this cycle happens three to four times a night for 6 to 8 hours.
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Stage 4 Sleep Hack: Drink Water!
You need to remain hydrated for many reasons, but if your memory is lagging, consider this: your brain is 70% water.
Stay hydrated so that the “brain washing” can firmly take place in stage 4 sleep! If you need a glass of water at your bedside table because you get thirsty at night, chances are you aren’t properly hydrating yourself during the day.
Hopefully this basic understanding of sleep stages has helped you think about what’s really happening when you nod off.
Now you’ll have a place to start when you take the next steps towards optimizing your sleep.
Remember that it’s a journey. If you are getting 4 hours, you won’t get 8 hours in one night forever just from reading this post , contemplating your life, and making some adjustments.
But you might get 4 and a half. And then in a week, 5 hours.
By the end of the month, you could be at 6 hours!
For a confidence boost, visit my Stan Store and get a FREE stay asleep guide along with weekly emails of more tips and tricks to help you get the sleep you deserve.
