Telluride Times, Thursday, February 19, 2026

This morning on the dog walk while reminiscing about childhood, I slipped mentally into my room on the second floor of the big house I grew up in, in Seattle. At night especially, it was clear to me how empty the place felt and how far away everyone else was downstairs, upstairs, or even down the hall.

I had a specific sleep routine that involved stretching my long braids straight out at 90-degree angles from my body, and then lining up two stuffed snakes snugly on either side of me, like sentries. Once this was accomplished, I felt safe enough to close my eyes and enter the kingdom of sleep (which, in my view, is adjacent to the kingdom of heaven).

In the intervening years, I have had bouts of sleep challenges, some quite long lived. Along the way, I’ve tried numerous remedies, written about them, and sought help. It’s a bit of a mystery for some of us, especially when wild cards like the moon keep showing up. Sleep, as we know today and perhaps always have, is a vital component of our overall health and attends to many mind-body systems, including the glymphatic, the brain’s own waste disposal system. Ideally, we need to get enough sleep; and we know what it’s like when we don’t.

Meanwhile, I often remind myself that mothers – and sometimes fathers — may go years without great sleep, as may entire groups or populations under duress. One of my own family members, many years ago, had to wake up every hour for over a year to attend to her infant’s challenges. We can do what we have to do.

And, not everyone, even given the opportunity, can lay their head down on whatever firm, flat, or poufy pillow, close their eyelids and then wake up seven hours later, having dreamt and REMed like pros, and then stretching contentedly as the last remnants of sleep morph into a really nice cup of coffee or tea. Many individuals, in fact, notoriously have subsisted on very little sleep throughout history – which is not to say it ultimately benefitted them, but that they did it.

Some of these are polyphasic sleepers (divided sleep), including short sleepers like Tesla, Jefferson, Edison and da Vinci who slept somewhere between two and four hours per night, napping in various configurations to make up for lost time. Other contemporary public figures who have been known anecdotally to sleep less are Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, and Margaret Thatcher.

Though a micro 1-3% of the population has natural short sleep (NSS), only a tiny fraction of these folks actually has the gene variation — called DEC2 — that allows them physiologically to sleep much less without documented effect on physical health, memory, mood and focus. Otherwise, those of us who want better sleep can be subject to the downsides of deprivation: brain fog, hormonal disruption, weakened immune system, irritability.

There are always new things trending in the world of getting more sleep, in addition to the familiar basics you yourselves may have already tried: dark rooms (no junk light), cool bedroom temperatures or fancier cooling mattresses, hot baths, gentle yoga, blue light restriction, magnesium and other supplements, regular bedtime and wake-up routines, brain-dump journaling, lower evening lighting, wearables and sleep tracking, self-hypnosis, and first-thing morning sun. Sleep hygiene has gotten a lot of publicity in the last five years, as many people continue to navigate more and more complex and stressful lives and brain activity.

Meanwhile, it is always interesting to read about the latest hacks and trends, some of which make me smile out loud.  Sleep tourism, which sounds like an utter fantasy, involves going elsewhere for optimized slumber and re-training. Cooling caps (controlled thermal transfer) that target the frontal cortex and are worn throughout the night to lower the actual temperature of the brain. Dark showering (a warm shower with the lights off), which can stimulate melatonin production and calm the body. And chronotype-adjusted sleep routines, which involves recognizing if you are a lark, an owl, or “third bird” (somewhere in-between) and adjusting habits based on your natural inclinations.

One of my favorite tangential sleep hacks is something called yoga nidra (I use YouTube tracks), a yogic body scan or version of progressive relaxation that attends to nervous system hygiene. Sometimes I listen when I’ve awakened super early for the day (I’m a lark). I don’t usually drift off again, but my body settles and rejuvenates, enabling me to meet my nervous system where it is, rather than where I think it should be. This creates a feeling of safety, even without any sentries – that I am aware of — at my side!