Grad student reveals benefits of sleeping like medieval person and why her wild experiment works

A woman spent the summer sleeping like a medieval person — waking up after four hours of sleep to write poetry and letters — and says it made her more “alert.”Anna Fox, 26, a graduate student studying medieval literature from North Carolina, US, experimented with the historical sleeping pattern after becoming fascinated by the idea of “first sleep” and “second sleep.”Rather than sleeping for one continuous stretch, Anna began waking around four-and-a-half hours after falling asleep and staying awake for several hours before returning to bed.Anna attempted this for four weeks.She admitted the experiment left her feeling more alert and she’d wake up with a “peaceful accomplishment.”She said, “For the first two weeks, I would go to bed early and then wake up at about 1:30 a.m.to 3:30 a.m.“One of the commenters told me to base it off whenever I actually went to sleep, so I would add four-and-a-half hours on to when I fell asleep.“If I went to bed at 9:30 p.m., I would set my alarm for 2 a.m.” Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.

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Never miss a story.Anna initially followed a strict routine, going to bed at around 9 p.m., waking in the early hours and then returning to sleep for four and a half hours until around 8 a.m.She eventually experimented with going to bed around sunset, sometimes waking at 3 a.m.

and occasionally finding herself naturally awake at 5 a.m.Anna, who was on a university break and therefore able to devote time to the experiment, admits it was not always easy to drag herself out of bed.She said, “There were definitely nights where it was a battle of the will and I really didn’t want to get up.“I’m not a very self-controlled person, so I had to really force myself.”But once she was awake, Anna found the hours surprisingly peaceful an...