The Art of Lying Down Read Online Free PDF

interdependent variously. Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.”
    Lying down and sleeping are more than just ways to prepare for the standing, walking, sitting, and other physical activities we engage in. Jürgen Zulley, a German sleep researcher, characterizes sleeping as “a different form of being awake.” Furthermore, he claims that quality, not quantity, is what matters. Still, the state of being awake requires explanation just as much as sleep does. Why are we conscious? And while we’re at it, why are we alive in the first place? “You cannot imagine life without death,” wrote the Italian legal philosopher Norberto Bobbio in his wonderful book
Old Age and Other Essays
. Sleep and waking are similarly inseparable.
    What happens between lying down and getting up in physiological terms? The blood pressure is highest in the arteries leading directly from the heart and falls as the blood flows through the body until in the veins before the right ventricle, it is practically nonexistent. Since all our blood vessels are laid flat when we lie down and our entire blood volume is just a few inches high as a result, hydrostatic pressureaccounts for just a small share of our blood pressure overall. In other words, in a horizontal posture, the heart no longer has to pump our blood “uphill” from our legs. When we lie down, the veins in the head and neck swell noticeably, and the jugular and temporal arteries pulse more strongly. Sometimes temporary headaches and confusion can occur; these symptoms worsen if the head is positioned lower than the rest of the body. When we stand up, hydrostatic pressure comes into play as the height of the liquid column changes and the blood vessels extend over a greater height range. In the arteries supplying oxygen to the head, for example, the pressure suddenly increases, while it falls in the arteries of the legs. If we stand up very quickly, the amount of oxygen reaching the brain may drop below the needed level. In severe cases, we can end up fainting.
    When we lie down, sleep is usually not far off, provided we’re in the right frame of mind for it. Although we can create favorable conditions for the transition between waking and sleep, we can’t plan all the details; a moment comes that we can neither control nor predict. Our eyes close; functioning slows in the muscles, including those in the neck; a feeling of heaviness floods through us. Thoughts lose their definition, and we stop concentrating on them. Our sense of space dissolves, we cede control, and consciousness slips away. Falling asleep in the presenceof loud noises or other external stimuli is possible only when we are truly exhausted. We need to feel that we are safe from disturbances, unpleasant surprises, and real or imaginary dangers.
    Some people, especially children, are afraid to give themselves over to the night and its slumber. For those who suffer from insomnia, lying awake can become a nightmare. Edward W. Said, the noted Palestinian American literary theorist, had the habit of going to bed late and getting up at dawn. In his autobiography,
Out of Place
, he explains that he always wanted to get sleeping over with as quickly as possible: “Sleeplessness for me is a cherished state to be desired at almost any cost; there is nothing for me as invigorating as immediately shedding the shadowy half-consciousness of a night’s loss than the early morning, reacquainting myself with or resuming what I might have lost completely a few hours earlier.”
    Sleep can be something pleasant and welcome, and full of dreams that open up new possibilities, offer solutions, and fulfill wishes; or it can present terrible nightmares. Presumably, people whose daily rhythms were not so rigidly controlled, as is often the case today, could, despite obligations and constraints, take a more flexible attitude toward sleep and the opportune times for it.