“Next, you want to cushion up the floor,” Bowman says. Either the egg crate foam topper cabal had me fooled all these years or I was crushing this experiment. After the first night without it, I couldn’t tell the difference. The guest room’s bed has one of those egg crate foam toppers-more bedding that I always thought added a little extra comfort. This phase, too, was painless, if a touch lonely. I slinked off to the guest room, feeling slightly as if I had committed some severe marital sin, to sleep for another three nights. “Think of it as cross-training,” Bowman says. Easy! What else you got, Bowman?Īfter you’ve adapted to a different part of your usual mattress, adapt to a different mattress altogether. It felt strange the first two nights, but then I slept soundly on the third. If you change positions, your body has to adapt.” So my wife and I switched spots. “Over time, your mattress adapts to your shape. As soon as I felt comfortable and well rested during one phase, I could then progress to the next.ĭo you sleep on the left-most portion of the mattress? Try a night on the right-most spot, says Bowman. I could ease into it using the following steps. Maybe a thorough massage-via-floor would work them out?īowman, mercifully, told me I wouldn’t have to jump immediately from the mattress to the mat. Recently, I’d been suffering from annoying muscle knots bestowed upon me by a weight-training program that includes bench pressing, squats, and overhead presses. Though I was skeptical I decided to give Bowman’s suggestions a try. It’s like a massage all night.” Bowman calls this “dynamic rest” that, coupled with daily foam rolling, will lead to a “more robust muscle structures for athletic adventures.” You’re putting pressure on your body parts. “By sleeping without a mattress, you’ll strengthen tiny muscles that build over time. The aches and pains most people suffer after waking up are due to not moving for hours,” she says. This prohibits the natural turning your body undergoes overnight. Those super-pricey, memory-foam mattresses are movement restrictors, Bowman says. “You’ll sleep better, achieve a deeper quality of sleep, and wake up feeling good,” she says. Sleeping without a mattress, on the floor, as Bowman has done for 3 ½ years, has numerous benefits. “We sit in chairs at work, on sofas in front of the T.V., and we sleep on thick mattresses at night.” All this cushiness, she argues, makes us soft. “We live an over-cushioned life,” Bowman says. When you talk to her about sleeping, you begin to realize that maybe your relationship with beds isn’t so rosy. Bowman’s written several books on pain relief and proper body alignment, such as Movement Matters and Move Your DNA. My wife, a longtime runner, told me about Bowman, whose specialization focuses on biomechanics and movement.

Should i sleep without a pillow