Understanding the Five Stages of Sleep

The Sleep Cycle: There are five stages of sleep. Stage one is where we start to drift off to sleep.
This is where you feel as if you're daydreaming. This is where Alpha and Theta comes in. Alpha
is the “Restful Place”. During this we experience strange feelings, like the feeling of falling. You
may also experience sudden muscle contractions, these are Hypnagogic Hallucinations. Some
people may even hear their name being called or even a cell phone ringing. Theta is the period
where you are in between sleep and awake. It usually only last for about five to ten minutes. On
average it takes somebody about seven minutes to fall asleep. Some people it takes longer,
some people don't need that long.Stage two is when our brains starts to make short

periods of
rapid wave activity. This is called “Sleep Spindles”.This only lasts about twenty minutes. Our
body temperature also starts to slow down.Stage three is our “Delta Waves” begin to arise.

This
is the transition between light sleep and very deep sleep.Stage four is sometimes referred to as
“Delta Sleep”, the delta waves occur during this time. This where the deep sleep comes, it last
for about thirty minutes. At the end of this stage is when most people start to sleepwalk and bed
wetting. Stage five is called REM. This is where the most dreaming happened. REM sleep is
characterized by eye movement, increased brain activity and increased respiration rate. REM
sleep is when your muscle become paralyzed. Your brain and other body systems are the most
active during this stage because they are so active when we dream. The period of paralyzation
is to protect us. This is so we won't run out of bed to get away from whatever is chasing us in
our dream.
The Cycle: The sleep stages don't exactly go in that order. Sleep begins with one then two, then
three and then that goes into four. The after four, stages two and three repeats before going into
REM. Once REM is over, we go back into stage two. This happens four to five times a night. A
complete cycle takes about ninety to one hundred and one minutes. Infants spend almost

fifty
percent of their time in REM sleep. Adults spend nearly half of sleep time in stage two, about
twenty percent in REM and the other thirty percent in divided between the other three stages.
Older adults spend less time in REM sleep.