Quote Originally Posted by Cdsnuts View Post
One thing that fascinated me about sleep habits before the invention of electric light was the practice of second sleep. Before lights people would usually fall asleep soon after the sun went down. They would sleep for four hours or so, wake up, eat, have sex, read and generally be up for an hour, sometimes two, then they would go into "second sleep" which is where they slept another four hours until the sun came up. Apparently this whole get an eight or nine hours of sleep in one shot is relatively new, in evolutionary terms, and man made. Who knew!

Some people wake up in the middle of the night. It's completely natural. But because of what's been drilled into our heads, we think there is something wrong, thus we start the mental gymnastics and drive our-self nuts. For the healthy people that have this habit, if they were to just relax, not stress out, they would end up falling back asleep in no time.
I've heard about this! thats so interesting. The only real insomnia I will have nowadays comes maybe once per month where I wake up and my mind runs wild with ideas and epiphanies for an hour or two.

Might be related to what you are describing. Its usually a beautiful headspace. Some of the clearest thinking I do outside meditation.