When it comes to sleep habits around the world, things get surprisingly creative. Charles Dickens always made sure his bed faced north — and he traveled with a compass to confirm it. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps slept in a pod that simulated high-altitude air, pushing his body to produce more red blood cells and keep his muscles stocked with oxygen. Throughout history, individuals have had sleep routines most of us would find pretty strange. But what about entire cultures and countries? It turns out that even though sleep is a universal need, how we actually do it is anything but universal.
6 Strange Sleep Habits Around the World That Might Change How You Think About Rest
1 – Babies Napping Outside
One of the more surprising sleep habits around the world comes from Scandinavia, where parents in countries like Norway and Sweden routinely leave their babies outside to nap — even in the dead of winter. And it’s not just in the safety of their own backyards. It’s common to spot babies snoozing in strollers parked outside a store or café while parents are inside shopping or having tea. Many daycare centers follow the same practice, lining up rows of strollers in the early afternoon chill. The thinking is that fresh air supports kids’ health and may help them fend off colds and flus. As a bonus, the babies also tend to sleep longer than those kept indoors.
2 – Keeping Kids Up Late
Here in the US, parents typically set early bedtimes for toddlers to get some “adult time” in before bed. It’s quite the opposite in some Asian countries where toddler bedtimes may be as late as 10 or 11 PM. Why? So parents can spend more time with their family after work. (Feeling a twinge of parental guilt? Don’t worry. Toddlers need their sleep for healthy development and well-being – and those late bedtimes could be cutting kids’ snooze times too short.)
3 – Napping at Work
In Japan, dozing off at your desk is a sign of dedication to your job (i.e. you’ve worked yourself to the point of total exhaustion. In recent years, Japanese companies have actually started making provisions for more comfortable workday napping believing that a better-rested worker is the more productive worker – which is true. But the Japanese are still getting the least sleep globally and karōshi – death by overwork – is not unheard of.
4 – Unscheduled Sleep
It’s not hard to imagine having a completely different sleep schedule when you don’t have artificial lighting, but you’d assume your inner clock would simply follow that of the sun. That’s not always the case as modern hunter-gatherer tribes show. For the !Kung of Botswana and the Efe of Zaire, “sleep is a very fluid state,” anthropologist Carol Worthman told Discover Magazine. “They sleep when they feel like it — during the day, in the evening, in the dead of night,” not in a recurring (mostly scheduled) block like in the US.
5 – Citywide Siestas
In the Mediterranean, people sleep more than once a day. The siesta (or riposo or Ta’assila, depending on the region) is the time held tradition of a mid-afternoon nap. In many places, restaurants and shops will close for an hour (or three) as employees partake in this scheduled snooze. Worthman found that in Cairo, they also sleep in “radically different sleep environments—rarely alone, almost always with one or more family members, in rooms with windows open to the roar of outside street traffic.”
6 – Fear Sleep
Perhaps the strangest sleep habit of all, according to Worthman, people in Bali have been observed to exhibit something called “fear sleep,” or “todoet poeles.” In a nutshell, it means that in stressful situations, they can quickly fall into a deep sleep. And we’re not talking sitting in a chair at your desk. Worthman described a scenario in which some men were caught stealing and as villagers hauled one off screaming at him, he fell limp and fast asleep in their arms.
Interested in learning more strange things about sleep? Check out our blog “The Top 10 Most Bizarre Sleep Disorders.”
