THE FORGOTTEN STAGE OF SLEEP

Many experts claim there are four stages to our regular sleep cycle – but there is also a fifth stage, often overlooked! This happens during the first five to 10 minutes of the falling-asleep process. As it only occurs once at the start of falling asleep, rather than repeating several times over though the night like the other four stages, most sleep researchers ignore it. But this fifth stage is actually a strange limbo-land between being awake and asleep, where hypnic jerks can occur, and some strange, often insightful, hallucinations, a bit like ‘pre-dreams’, can come our way.