Sleep connoisseur rates the best ways to fall asleep

I’ve been working as a professional sleeper for the past 16 years, and as a sleep connoisseur, I feel that it’s my duty to test different resting positions in search of the ultimate way to sleep. I know — exhausting work — but hey, I’m just doing my part to better your sleeping experience.

My first trial was trying to sleep upright by standing — which I attempted for a few seconds before remembering that I’m not a horse. I eventually managed to fall asleep upright in a chair, but after waking up in about 30 minutes because of the discomfort, I called it a night and went to sleep normally. The overall experience was uncomfortable and took way too much effort, so unless you're sleeping at school or on an airplane, I wouldn’t recommend sleeping vertically: 1/13.

The following night, I switched to sleeping on my side, and I was able to fall asleep easily. Despite this, my spine felt like a corkscrew when I woke up, which was surprising given how quickly I fell asleep. Over the course of the following two days, I alternated sleeping on my right and left side to see if my spine aching was just an outlier, but what I found only reaffirmed my experience and back pain — ultimately, I would give sideways sleeping a 7/13.

At that point, I was tired of my spine hurting whenever I got out of bed, so I decided to take a break and sleep on my back. As someone who normally sleeps on my back, I might be biased when I say that basic is better, especially when it comes to sleeping: 13/13. 

For me, the real shock was sleeping on my stomach. It took me awhile to position my face so that I could actually breathe, but when I did manage to overcome this obstacle, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. I slept so soundly that I actually slept through my alarm and woke up at around 1 p.m. — slightly later than my usual waking time: 12/13.

Having established the best resting positions, I moved on to testing various ways to sleep. I first tested sleeping with the lights on, which made me pretty groggy in the morning and made falling asleep take longer than usual, but I honestly thought it would be worse; even so, unless you’ve just watched a horror movie, I wouldn’t recommend it: 4/13.

I then tested sleeping with my door open, but as it turns out, closing your door while you sleep is a must. Like every other normal teenager, I need to use my phone for at least an hour before I fall asleep. When I tried to sleep with my door open, my veil of protection disappeared — my mom wasn’t pleased when she found me “sleeping.” Don’t worry; she can’t ground me because the coronavirus already has, but it still wasn’t worth it: 1/13.

Lastly, I’m personally not a fan of PJs because I don’t enjoy the hassle of changing before sleeping and after waking up, so unless you have really cute PJs, wearing them isn’t worth it: 6/13

Ultimately, the way you sleep is up to you, but if you’re not sleeping on your back, with the door closed, lights off and cute PJs on, you should definitely sleep on it.