Does Having Your Eyes Closed in Bed Count as Sleep?

Since you clicked on this headline, you have probably felt the same way as me and every other living human being while trying to sleep.

Your eyes are closed. But you can’t sleep. You hope you will fall asleep soon, but you lay there for ten minutes, without being able to sleep. You lay there for thirty minutes, without being able to sleep. And then you lay for hours and it’s pretty clear you’re not going to move into another state of consciousness.

When I was young, I once laid in bed, not able to sleep but still having my eyes closed the entire night. I do not remember how tired I was during the day, but I have thought about how effective laying in bed with my eyes closed actually is. I know I’m not actually sleeping, but I’m not quite fully awake either, right?

According to Bryan Fung at The Atlantic, some scientific studies have called laying in bed with your eyes closed “quiet wakefulness.” Neuroscientist Chiara Cirelli says our neurons are firing when we’re awake, but when we’re asleep, our neurons go to an “up-and-down” state, and during the deeper parts of sleep, our neuronal activity goes completely silent.

So the answer, at least on a neuroscientific level, is no. Having your eyes closed in bed does not count as sleep unless you’re actually asleep. But Fung mentions other animals, including dolphins, whales, and some sharks, who actually never go into a full sleep state. Instead, they turn off half their brains for eight hours a day in what scientists now call “unihemispheric sleeping.”

Of course, for humans, we don’t get a cognitive boost unless we’re actually asleep. There’s a huge benefit of sleep we don’t get from quiet wakefulness.

However, lying down with your eyes closed is not useless either. It allows your muscles and organs to relax.

I am lucky to have never suffered from insomnia, but beyond neuroscience, laying in bed with my eyes closed is useful for one reason: it helps me go to sleep. I realize I give up on going to sleep too early. I have been conditioned to go to sleep only when I’m tired and exhausted instead of when I should. I’ll normally read in bed until I get tired, or stay up to the point where I collapse in bed and fall asleep in a minute.

What I realized is it’s normal to be in bed for 20 minutes and not fall asleep. Rarely am I getting less tired during this time, but my mind automatically thinks it’s unnatural and there’s something wrong if I’m not going to sleep within that time.

Instead, recently I’ve been letting myself just lay in bed and not open my eyes until I’ve actually gone to sleep. This might not work for everyone, but what I usually find is I do eventually go to sleep.

Also, time with my eyes closed in bed is a time for meditation and prayer which I don’t normally make time for during the day because I don’t get much solitude. I’m usually on “go” mode for the majority of the day, so the time really does have some benefit. It’s not a time when I’m looking at a screen or getting distracted. It is time for rest, regardless of whether I’m in a deep sleep state of consciousness or not. It’s time to think, which is valuable as a person who just presses forward and tries to take action all day.

So no, having your eyes closed in bed does not count as sleep, but it’s not like it’s not beneficial either. Quiet wakefulness is an intermediary step for all of us to get to sleep on a healthy schedule, unless we are accustomed to being so exhausted we fall asleep within seconds of laying down.

Personally, allowing for quiet wakefulness has allowed me to regulate my sleep schedule much better and be more well-rested. I have averaged eight or nine hours of sleep this week after last week, where I struggled to sleep at all. The solution has been keeping my eyes closed while in bed.

I realize I give up on sleep if I’m not tired too easily, whereas I should be allowing myself to just lay there. I almost always get more tired as I lay there. I try not to toss and turn that much. But eventually, somehow, I always fall asleep.

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This post was previously published on The Partnered Pen.

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