November 4, 2022 • 20 mins
When you’re a wildlife documentarian, you camp in the most remote parts of the world, ready at a moment’s notice to record elusive subjects. You also have to sleep when you can, where you can, often in extreme, uncomfortable, sometimes sub-zero conditions. Chris Morgan is a renowned filmmaker, ecologist and conservationist who’s journeyed the world, including deep into the Siberian tundra, tracking endangered species. With insights from sleep psychologist and researcher Dr. Jade Wu, discover how Chris uses sleep strategies borrowed from the military to stay alert and how time in nature can actually help improve sleep.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
The Alaska Peninsula is one of the densest populations of
bears in the world. I've spent a lot of time there,
you know, thousands of days out there over the years,
and many many nights as well. On one particular shoot
we did for the BBC, we were sleeping out there
for probably four months, over four months in total, intent
in the middle of their country thousand pound carnivores and
(00:25):
do tons at your tent in the morning and there
could be two, three or four bears in view. There's
a lot of precautions you can take, like practical considerations,
and then you've just got to remember the bears really
aren't looking for trouble. Chris Morrigan travels to remote corners
of the planet to film animals in the wild. He
gave us a glimpse into what it's like to sleep
(00:47):
during these expeditions and the hyper vigilance that it takes
to capture a one of a kind shot of an
animal with its own unique sleep schedule. I was camping
alone on this this one particular little beach, but I
was having a lie in one day and at five
fifteen in the morning, I hear this sleeping Yeah, yeah,
(01:09):
but I hear it outside the tent and it was
a wolf. So I was my alarm clock was a
wolf at five fifteen in the morning. Usually I've been
getting up about four or thirty. For some reason, I didn't,
and this wolf woke me up with mind blowing But
I packed up my tent that day I had to
move sites, and as I turned back to look at
the site, this sort of bid farewell to this beautiful
(01:30):
spot in the trees, on this little beach, this cove.
The wolf came out. It was amazing because I didn't
expect to see one of these elusive creatures. And but yeah,
there he was, keeping me on the on the on
the wolf sleep pattern. You know, time to get up.
You know, you might think that an ecologist and filmmaker
with a passion for sharing nature's hidden splendors would be
(01:52):
immune to the effects of long term, uncomfortable sleeping arrangements
as a condition of his job. But as he'll tell us,
it hasn't necessarily been Chris's experience. It's funny because I
am I'm a big fan of sleep, So it didn't
necessarily make the most sense, you know, to go into
this line of work. So how exactly and when do
(02:15):
Wildlife documentary and sleep while they're out on assignments, and
how do they balance getting enough sleep with capturing the
perfect footage at just the right moment. We'll go behind
the scenes in this episode Sleep in the Wild. Hi,
I'm on a hut O'Connor and this is Chasing Sleep
(02:38):
and I heart radio production and partnership with Mattress Firm.
Nature documentaries are incredibly popular. They're an immersive, easily accessible
kind of escapism and given the rate of habit tat loss,
(03:00):
there's never been a more important time to spread awareness.
Chris Morgan has hosted and narrated Emmy Award winning TV
productions and he's the co founder of Wildlife Media. It's
a nonprofit that produced Bear Trek, a documentary that follows
Chris's journey by motorcycle to some of the most incredible
places on Earth, places like Alaska, Peru, the Canadian North,
(03:23):
and Borneo. But for someone who values a good night's rest,
Chris spends a lot of time sleeping on the ground
under the stars. On a recent assignment, Chris joined renowned
Korean photographer and naturalist Sioue Young Park in the northeastern
forests of Russia to capture images of the elusive and
beautiful Siberian tiger. The Siberian tiger is one of the
(03:46):
rarest animals on the planet. Just four hundred are estimated
to live in the wild, all of them hidden within
this incredibly remote, frozen landscape. Park spent five years filming
for months at a time in negative twenty two degree weather.
Chris observed the stamina and sleep process required for this
remarkable feat firsthand as Park recreated his experience for the
(04:10):
PBS documentary Siberian Tiger Quest. We've lost about ninety seven
of tigers around the world just in the last hundred years.
Wherever they are, they're special, and these ones are particularly
special because they're out there on their own in this
little corner of Russia, in an area about the same
size as Washington State. The physical and emotional effects of
(04:31):
around the clock work schedule and hostile environments can really
take its toll, and hiding in plain sight from one
of the planet's most lethal predators is no easy feat.
As Chris learned from Park, he had a four by
six hole in the ground that was his hide, tiny
little space that you couldn't stand up and you could
just about sit up straight in And in the first
(04:54):
year that he was there, he spent seven months in
that hole in the ground and it was his hide,
white to film and seeing capture on film for the
first time Siberian tigers. No one had done it before.
But then he goes on to say that he was
doing this in the winter months, which is the best
time to see the tigers. There. At one point, I say,
and how long was it till you saw your first tiger?
(05:15):
And he said, oh, two or three months. I just
learned so much from the guy. He must have had
some on off switch where he could sleep at a
moment's notice and be able to just wait out the
hours until a cat showed up. And he has insane
stories of one more than one getting onto the roof
of his hide. At one point one of them swiped
(05:35):
past his his camera on his hand, and he had
some really up close intense experiences with him. Well, you
have to be tough as nails to camp out perfectly
still in this little hide for five months at a time.
So how did he sleep in there? He didn't get
much sleep, but he had plenty of warm sleeping bags
and enough to get him through the winters, you know,
(05:57):
and but of course no fire, because he didn't want
to give his sent away or the well of anything
sort of human like. He'd be able to stretch out there,
you know. It's about six ft long, this hole in
the ground, so we could stretch out straight, you know,
and take naps. He sort of talked me through the
process of this and left me to it. I built
a platform in the woods where I could try and
sort of recreate a little bit what he did and
(06:19):
how he did it. I don't know how he pulled
it off, you know, but the proof is in his footage.
I think at one point you said that your mustache
felt like it was freezing. And when you're sleeping out
there on that platform in the middle of the night,
you had to wake up because it was so cold,
And I think you said, put on warmer clothes. What
is it like, you know, for you sleeping out there
in the dead of night in Siberia, And do you
(06:41):
have to do anything to be able to sleep out there?
I think the most important thing is making sure you've
got enough layer so you can add them and lose
them as you need to. But I ended up wearing
everything I've got because it was damn cold, you know,
So just a really good down sleeping bag, a really
good thermal mattress, you know, just there's at least a
couple of inches thick that keeps you off the ground,
(07:02):
or in this case, keeps you off this wooden platform
that i'd built in the forest. I had a tent
around me as well to keep off some of the cold.
But there's not much you can do much more than that,
other than just making sure that you're wearing really good thermals.
You know, when it comes down to it, it is
like really good wool thermals. There's nothing better than a
sheep to keep you warm at night. You know, they've
(07:23):
learned over thousands of years out to stay warm. I
also use those chemical handwarm as a lot. I actually
get really quite bad circulations, so that often wakes me up,
you know, my fingers or toes are called. So just
having those chemical handwarm as handy is really good. And
you keep all your clothes on and you're ready for
action to jump out of a tent or sleeping magg
at any moment if something happens, to film or watch
(07:44):
or record round the clock vigilance Disrupted sleep routines and
less than ideal conditions create a world of challenges for
professionals like Chris. Dr Jade Woo is a board certified
sleep medicine specialist and a research or at University School
of Medicine, and Chris's story reminds her of another population.
(08:06):
What this reminds me of is actually people with a
military background, because when people are deployed, for example, they
really do need to be up at a moment's notice.
It can be any time of night or day. You know,
there's not much preparation for it, not much advanced notice,
if any at all. And the pattern that I see
(08:27):
when they get home when they're living a civilian life
now is that they're more on high alert. So even
when they intellectually know that all is safe and they're
not on duty they don't have to do anything at night,
their body is still wired to be more on high alert,
more easily woken up. And I think this is probably
(08:48):
similar for Chris because he's also used to having to
just pop up into consciousness and be ready to function
right away. So yeah, I can see how it would
be more difficult to sleep long stretches, more difficult maybe
to relax into deep sleep and maybe more easily woken
by small noises or lights. While Chris has a lot
(09:12):
of experience filming at night in a state of hyper vigilance,
has heightened awareness of his surroundings and dedication to the
wild life that he's there to research, has a big
advantage when it comes to establishing a sleep pattern that
won't compromise the shoot. One of the things I've noticed
from a lot of your your films and your shows
is you you do a lot of work at night.
(09:33):
Are you naturally a night owl? Is that sort of
a prerequisite for the job? I am a bit more
of a night owl. I'm not an early morning guy,
but I have found that I which sounds weird, doesn't
it for a whild left guy, But I found I'm
able to adjust quite well, and especially on longer trips
into the wilderness where I kind of get a chance
to just start to flow with the rhythms of nature,
(09:55):
and the rhythms of nature or what the animals, the
wild animals that we are there to see research, the
film record, whatever it would be there, They're of course
tuned into that rhythm of nature really well. Because if
there are thousands of years of uninterrupted history with that
natural circadian rhythm right of sleep cycles, whereas we've lost
touch with it, you know, with alarm clocks and TV
(10:15):
till late at night, and you know, changing our clocks
and all kinds of disruptions to that natural cycle. But
these wild creatures do it well. And I've noticed that
I can kind of switch. If I'm giving enough days,
I can kind of switch into the same rhythm as
the animals that we they're looking for. We'll be right
(10:36):
back after a brief message from our partners at Mattress Firm,
and now back to chasing sleep. If you think about
your own bedtime routine, maybe brushing your teeth, had a
sink in a bathroom, adjusting the temperature in your bedroom,
(10:58):
or putting on pagile was you're giving your brain cues
that it's time to go to sleep. Dr Wu says
that ideally you'd create as much separation as possible between
your waking life and sleeping life for your best chance
at a good night's rest. But what about someone like
Chris who has been living with a heightened state of
(11:19):
awareness of his surroundings and all kinds of disruptions to
sleep for weeks or months at a time and can't
give his brain those traditional signals when he is out
on a project and you know, he can't have home
mode and these relaxing sort of cues for the body.
I would say, really using napping strategically is good. Funny.
(11:43):
Dr Wu should mention that, as Chris did mention his
nontraditional method for napping. Once you've been really focused on
your target, it can get mentally and physically really exhausting.
And if you're out there long enough, you're able to
figure out when the animals are active and when they're not,
and when and not you can take a nap. So
I've got really good at taking literally sometimes a two
(12:05):
minute nap. I can put my head down and incident
situations out in the middle of nowhere and be asleep
in sixty seconds. Take a two or three minute nap,
you know, fifteen minutes if you're really lucky. I've learned
to do that, and I've learned different positions. I heard
the military has this as well. You know, guys in
the military are taught if they sleep on their backs
(12:26):
with their knees bent and their calves up on a
chair Apparently having that blood drained from your legs into
your core is good for sleep. So I try to
do that, put my feet up, take a nap, get
a quick power kip in whenever I can, especially if
there's like between action, and it really works. Yeah, I
think that's a really good strategy for when you can't
(12:47):
get more than two minutes at a time. Hey, two
minutes is better than nothing, right, So absolutely I support that.
As a parent. Just coming out of the haze of
newborn life, I can absolute say two minutes will do
something for you. It'll refresh you, It'll give you your
body a little bit of a refresh. It's certainly not
(13:09):
enough to only sleep in these little chunks throughout the day.
We do need to come back down to earth and
really replenish our body with deeper, longer, more restorative sleep.
But you know, when you're in action mode, you know,
if that's what you can get, that's what you can get.
So are there any advantages to these conditions? I mean,
(13:30):
I have my memory phone, mattress, my white noise machine,
my fan, cooling bamboo sheets to help me get my
quality sleep. So why is it that someone lying on
a frozen platform or in a hole in the ground,
could still sleep well, I think, you know, even with
a difficult sleep schedule. When he's out there, one major
(13:52):
advantage that he has is that he is living by
the sun and the moon, right, so he has a
much stronger circadia system probably than you or I do
because we work indoors, we work in an office, um,
and we have to be conscious to make sure we
have enough light exposure during the day and not too
much screens and you know, light at night to maintain
(14:13):
this day night contrast, whereas he just gets that in spades.
He's out in the sun all day. He's you know,
at the very least getting natural broad spectrum sunlight all
day long, and then at night he has maybe his campfire,
maybe some devices, but probably not as much as the
average person. So you know, in this way, no wonder
(14:34):
he is able to function so well even with disruptive
sleep is that, you know, his circadian rhythm is at
least really really solid, and so whatever sleep he is
getting is really good quality sleep. You definitely sort of
get into this process of going to sleep when it's
dark and then waking up when it's light, and it's
exactly what the animals are doing. You just sort of
start adapting to that. And there's no reason to stay
(14:56):
awake at night at camp in the wilderness after dark,
there's nothing to see do what you know, you might
as well just sleep and your bloody exhausted anyway. So
it depends what time of year though, you know, in
Alaska up north as it's it's perpetual daylight a lot
of the time, and that whole different subject of like, wow,
what do you do then? For Chris or for anybody
(15:18):
else that does a lot of traveling or sleeping in
unfamiliar or not perfect environments, if you can have like
one object that's kind of your like comfy, reliable, Lucky
Sleep hat or Lucky sleep I'm ask or Lucky Sleep blanket,
then you have something familiar to cue that sleepiness, that
(15:39):
ritual or falling asleep, whether you're in the jungles or
you know, in a hotel room or wherever, You've got
to have these routines while you're out there. You know,
breakfast is at this time, lunches at this time unless
something gets in the way of it, and then your
evening ritual as well. I just love, you know, when
I'm in that mode, and I'm up at five o'clock
in the morning and watching the sun come up, and
you know that the world, the natural world, is coming
(16:01):
alive as well. And you know, whether it's wolves or
bears or targets, what, you know, they're doing the same thing.
You know. They're in their day beds, are in their
dens and and they're stretching and slowly waking up. And
you're doing the same thing. And you fire up that
stove and you hear the boiling water and you see
the steam in the early morning and you pour your cupper.
I can hear it and smell it. Now you're just
(16:23):
talking about it, and it's just you kick back and
you're like, this is the start of my day. It's like,
I don't know, it's like the best possible coffee commercial
you can imagine when you're out in nature doing it.
And I just love that part of the day. So
even when you're out there, you know, in the middle
of Siberia or you know, the jungle or wherever it is,
there's still a structure and routine involved in your your
(16:44):
daily schedule. It sounds like, yes, it does depend for
the longer shoots. Definitely, if you're out there for weeks
or months, you've got to have that routine, I think,
but then always be ready for something to completely disrupt
it and and get in the way of it. And
it's usually an animal. You know, you've gotta be ready
to jump up at the instant, you know, without a
moment's notice, with with gear and to wherewithal to get
(17:05):
into the right spot if someone spotted an animal, or
if we know that something is happening when you hear something.
So it's kind of that blend of like having a routine,
but be ready to break a moment's notice. What would
you recommend, generally speaking, are some good things to add
for an adult until wind down routine, UM, and things
that maybe like that you can do on the road.
(17:26):
So for someone like Chris who's out there in the wild,
if you're Chris, you're out there in the wilderness, you
can do a body scan, which you can also do
at home, which is where you just walk your attention
through your body from head to toe or from toe
to head, and you know, without judgment and without trying
to change anything. So even if you have pain or
(17:48):
discomfort or something like that. UM, just very non judgmentally,
ask your body, how does it feel? You know, like, hey,
little toe on my left foot, how do you feel,
haven't talked to you all day? And you know, moving
to the other toes and to your feet, your ankles
and slowly and gradually up. And often my patients will say,
you know, I did the body scan and by the
(18:09):
time I didn't, you know, I've never even made it
up to my shoulders and I was asleep on the couch.
So whatever you can do to signal that switch, I
think would be really helpful to have in the bedtime routine.
Sleep never feels so good after a trip like that.
It's funny. I love I love traveling, and I love
(18:30):
being out in wild places, and I feel lucky and
privileged to be there and experience them. It's my life,
you know. I love these places deeply, so I put
my all into it when I'm there, and then when
I get back, oh my god, it just feels so
luxuriant to have a bed and to have curtains that
you can close, and to need an alarm clock to
(18:50):
wake up, and it's like I just kind of hit
the sack and don't want to get out of it
for a few days once I'm back, and it's really
really nice feeling because you feel like, Okay, this is
just a but that's all for this episode. Join me
again next week when we learn about sleeping in the
(19:11):
Final Frontier, how astronauts get the rest they need while
working in conditions no human was made to be in.
So imagine being so excited to be in space for
the first time, looking at the Earth floating you know where,
in this weird environment, feeling a little weird, and four
hours after launching into space for my first time, I
had to go to sleep. We want to hear from you.
(19:34):
Leave a rating or review for our show on your
podcast player of choice. You can find me on Twitter
at on At O'Connor. Until next time, hoping you're living
your best while sleeping your best. Chasing Sleep is a
production of I Heart Radio and partnership with Mattress Firm.
Our executive producer is Molly Sosha. Our EP of post
(19:56):
is James Foster. Our supervising producer is Kia Swinton. Our
producer is Sierra Kaiser. This episode was written and researched
by Erik Leisa and Jesscopatia. This show is hosted by
me on a hot O'Connor
The Alaska Peninsula is one of the densest populations of
bears in the world. I've spent a lot of time there,
you know, thousands of days out there over the years,
and many many nights as well. On one particular shoot
we did for the BBC, we were sleeping out there
for probably four months, over four months in total, intent
in the middle of their country thousand pound carnivores and
(00:25):
do tons at your tent in the morning and there
could be two, three or four bears in view. There's
a lot of precautions you can take, like practical considerations,
and then you've just got to remember the bears really
aren't looking for trouble. Chris Morrigan travels to remote corners
of the planet to film animals in the wild. He
gave us a glimpse into what it's like to sleep
(00:47):
during these expeditions and the hyper vigilance that it takes
to capture a one of a kind shot of an
animal with its own unique sleep schedule. I was camping
alone on this this one particular little beach, but I
was having a lie in one day and at five
fifteen in the morning, I hear this sleeping Yeah, yeah,
(01:09):
but I hear it outside the tent and it was
a wolf. So I was my alarm clock was a
wolf at five fifteen in the morning. Usually I've been
getting up about four or thirty. For some reason, I didn't,
and this wolf woke me up with mind blowing But
I packed up my tent that day I had to
move sites, and as I turned back to look at
the site, this sort of bid farewell to this beautiful
(01:30):
spot in the trees, on this little beach, this cove.
The wolf came out. It was amazing because I didn't
expect to see one of these elusive creatures. And but yeah,
there he was, keeping me on the on the on
the wolf sleep pattern. You know, time to get up.
You know, you might think that an ecologist and filmmaker
with a passion for sharing nature's hidden splendors would be
(01:52):
immune to the effects of long term, uncomfortable sleeping arrangements
as a condition of his job. But as he'll tell us,
it hasn't necessarily been Chris's experience. It's funny because I
am I'm a big fan of sleep, So it didn't
necessarily make the most sense, you know, to go into
this line of work. So how exactly and when do
(02:15):
Wildlife documentary and sleep while they're out on assignments, and
how do they balance getting enough sleep with capturing the
perfect footage at just the right moment. We'll go behind
the scenes in this episode Sleep in the Wild. Hi,
I'm on a hut O'Connor and this is Chasing Sleep
(02:38):
and I heart radio production and partnership with Mattress Firm.
Nature documentaries are incredibly popular. They're an immersive, easily accessible
kind of escapism and given the rate of habit tat loss,
(03:00):
there's never been a more important time to spread awareness.
Chris Morgan has hosted and narrated Emmy Award winning TV
productions and he's the co founder of Wildlife Media. It's
a nonprofit that produced Bear Trek, a documentary that follows
Chris's journey by motorcycle to some of the most incredible
places on Earth, places like Alaska, Peru, the Canadian North,
(03:23):
and Borneo. But for someone who values a good night's rest,
Chris spends a lot of time sleeping on the ground
under the stars. On a recent assignment, Chris joined renowned
Korean photographer and naturalist Sioue Young Park in the northeastern
forests of Russia to capture images of the elusive and
beautiful Siberian tiger. The Siberian tiger is one of the
(03:46):
rarest animals on the planet. Just four hundred are estimated
to live in the wild, all of them hidden within
this incredibly remote, frozen landscape. Park spent five years filming
for months at a time in negative twenty two degree weather.
Chris observed the stamina and sleep process required for this
remarkable feat firsthand as Park recreated his experience for the
(04:10):
PBS documentary Siberian Tiger Quest. We've lost about ninety seven
of tigers around the world just in the last hundred years.
Wherever they are, they're special, and these ones are particularly
special because they're out there on their own in this
little corner of Russia, in an area about the same
size as Washington State. The physical and emotional effects of
(04:31):
around the clock work schedule and hostile environments can really
take its toll, and hiding in plain sight from one
of the planet's most lethal predators is no easy feat.
As Chris learned from Park, he had a four by
six hole in the ground that was his hide, tiny
little space that you couldn't stand up and you could
just about sit up straight in And in the first
(04:54):
year that he was there, he spent seven months in
that hole in the ground and it was his hide,
white to film and seeing capture on film for the
first time Siberian tigers. No one had done it before.
But then he goes on to say that he was
doing this in the winter months, which is the best
time to see the tigers. There. At one point, I say,
and how long was it till you saw your first tiger?
(05:15):
And he said, oh, two or three months. I just
learned so much from the guy. He must have had
some on off switch where he could sleep at a
moment's notice and be able to just wait out the
hours until a cat showed up. And he has insane
stories of one more than one getting onto the roof
of his hide. At one point one of them swiped
(05:35):
past his his camera on his hand, and he had
some really up close intense experiences with him. Well, you
have to be tough as nails to camp out perfectly
still in this little hide for five months at a time.
So how did he sleep in there? He didn't get
much sleep, but he had plenty of warm sleeping bags
and enough to get him through the winters, you know,
(05:57):
and but of course no fire, because he didn't want
to give his sent away or the well of anything
sort of human like. He'd be able to stretch out there,
you know. It's about six ft long, this hole in
the ground, so we could stretch out straight, you know,
and take naps. He sort of talked me through the
process of this and left me to it. I built
a platform in the woods where I could try and
sort of recreate a little bit what he did and
(06:19):
how he did it. I don't know how he pulled
it off, you know, but the proof is in his footage.
I think at one point you said that your mustache
felt like it was freezing. And when you're sleeping out
there on that platform in the middle of the night,
you had to wake up because it was so cold,
And I think you said, put on warmer clothes. What
is it like, you know, for you sleeping out there
in the dead of night in Siberia, And do you
(06:41):
have to do anything to be able to sleep out there?
I think the most important thing is making sure you've
got enough layer so you can add them and lose
them as you need to. But I ended up wearing
everything I've got because it was damn cold, you know,
So just a really good down sleeping bag, a really
good thermal mattress, you know, just there's at least a
couple of inches thick that keeps you off the ground,
(07:02):
or in this case, keeps you off this wooden platform
that i'd built in the forest. I had a tent
around me as well to keep off some of the cold.
But there's not much you can do much more than that,
other than just making sure that you're wearing really good thermals.
You know, when it comes down to it, it is
like really good wool thermals. There's nothing better than a
sheep to keep you warm at night. You know, they've
(07:23):
learned over thousands of years out to stay warm. I
also use those chemical handwarm as a lot. I actually
get really quite bad circulations, so that often wakes me up,
you know, my fingers or toes are called. So just
having those chemical handwarm as handy is really good. And
you keep all your clothes on and you're ready for
action to jump out of a tent or sleeping magg
at any moment if something happens, to film or watch
(07:44):
or record round the clock vigilance Disrupted sleep routines and
less than ideal conditions create a world of challenges for
professionals like Chris. Dr Jade Woo is a board certified
sleep medicine specialist and a research or at University School
of Medicine, and Chris's story reminds her of another population.
(08:06):
What this reminds me of is actually people with a
military background, because when people are deployed, for example, they
really do need to be up at a moment's notice.
It can be any time of night or day. You know,
there's not much preparation for it, not much advanced notice,
if any at all. And the pattern that I see
(08:27):
when they get home when they're living a civilian life
now is that they're more on high alert. So even
when they intellectually know that all is safe and they're
not on duty they don't have to do anything at night,
their body is still wired to be more on high alert,
more easily woken up. And I think this is probably
(08:48):
similar for Chris because he's also used to having to
just pop up into consciousness and be ready to function
right away. So yeah, I can see how it would
be more difficult to sleep long stretches, more difficult maybe
to relax into deep sleep and maybe more easily woken
by small noises or lights. While Chris has a lot
(09:12):
of experience filming at night in a state of hyper vigilance,
has heightened awareness of his surroundings and dedication to the
wild life that he's there to research, has a big
advantage when it comes to establishing a sleep pattern that
won't compromise the shoot. One of the things I've noticed
from a lot of your your films and your shows
is you you do a lot of work at night.
(09:33):
Are you naturally a night owl? Is that sort of
a prerequisite for the job? I am a bit more
of a night owl. I'm not an early morning guy,
but I have found that I which sounds weird, doesn't
it for a whild left guy, But I found I'm
able to adjust quite well, and especially on longer trips
into the wilderness where I kind of get a chance
to just start to flow with the rhythms of nature,
(09:55):
and the rhythms of nature or what the animals, the
wild animals that we are there to see research, the
film record, whatever it would be there, They're of course
tuned into that rhythm of nature really well. Because if
there are thousands of years of uninterrupted history with that
natural circadian rhythm right of sleep cycles, whereas we've lost
touch with it, you know, with alarm clocks and TV
(10:15):
till late at night, and you know, changing our clocks
and all kinds of disruptions to that natural cycle. But
these wild creatures do it well. And I've noticed that
I can kind of switch. If I'm giving enough days,
I can kind of switch into the same rhythm as
the animals that we they're looking for. We'll be right
(10:36):
back after a brief message from our partners at Mattress Firm,
and now back to chasing sleep. If you think about
your own bedtime routine, maybe brushing your teeth, had a
sink in a bathroom, adjusting the temperature in your bedroom,
(10:58):
or putting on pagile was you're giving your brain cues
that it's time to go to sleep. Dr Wu says
that ideally you'd create as much separation as possible between
your waking life and sleeping life for your best chance
at a good night's rest. But what about someone like
Chris who has been living with a heightened state of
(11:19):
awareness of his surroundings and all kinds of disruptions to
sleep for weeks or months at a time and can't
give his brain those traditional signals when he is out
on a project and you know, he can't have home
mode and these relaxing sort of cues for the body.
I would say, really using napping strategically is good. Funny.
(11:43):
Dr Wu should mention that, as Chris did mention his
nontraditional method for napping. Once you've been really focused on
your target, it can get mentally and physically really exhausting.
And if you're out there long enough, you're able to
figure out when the animals are active and when they're not,
and when and not you can take a nap. So
I've got really good at taking literally sometimes a two
(12:05):
minute nap. I can put my head down and incident
situations out in the middle of nowhere and be asleep
in sixty seconds. Take a two or three minute nap,
you know, fifteen minutes if you're really lucky. I've learned
to do that, and I've learned different positions. I heard
the military has this as well. You know, guys in
the military are taught if they sleep on their backs
(12:26):
with their knees bent and their calves up on a
chair Apparently having that blood drained from your legs into
your core is good for sleep. So I try to
do that, put my feet up, take a nap, get
a quick power kip in whenever I can, especially if
there's like between action, and it really works. Yeah, I
think that's a really good strategy for when you can't
(12:47):
get more than two minutes at a time. Hey, two
minutes is better than nothing, right, So absolutely I support that.
As a parent. Just coming out of the haze of
newborn life, I can absolute say two minutes will do
something for you. It'll refresh you, It'll give you your
body a little bit of a refresh. It's certainly not
(13:09):
enough to only sleep in these little chunks throughout the day.
We do need to come back down to earth and
really replenish our body with deeper, longer, more restorative sleep.
But you know, when you're in action mode, you know,
if that's what you can get, that's what you can get.
So are there any advantages to these conditions? I mean,
(13:30):
I have my memory phone, mattress, my white noise machine,
my fan, cooling bamboo sheets to help me get my
quality sleep. So why is it that someone lying on
a frozen platform or in a hole in the ground,
could still sleep well, I think, you know, even with
a difficult sleep schedule. When he's out there, one major
(13:52):
advantage that he has is that he is living by
the sun and the moon, right, so he has a
much stronger circadia system probably than you or I do
because we work indoors, we work in an office, um,
and we have to be conscious to make sure we
have enough light exposure during the day and not too
much screens and you know, light at night to maintain
(14:13):
this day night contrast, whereas he just gets that in spades.
He's out in the sun all day. He's you know,
at the very least getting natural broad spectrum sunlight all
day long, and then at night he has maybe his campfire,
maybe some devices, but probably not as much as the
average person. So you know, in this way, no wonder
(14:34):
he is able to function so well even with disruptive
sleep is that, you know, his circadian rhythm is at
least really really solid, and so whatever sleep he is
getting is really good quality sleep. You definitely sort of
get into this process of going to sleep when it's
dark and then waking up when it's light, and it's
exactly what the animals are doing. You just sort of
start adapting to that. And there's no reason to stay
(14:56):
awake at night at camp in the wilderness after dark,
there's nothing to see do what you know, you might
as well just sleep and your bloody exhausted anyway. So
it depends what time of year though, you know, in
Alaska up north as it's it's perpetual daylight a lot
of the time, and that whole different subject of like, wow,
what do you do then? For Chris or for anybody
(15:18):
else that does a lot of traveling or sleeping in
unfamiliar or not perfect environments, if you can have like
one object that's kind of your like comfy, reliable, Lucky
Sleep hat or Lucky sleep I'm ask or Lucky Sleep blanket,
then you have something familiar to cue that sleepiness, that
(15:39):
ritual or falling asleep, whether you're in the jungles or
you know, in a hotel room or wherever, You've got
to have these routines while you're out there. You know,
breakfast is at this time, lunches at this time unless
something gets in the way of it, and then your
evening ritual as well. I just love, you know, when
I'm in that mode, and I'm up at five o'clock
in the morning and watching the sun come up, and
you know that the world, the natural world, is coming
(16:01):
alive as well. And you know, whether it's wolves or
bears or targets, what, you know, they're doing the same thing.
You know. They're in their day beds, are in their
dens and and they're stretching and slowly waking up. And
you're doing the same thing. And you fire up that
stove and you hear the boiling water and you see
the steam in the early morning and you pour your cupper.
I can hear it and smell it. Now you're just
(16:23):
talking about it, and it's just you kick back and
you're like, this is the start of my day. It's like,
I don't know, it's like the best possible coffee commercial
you can imagine when you're out in nature doing it.
And I just love that part of the day. So
even when you're out there, you know, in the middle
of Siberia or you know, the jungle or wherever it is,
there's still a structure and routine involved in your your
(16:44):
daily schedule. It sounds like, yes, it does depend for
the longer shoots. Definitely, if you're out there for weeks
or months, you've got to have that routine, I think,
but then always be ready for something to completely disrupt
it and and get in the way of it. And
it's usually an animal. You know, you've gotta be ready
to jump up at the instant, you know, without a
moment's notice, with with gear and to wherewithal to get
(17:05):
into the right spot if someone spotted an animal, or
if we know that something is happening when you hear something.
So it's kind of that blend of like having a routine,
but be ready to break a moment's notice. What would
you recommend, generally speaking, are some good things to add
for an adult until wind down routine, UM, and things
that maybe like that you can do on the road.
(17:26):
So for someone like Chris who's out there in the wild,
if you're Chris, you're out there in the wilderness, you
can do a body scan, which you can also do
at home, which is where you just walk your attention
through your body from head to toe or from toe
to head, and you know, without judgment and without trying
to change anything. So even if you have pain or
(17:48):
discomfort or something like that. UM, just very non judgmentally,
ask your body, how does it feel? You know, like, hey,
little toe on my left foot, how do you feel,
haven't talked to you all day? And you know, moving
to the other toes and to your feet, your ankles
and slowly and gradually up. And often my patients will say,
you know, I did the body scan and by the
(18:09):
time I didn't, you know, I've never even made it
up to my shoulders and I was asleep on the couch.
So whatever you can do to signal that switch, I
think would be really helpful to have in the bedtime routine.
Sleep never feels so good after a trip like that.
It's funny. I love I love traveling, and I love
(18:30):
being out in wild places, and I feel lucky and
privileged to be there and experience them. It's my life,
you know. I love these places deeply, so I put
my all into it when I'm there, and then when
I get back, oh my god, it just feels so
luxuriant to have a bed and to have curtains that
you can close, and to need an alarm clock to
(18:50):
wake up, and it's like I just kind of hit
the sack and don't want to get out of it
for a few days once I'm back, and it's really
really nice feeling because you feel like, Okay, this is
just a but that's all for this episode. Join me
again next week when we learn about sleeping in the
(19:11):
Final Frontier, how astronauts get the rest they need while
working in conditions no human was made to be in.
So imagine being so excited to be in space for
the first time, looking at the Earth floating you know where,
in this weird environment, feeling a little weird, and four
hours after launching into space for my first time, I
had to go to sleep. We want to hear from you.
(19:34):
Leave a rating or review for our show on your
podcast player of choice. You can find me on Twitter
at on At O'Connor. Until next time, hoping you're living
your best while sleeping your best. Chasing Sleep is a
production of I Heart Radio and partnership with Mattress Firm.
Our executive producer is Molly Sosha. Our EP of post
(19:56):
is James Foster. Our supervising producer is Kia Swinton. Our
producer is Sierra Kaiser. This episode was written and researched
by Erik Leisa and Jesscopatia. This show is hosted by
me on a hot O'Connor
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!