Since then, the idea that our society may be experiencing a “sleep crisis” has become more popular, with reports that people’s sleep debt – namely, the difference between the amount of sleep they need and the amount they actually get – has been rising in recent years. Her stories of troubled sleep purposefully steer well clear of the subject of insomnia – a condition that has been the core theme of a recent boom of memoirs, such as Marina Benjamin’s Insomnia (2018) and Samantha Harvey’s The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping (2020). Meanwhile, last summer’s heatwave produced endless variations of top tips for ensuring the right amount of sleep in sweltering temperatures. More recently, this parasomnia is thought to be the origin of many reports of alien abductions that supposedly happened at night and were accompanied by a peculiar heavy feeling. Ever since childhood, she’s been prone to “parasomnias” – sleep disturbances that include nightmares, sleepwalking and ghostly hallucinations.

What is more, people may be reluctant to talk about them: there is still a certain stigma attached to these “sleep demons”, which for centuries were explained away through the supernatural, or seen as a mark of insanity. I think it shows how essential it is for us teachers to remember how we teach is just as important as what we teach and how huge is the impact we can make to a person's life.She is also interested in comics, especially regarding depictions of the body, and gave a talk on her work in this area at the Wellcome Collection in March 2020.

IN HEADSPACE: HOW THE SEVENTIES LOST ITS MIND, FOUND ITSELF AND TAUGHT US TO BE WELL, by Dr James Riley, tells the story of the New Age Health movements of the 1970s, and how they formed the basis for today’s contemporary wellness industry. All in all, I think this book did exactly what it sought out to do - offer the reassurance that we are not alone. I was instantly drawn to the cover, and if you're not familiar with the image, it's the The Nightmare by Swedish painter Henry Fuseli.Wearable devices and mobile apps monitor quality and quantity, nudging users to make adjustments to their bedtime routines. Ever since Alice Vernon was a child, her nights have been haunted by nightmares of a figure from her adolescence, sinister hallucinations, and episodes of sleepwalking. This pervasive folk belief, Alice Vernon says, was popularised by Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, who blamed his ghostly apparitions on “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato”.

It’s about monsters, and ghosts, desires, aggression, trauma and anxiety, health, creativity, and the state of our inner lives.A fascinating look at the different form s of parasomnia and the ways they have been recorded and interpreted in history. Lucid dreaming is romanticised now, I think, because it’s almost like unlocking a hidden part of yourself.