We, humans, have more than five senses and touch is one of them. Unlike other senses, the sense of touch doesn’t completely turn off while you are asleep. It stays half active which helps you wake up in case of an emergency. However, it is still possible to touch someone without waking them up. For example, if you want to turn your sleeping partner onto their side. The trick to touch someone while they are asleep lies in three things: apply gentle pressure, move your hands or fingers slowly, and avoid direct contact with their skin. In this post, we will be discussing how to keep someone asleep while touching them. Regardless, why you need this, you can find this information useful. How does sleep work? Before onto any further details, we need to first understand how sleep works. Here is a detailed explanation that will answer all your questions related to sleep. We have a complex sleep cycle as it comprises multiple stages. It is mainly divided into two main categories including rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM). This refers to the movement of your eyeballs beneath your eyelids while sleeping. Your eyeballs will either move rapidly or stay still. Both REM and NREM make up a single sleep cycle. When you are asleep, your brain moves through different sequences. This can also be referred to as the different stages of sleep. Here are the details: Wake: Stage 0 The wake stage happens just after you fall asleep. In this stage, you stay slightly awake. This is very common in adults. Light Sleep: Stage 1 & 2 This is the stage where you transition into deeper stages of sleep. At this point, your breathing becomes slow, your muscles start to relax, and your heart rate becomes stable. When you are in this stage, you may experience lower body temperature, muscle jerks, and lighter breathing. Deep Sleep: Stage 3 & 4 This is called the restorative sleep stage. At this point, your body promotes muscle growth and recover faster. You tend to feel disorientated when you suddenly wake up from this stage. During these stages, your body has a lower blood pressure level. REM Sleep: Stage R This stage is considered to be the most important one as it helps in re-energizing your mind. During this stage, we dream. However, you should know that this stage gradually decreases with age. You may see vivid dreams, experience increased breathing, and blood flow to the genitals. By understanding this stage of sleep, you can understand how to touch someone without waking them up. Every person has a different touch sense. While some people are more responsive, others are not. You should keep this in mind while touching someone when they are asleep. What happens to your sense of touch when you are sleeping? As mentioned before, the touch sense in humans is complex. It is not only determined by how you interact with things around you, but also the way you perceive factors such as wind, temperature, and other things. The sense of touch becomes dimmed when sleeping. But it never turns off completely. This is why you can wake up someone by just touching. The touch sense remains partially active, so you can wake up if there’s an emergency. But the sensitivity to touch may vary based on the sleep stage you are going through. When you are in the deeper sleep stages, your brain becomes less aware of external stimuli. This is said to be the lowest point in the brain’s activity. During this stage, our body recovers faster and restores energy. Touching someone when they are in the deep sleep stage is the best option as there are lesser chances of them waking up. In the Rapid Eye Movement stage, we see dreams. This is also called ‘paradoxical sleep’. That’s because our brain stays close to the waking state even if we are not moving much. Touching someone in this sleep stage can wake them up easily. This means the NREM sleep stage is the best time to touch someone in their sleep. Those of you who were wondering how to touch someone in their sleep without waking them up, this should answer your question. How your touch affects someone’s sleep quality? The first thing you need to know is that every person has a different level of touch response. For instance, some are more sensitive to touch than others. A more sensitive person is likely to wake up even from the slightest touch on their skin. But others may continue to sleep even when you are slapping them. People who have a very sensitive nervous system such as someone from a certain illness, babies, or people with a mental disorder, usually find it difficult to fall asleep. So if you wake them up in the middle of the night, they will find it hard to fall asleep again. It is needless to say that deprivation or fragmented sleep can have a bad impact on your health. This is why you should never wake up such a person from sleep unless it is not needed. But if you want to touch them without waking up, we have some tricks you can try. How to understand if you can touch the person sleeping? By now you already know that the sense of touch remains half active when you are asleep. This helps you to wake up in case of an emergency. Now the question is how to understand if a person can be touched while they are asleep. For this, you need to determine the sleeping stage the person is in. As mentioned before, there are two sleeping stages and REM is the stage where a person can wake up from your touch. Now you must be wondering how to keep someone asleep and touch them. Well, you can do so when the person is in the NREM stage. …
