Can ditching your mattress give you more energy, less pain, and maybe even improve your relationship A bed has never physically harmed me, caused me undue mental stress, or conducted any disparaging act upon my character. ‘We sit in chairs at work, on sofas in front of the T.V., and we sleep on thick mattresses at night.’ All this cushiness, she argues, makes us soft. Sleeping without a mattress, on the floor, as Bowman has done for years, has numerous benefits. ‘You’ll sleep better, achieve a deeper quality of sleep, and wake up feeling good ‘By sleeping without a mattress, you’ll strengthen tiny muscles that build over time. You’re putting pressure on your body parts. It’s like a massage all night.’ Bowman calls this “dynamic rest” that, coupled with daily foam rolling Do you sleep on the left-most portion of the mattress? Try a night on the right-most spot, says Bowman. ‘Over time, your mattress adapts to your shape. If you change positions, your body has to adapt.’ So my wife and I switched spots. It felt strange the first two nights, but then I slept soundly on the third. After you’ve adapted to a different part of your usual mattress, adapt to a different mattress altogether. ‘Think of it as cross-training,’ Bowman says. I slinked off to the guest room, feeling slightly as if I had committed some severe marital sin, to sleep for another three nights. This phase, too, was painless, if a touch lonely. The guest room’s bed has one of those egg crate foam toppers – additional bedding that I always thought added a little extra comfort. After the first night without it, I couldn’t tell the difference. Either the egg crate foam topper cabal had me fooled all these years or I was crushing this experiment. Next, you want to cushion up the floor,’ Bowman says. Ah, dammit. I took the egg crate foam topper and put it on the floor next to the bed. On top of that, I placed another foam camping topper and, fearing the following morning, a sleeping bag. I crawled on top of everything, drew a quilt over me, and tried to find a comfortable position amidst what it must feel like trying to sleep in the back seat Up until this point, I had been sleeping well, but not necessarily feeling amazing. ‘When you wake up, you should feel like you had a workout,’ Bowman said. Instead, I felt like a posse of aggressive toddlers had spent the last eight hours pummeling me from head to foot. Yet I pushed on. I removed the sleeping bag, leaving me with about an inch of foam padding separating my weary body from the thinly carpeted floor. Under these conditions, I slept for one week – not soundly, but not terribly.
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Monday, March 9, 2026