How you sleep: What does it mean?

The way you sleep may not be a hot topic around the dinner table—or any other table for that matter—but maybe it should be.

Studies show that there are various insights to be gleaned from how someone sleeps. Here we examine a few, and explain what you might be able to learn about yourself from your own sleep habits.

Personality

A study conducted by Chris Idzikowski, who heads the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service in the UK, focused on the six most common sleeping positions and how they reflected people's personalities. Here they are, in order of prevalence.

"The Fetus" is the most common position, with the sleeper lying curled up on their side. It is said to reflect someone with a tough exterior shell but a soft, sensitive core.

"The Log" position is that of someone lying on their side with their arms down. "Log" sleepers are sociable and outgoing, but gullible.

"The Yearner" sleeps on their side as well, but with their arms stretched out in front of them. This positions tends to reflect a cynical straight shooter: someone who is hesitant to commit or trust but once they do, they're all in and mean business.

"The Soldier" position is on the back with the hands at the side. This is a common one for more reserved, less dramatic folks.

"The Starfish" is the least common position, but when you find a "Starfish" sleeper, hang onto them! This position is associated with people who are selfless, generous, humble individuals.

How It Impacts Your Waking Life

Not only does your sleeping position reflect your personality, it can also affect how you behave when you wake up. Dr. Mark Kohler at the University of South Australia's Centre for Sleep Research suggests that sleeping postures can clue us into what's rolling around inside someone's head. "Just like our waking posture and position can influence our emotions - for example, if you are leaning forward and clenching your fists, you are most likely to feel angry - our sleeping position is thought to influence our emotions or represent our personality," he says.

What It Says About Your Relationship

Obviously, having another body in the bed with you changes things a great deal.Not only may your position be different in order to provide you the best comfort, it may also shift to reflect your relationship to that bedfellow of yours. The same Australian experts say that close contact, while reflective of intimate feelings, is not particularly sustainable for longer relationships. A slight distance between partners does not suggest a poor partnership. Little things like interwoven hands and feet are indicative of not only strong feelings, but of high quality sleep as well. So relationships turn out to be beneficial for providing more than just one healthy bedtime activity.

Which position do you find most comfortable? Are those personality traits accurate for you? Maybe you should head to Australia, find an Australian mattress, and test the theories out for yourself.

(Data Courtesy: Marianne Ross. She is a freelance blogger on topics related to health and wellbeing.)