I’ve continued to sleep extremely well. I’m sure there’s something to this. I’m almost sure it’s because of the one-legged standing.
Here are some technical details. I usually do four bouts of one-legged standing, two in the morning and two later. During each bout I stand on one leg, pulling my other leg up behind me. Sometimes I touch something to balance myself. Usually I watch or read something at the same time. Each bout lasts until it’s hard to continue — until it becomes slightly painful. At first the bouts lasted about two minutes, now they last about four minutes. I enjoy it more when I time it with a stopwatch.
I haven’t yet systematically varied the number of bouts but I suspect one is too few to get the full effect and four is plenty. I’m still trying different ways of arranging them throughout the day. Doing all four at once is too tiring — it takes too long to recover. Maybe it’s best to do two whenever’s convenient during the day and then do two more in the evening when it’s okay to be tired.
Super interesting. I look forward to hearing more! How many days do you think you would take to compare various protocols (when is best to stand, how long is best to stand, etc). It is also interesting because it helps develop balance, which is a neglected aspect of many people’s fitness. A great article about balance in the NYTimes notes that 1/3 Americans over 65 are injured every year from a fall: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/health/08brod.html?ex=1357448400&en=d2e8cfe20029acbe&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
(I’m also curious about whether that statistic is meaningful! I know lots of over-65s who aren’t injured from falls, and can only think of one one I have even known who was injured from a fall. Nonetheless!)
It’s not clear that you have in fact separate the effects of the two factors, i.e., test one without the other (see part 4 of the directory).
Nansen, yes, that’s correct. I have found that the standing alone — without the other factor — produces the effect. But I’ve only observed this a few times. I’ll go from “almost sure” to “sure” when I observe it a few more times.