Circadian: Notes from the Border of Sleep, by Bruce D. Forman

Prose, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

In nine lyric essays, psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist Bruce D. Forman leads readers back to something most of us have lost, a felt relationship with the darkness, the night, and the ancient rhythms that governed human sleep for two hundred thousand years before the electric light changed everything.

Circadian moves between the consulting room and the natural world: from the half-sleeping dolphin and the kelp-wrapped sea otter to the insomniac counting minutes at 3a.m.; from the medieval practice of segmented sleep to a solo night on the Peace River; from the neuroscience of melatonin and the dawn chorus to a Jewish morning prayer of gratitude for the return of the soul. The author brings a clinician’s precision and a naturalist’s attention to the question his patients have always asked, the one that lies beneath every sleep complaint: why is this so hard?

His answer is not a diagnosis. It is an invitation. What we call insomnia, he suggests, may be less a disorder than a form of homesickness, a kind of longing for a darkness we have trained ourselves to forget. The remedy is not a technique but a reorientation toward the body’s deep memory of night, toward the habitats sleep requires, toward the faith that letting go is safe.

Circadian is a chapbook for the sleepless and the curious alike; for anyone who has ever lain awake in the wee hours and wondered what the darkness is trying to say.

Bruce D. Forman, PhD has practiced psychology for over four decades. He specializes in behavioral sleep medicine in South Florida, offering his services exclusively by telehealth. He has authored dozens of professional/scientific articles and published 11 books. His latest works are For God’s Sake Go to Sleep: Insights About Sleep from Jewish Tradition & Modern Science and Can’t Sleep, Won’t Sleep, Panicking About Sleep: A Slightly Snarky Guide to Breaking the Sleep Anxiety Cycle. He also serves as insomnia course director for the World Sleep Academy, an initiative of the World Sleep Society, bringing accessible and affordable education in sleep medicine to physicians and healthcare providers globally. In addition, he is also an ordained rabbi, serving the non-affiliated Jewish community by officiating at weddings, baby naming ceremonies and funerals, and regularly contributes commentaries to the Florida Jewish Journal and to The Times of Israel.