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Your pillow is ruining your sleep
Restless nights can be caused by a number of emotions, such as stress, anxiety, or excitement. It can also be cause by external influences, like the temperature of your room, the noise around you, the comfort of your mattress, and the design of you pillow, which is what I'll focus on here.
So why is your pillow messing with your REM cycles? It has to do with you spine, body alignment, and the side on which you prefer to sleep.
The purpose of a pillow is to support your spine and body alignment as you sleep. Your body's curvature is de signed support the weight of carrying your body. Your neck tilts slightly forward to support your head. Your spine curves as it moves down the back in order to handle stress, relieve pain, enable flexibility, and balance the various points of the body. When you lay down to sleep, the spine is in an unnatural positing r many hours so it's important to create conditions that ease your spine and mimic it's natural position. Enter the pillow.
Back Sleepers
These sleepers can have a night of sleep ruined if their pillows are too high. Because there is a slight curve forward in the neck, it's important to find a pillow that has some height to it, but too much will push the head downward towards the chest, stretching the neck instead of resting it.
Ideally, back sleepers should find a pillow that supports the space of the neck by offering less than four inches of support and has a slight depression in the centre of the pillow for the head.
Side Sleepers
There are many degrees people can sleep on their side, but the more you twist your body, the worse this position is. The shoulders weren't designed to carry the load of your upper body, and you legs collapsed on eachother causes stress on your spine. It gets worse if you love the "running" position of your upper legs crossed over and stretched out. This position twists your spine and creates severe pressure of your shoulders.
So what can you do to get better sleep? Finding a pillow that supports your neck and removes weight from your shoulders is the first step. Your pillow should be around four inches or taller and offer moderate to firm filling. It is also recommended that you place a pillow between your legs to alleviate pain from your spine by supporting it's natural alignment.
Stomach Sleepers
Stop it. Just stop. Every site I've read has said this position is awful for your spine's alignment. If you have to do it, the advice seems to be unanimous: NO PILLOW!
