As a general rule, sleeping well is associated with sleeping without waking up during the whole night. This is partly true, but not entirely. It is completely normal to have micro-awakenings and to wake up for brief seconds; thanks to these, we can remember our dreams the next morning and wake up properly.
From the time we are born until the time we die, we continue to micro-awaken. Babies have them too, but they learn to resume sleep right after. We also find them in adolescence and adulthood. These microawakenings will progressively increase as we get older, as sleep becomes more shallow.
Everyone has them, but sometimes they are so brief that we cannot remember them. For example, in summer we go to bed with the sheets down to our knees and wake up covered to the top. This act of wrapping up is a micro-awakening. We move, we change position… If we did not have this brief awakening, we would wake up completely stiff after 8 hours in the same position. Therefore, micro awakenings are completely normal and healthy.
They are important because they are part of the structure of sleep and we should not overestimate them thinking that we have some sleep pathology. They are simply physiological.