The Third Annual Global Sleep Symposium Returns June 4, 2026
Equinox Hotels Doesn't Just Study Sleep. It's Redefining It.
The luxury hotel brand's third annual symposium features Dr. Matthew Walker and expert panels exploring sleep as a performance tool.
Photo by Equinox Hotels
Sleep is not a pause between performances. It is performance. And no one understands that more than Equinox Hotels.
The leader in high-performance luxury, built on the uncompromising pillars of movement, nutrition, regeneration, and community, announces the return of its Global Sleep Symposium for its third consecutive year.
An evening unlike anything else in the world of health, hospitality, or science: one night, one room, the most rigorous minds in human optimization, and a singular question: what happens when you treat sleep as the most powerful tool in your arsenal?
June 4th. Equinox Hotel New York. One night to change how you perform for the rest of your life.
This year's Symposium evolves. Gone is the traditional conference format. In its place: an intimate, salon-style evening where world-class science meets unfiltered conversation, distilled into an experience that is as intellectually relentless as it is deeply human. Conversation. Connection. Transformation.
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP + PERFORMANCE
Sleep is not passive. It is the most underutilized performance lever on earth, governing cognition, emotional intelligence, physical recovery, hormonal health, creativity, and the quality of every human connection you'll ever have. The Symposium's third chapter doesn't just illuminate that truth. It activates it.
The evening opens with a keynote from Dr. Matthew Walker, the world's preeminent authority on sleep science, probing how sleep shapes every dimension of elite performance: decision-making under pressure, creative breakthrough, long-term cognitive resilience, and the compounding returns of truly restorative rest.
Then the conversation goes further.
An interdisciplinary panel brings together three of the most formidable voices at the intersection of science, performance, and the human condition:
Dr. Eric Potterat: High Performance & Clinical Psychologist. Former Head Psychologist for the U.S. Navy SEALs, U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Red Bull Athletes. He has operated at the outermost edge of human performance. He knows what sleep costs when it breaks down and what it returns when it's optimized.
Dr. Kirk Parsley: MD, Member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Retired Navy SEAL. The rare physician who has lived the physiological stakes of sleep deprivation at the elite level and rebuilt the science of recovery from the ground up.
Dr. Emily Morse: Doctor of Human Sexuality, renowned Sexologist, and host of the Sex With Emily podcast. Because sleep doesn't just shape how you work. It shapes how you love, connect, and experience intimacy, and the science behind that is more powerful than most people realize.
Together, they will dismantle the conventional understanding of rest and rebuild it as what it actually is: a biological superpower.
GET CLOSE TO THE SCIENCE
This is not a lecture. Salon-style conversations give guests direct, unfiltered access to each speaker, the kind of dialogue you cannot have anywhere else. Ask the questions you've never had the room to ask. Walk away with evidence-based strategies tailored to your life, your body, your performance.
THE CLOSE: SOUND AS RECOVERY
The evening culminates in an immersive sound journey led by Johnny Venus, Grammy-nominated artist and member of the acclaimed duo EarthGang. Anchored in the principles of music psychology, the session uses live music, rhythm, and resonance to deactivate the nervous system, release stored tension, and guide the room into deep restoration. This is not ambient music at the end of a long night. This is science expressed as art, and the most powerful demonstration of what Equinox Hotels means when it says recovery is a practice.