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"Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap."
 --Robert Fulghum

In my late 30s and early 40s, when I was raising 5 kids, home schooling them, taking care of the household, running Evenstar part-time and maintaining a small home birth midwifery practice, I got the idea that I did not need to sleep. I had a strong constitution and even stronger will-power and convinced myself that I could do well on 3-4 hours of sleep most nights and "catch-up" on sleep some nights by sleeping in for 6 hours.

Talk about the folly of youth!

I am convinced that these sleepless years contributed much to the aches and pains and diminished energy of my late 40s. Since my middle 40s, when I got fed up with my dwindling energy, I have had a focused intention to educate people about the power and importance of sleep. And I resolved to never be sleep deprived again. What is so important that you have to go through life drowsy and dragging?

Now, I take the power of sleep very seriously. My wake-sleep times are regular - to bed at the same time every night and up at the same time every morning. And my #1 lifestyle rule is to make sure that I have 8 hours of sleep every night. My bedroom is deliciously inviting for sleep and I have a wonderful nighttime routine that I look forward to each night. Good quality sleep is a cherished pleasure in my life these days.

In my quest for finding out more about the power of sleep and it's rejuvenating affects on the body, I keep running across the importance of napping. There are some powerful peak performers who nap regularly.

One of my intentions for 2007 is to be well rested - not just to get good quality sleep every night but to take the concept further and to be sure that I am rested: refreshingly at ease; free from exertion; to be tranquil and at peace; to be quiet and still; mental and spiritual calm. Why not take advantage of the wisdom of successful nappers and incorporate napping into my lifestyle?

To facilitate that intention I have created the perfect napping environment. I bought a camping cot from K-Mart - inexpensive and very cool. Bought inviting blue and while cotton sheets and a creamy color cuddly blanket, with a comfy bed topper, and a wonderful new memory foam pillow (the most comfortable pillow in the world).

I set up this "cot experience" in my office. Refreshing, soothing, beautiful and inviting - it beckons me to stay well rested.

It is part of your natural energy cycle for your energy levels to decline throughout the day. With that energy decline, away goes your alertness, cognitive sharpness, your awareness and your motivation. In the past when I would feel that downward swing in energy I would try to rest my head on my desk. Now, we all know just how uncomfortable that can be. Resting your head doesn't have the rejuvenating effect of actually lying down horizontally.

But now I have this wonderfully refreshing napping cot. When I feel this downward swing of energy I take a pause and lay down and rest for a while. Sometimes I actually sleep and sometimes I just do some heart breathing and refocus myself on what I want to see happening in my life. No more pushing. A return to being refreshingly at ease. I am loving this - and my productivity and creativity is skyrocketing!

Here is the scoop on napping - its benefits & how to make naps work for you:

Good napping is an art - and has a lot of science to it. Napping has been a tradition in some countries - think siestas in Spain -and is gaining popularity in the US. In North America there are several Pod napping centers in operation (MetroNaps) and statistics show that more than half of adult Americans nap at least once a week and one-third nap twice a week. 33% of adults surveyed by the National Sleep Foundations said they would nap at work if allowed.

Napping does not seem to be the territory of the weak willed. Some pretty productive and accomplished people are reported nappers - including:

Lance Armstrong

Albert Einstein

Thomas Edison

Leonardo da Vinci

Napoleon Bonaparte

Ronald Reagan

Bill Clinton

Brahms

Many top athletes and Olympians consider napping an important and crucial part of their training. If it is good enough for them, it could do wonders for you.

Nap Questions

I Have Way Too Much To Do. I Can't Afford to Nap.

With so much to do why should you bother napping? For one, you will feel better and be better rested. And two, you get all of these incredible benefits:

Lowers risk of heart disease and improve heart functioning

Repairs cells

Lifts your mood

Increases your stamina

Supports hormonal balance

Look younger

Increased awareness

Improved memory retention

Greater creativity

Increased insight

Increased neuromuscular coordination

Increased motor skills

Improve your capacity to learn tasks

Reverse information overload by protecting brain circuits from overuse

People who nap regularly live longer, stay more active and increase their performance and productivity. If you could use some of those benefits it is worth it to invest in learning some good napping strategy.

What Makes For Good Napping?

Many of us have had the experience of taking a nap and waking up feeling like a zombie for the rest of the day. There are reasons for this and with a little pre-planning and a napping strategy you can turn that zombie experience into a refreshing interlude in your day.

As the day goes on the body and the mind tend to decrease their functioning. Irritation, frustration, and poorer performance are typical toward the end of the day. A short 20-30 minute nap can prevent this deterioration and down swing in mood and energy. And a 50-60 minute nap can boost performance back to early day levels.

When Should I Nap?

Your body is designed to take a downward swing in the afternoon. The biological urge to sleep is bi-phasic in humans and part of natural circadian rhythms that define your wake-sleep cycles. Generally these two physiological sleep urges occur between 2-4 AM and 2-4 PM. During these two periods of time your body is programmed to sort of "force" you into sleep. Along with a drop in your core temperature comes a significant drop in alertness. You find it hard to stay awake and all you can think about is sleep. (Sometimes we mistake this for the after lunch sleep coma and blame it on the food - which has some truth to it - but a good part of the after lunch sleep coma may actually be us moving into our afternoon sleep cycle.)

This afternoon lull towards sleep generally occurs about 12 hours after the middle of your night's sleep or about 8 hours after awakening. All things considered, this is the time of day for you to gain the most benefits from your napping.

This means you will be napping late morning or early afternoon and probably not past 3 PM. If you nap later than 3 PM you are more likely to slip into slow wave deep sleep and enter the zombie experience. You will need to experiment with times to find what works best for you.

How Long Should I Nap?

Anywhere between 5 minutes to more than two hours - but not more than three hours!

That groggy, cranky, zombie like feeling that you get when you awaken from a nap is a result of poor timing that caused you to wake up in the middle of your slow wave sleep stage.

In order to decide how long to sleep you have to know a bit about the architecture of sleep. The sleep cycle is divided into five stages of different types of brain activity. When you sleep you continuously recycle through these five stages of sleep (i.e. one cycle of sleep) every 90 to 120 minutes for a total of four to six cycles (of five stages of sleep) every night.

Stage I - the brain's electrical activity starts to slow down, as does your respiration and eye and jaw muscle movement. You enter Stage I as soon as you start to drift toward falling asleep. This stage can last from one half a minute to 10 minutes.

Stage II - this is a light and restful sleep in which your body prepares for deep sleep by lowering your body temperature and further relaxing your muscles. A feature of this stage is a less intense form of the delta sleep that occurs in Stages III and IV. Reaching this stage improves your alertness and stamina. During Stage II sleep, electrical signals in the nervous system solidify the connection between neurons involved in muscle memory so that when you wake up you can act faster and with more accuracy.  This is the stage that nappers want to reach. It is here that your body refreshes itself. Stage II lasts about 20 minutes.

Stage III and Stage IV - you enter the deep slow wave sleep. During these two stages your brain emits very low frequency, high voltage delta waves. During Stage III and IV the body is restored. Growth hormone release reaches its twenty-four hour peak in these sleep stages.

Stage V - REM sleep when your eyes twitch and dreaming is most intense. During this stage of sleep the mind is restored. It is during this time that specific neural connections are made that support the retention and organization of information. In addition, these neural connections are involved in making space to learn and perform new tasks.

The biggest problem with napping is waking in the middle of a slow wave deep sleep stage. When you are in a slow wave deep sleep your brain rhythm is synchronized into a slow, steady pattern. The complete opposite of your wakeful brain rhythm operating on many frequencies. If you wake in the middle of a slow wave deep sleep, you are jolting your brain into desynchronization and forcing it to fire off high frequency electrical activity. During this time your limbs may feel very heavy, your eyes don't focus well, you are not the greatest at articulation and you will feel like you've left your mind asleep - which you have. It takes a while to get everything synchronized again. Better to avoid this with good nap planning than to try to counteract it.

The best naps are of two sleep designs. 

The Twenty Minute Power/Cat Nap - plan for a 30-minute time frame. Ten minutes to reach Stage II sleep and 20 minutes to dip into the refreshing benefits of Stage II sleep and wake up before drifting further into the deeper sleep of Stages III and IV. Even three minutes of napping in Stage II sleep can be beneficial. If you find you have slipped into slow wave deep sleep add another twenty minutes to avoid the jolting problem of waking in the middle of a slow wave sleep stage.

The Sixty to Ninety Minute Restorative Nap - This restorative nap takes you all the way through a full sleep cycle of all five stages. This will take about 50 minutes from the time you fall asleep. This nap is the most restorative and rejuvenating. It is here that you will gain the most benefits from napping.

When you wake, it is normal to experience some degree of sleep inertia - that groggy, slow feeling. The severity of sleep inertia depends upon how long you have been asleep and in which stage of sleep you awaken. To minimize your sleep inertia either keep your naps to 30-20 minutes Power Nap or sleep all the way through the deeper Stage III and IV sleep stages.

Activity, noise and light can quickly reverse any normal sleep inertia you experience.

Additional Tips

You can use an alarm to rouse from your nap at the appropriate time. But for those with a regular wake/sleep cycle you may find that you can easily entrain yourself to wake "on time". This is especially true if you get outside in the sunlight right after you wake from your nap. The sunlight will quickly set your circadian clock so that you form the habit of waking refreshed on time.

Don't nap longer than three hours.

Don't nap less than four to five hours before your bedtime.

If you got fewer than five hours of sleep the night before the Twenty Minute Power/Cat nap taken early afternoon might work best for you.

If you are getting sleepy in the late afternoon a walk outside might be more restorative for you than a nap.

Your body temperature drops when you nap so a cozy blanket or sweater may be helpful.  A sleep mask, earplugs or relaxing music and a travel pillow are handy sleep aids and help to build a consistent nap routine so that the body quickly goes for it's restorative treat. 

Do your best to get in as much of a reclining position as possible. Being horizontal is so much more restful. 

If you have just consumed anything high in fat, sugar, caffeine or anything else stimulating, you may find it hard to fall asleep - even if you feel sleepy.

If you are a shift worker you need special napping strategies. You should consult a sleep expert for this.

~o00o~

Ok, Nappers!! Head for those comfy napping cots, Pods or reclining desk chairs. Gain the productive advantage by indulging in this time honored tradition. Happy Napping!

"How lovely it is to rest and then do nothing afterwards."
-- Spanish proverb

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