Maybe it's just me, but I'm always leery of any advice that involves not getting a good night's sleep. There are some things you're better off not trying to hack. Much evidence suggests your sleep cycle is one of them.
I'm not advocating not getting a good night's sleep. In fact, my article doesn't even talk about whether you should implement monophasic, or biphasic, or polyphasic sleep, or some other creative variant. This article is about how to nap, not whether you should nap or at what time of the day you should nap (and whether you should let it affect your sleep).
Before this article does collateral damage: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm Acording to this, polyphasic sleep is a good technique when you can't afford to sleep much. Good in some extreme survival situations, like solo sailing. However, it is unnatural, and still leaves you in a sleep deprived state. Not good for everyday life. Even worse if you have to be creative. One single nap just after lunch,…
I will lie in bed, awake, forever thinking and rethinking whatever happens to be on my mind at the time. That was me until I got some earphones and went to bed listening to podcasts every time. Having another voice chattering away (which I can ignore) stops my inner voice (which I can't ignore) chattering away. Works a treat.
I quite like falling asleep while listening to something, but I wish there was some way that my iPod could work out that I've gone to sleep and cut out at that point.
Maybe an app that requires you to hold the iPod vertically and pauses audio playback out when it goes into any other position for more than a configurable number of seconds?
It may have started as guided meditation, I'm not arguing against that. However, I now nap without any soundtrack, and without even an alarm clock, so whatever it was that I was doing at the beginning, I think it's fair to call what I'm doing now napping.
I teach meditation, and in my opinion, what you're doing is definitely a form of meditation. You have an intentional practice of relaxation that doesn't involve falling asleep. That's meditation. Specifically, paragraphs like this can be found in hundreds of books on meditation: The best way I can describe the feeling of napping is that you lie down or sit somewhere, and first focus on relaxing. Relax your muscle gro…
I agree that it sounds like meditation. In a yoga class I attend, which combines an hour of light flow yoga with about a half-hour meditation (first about 20 minutes prone on the back, and then 10 minutes sitting cross-legged), I often enter a sort of immediate REM-like state. While the teacher was talking about clearing our minds, I was having wild, vivid, waking dreams. It's pretty fun to get into that state, and it definitely makes me feel good afterwards. The OP's "napping" sounds a lot like this.
Before this article does collateral damage: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm Acording to this, polyphasic sleep is a good technique when you can't afford to sleep much. Good in some extreme survival situations, like solo sailing. However, it is unnatural, and still leaves you in a sleep deprived state. Not good for everyday life. Even worse if you have to be creative. One single nap just after lunch,…
Rebuttal to aforementioned article: http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2006/11/01/an-attack-on-p...
Also here's a 5-1/2 month trial of polyphasic sleep - http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ . This is the first entry, but he went back and added links to all of his posts about polyphasic. I am trying it, or attempting to - I am having trouble getting to sleep quickly enough, then having trouble getting up and not over-sleeping.
I will lie in bed, awake, forever thinking and rethinking whatever happens to be on my mind at the time. That was me until I got some earphones and went to bed listening to podcasts every time. Having another voice chattering away (which I can ignore) stops my inner voice (which I can't ignore) chattering away. Works a treat.
What works for me: playing solitaire on my phone. The act of concentrating on that single thing (when I'm tired, which I always am at the end of the day) for 5 minutes never ceases to put me to sleep.
Do you get lucid dreams? I am quite prone to lucid dreaming, especially when napping or getting back into bed after waking up in the morning.
I've only had a couple of lucid dreams in my life, unfortunately (that I can remember). I wish I had more - they were both very enjoyable. I think part of the problem for me is that my dreams are so insane that it's very difficult for me to implement mnemonic-induced lucid dreaming.
Habits tend to carry over into dreams. Just make a habit of testing for reality every once in a while (or when something looks remotely fishy). E.g. I found that I can not read in dreams--or at least everything longer than a few letters changes when I read it twice. (Jumping also works different in dreams, but that's too geeky to do while you are awake.)
I was expecting a sales pitch at the bottom. It's a great anecdote and I'll try it out, but there's no evidence aside from his story that this works.
Just to make this clear: I have no affiliation whatsoever with Pzizz. I mentioned it a lot because it was a central element of how I learned to nap. I have exchanged a couple of emails with the guys from Wakemate, and may perhaps get a review unit at some point, but I won't derive any financial benefit from it (I've paid for that unit!).
I suppose I structured that sentence in a "jerk" fashion. My intent was that I was looking for some more research into this method other than a story, well-written I might add.
I didn't expect you to be paid by Pzzzzz, but I did check for affiliate links ;)
I taught myself to nap almost anytime anywhere with one little secret: a Mindfold relaxation mask. http://www.mindfold.com/ The only thing I've ever found that provides total darkness in any condition with my eyes wide open. Combine it with a neck pillow and the right track on my ipod and I have a poor man's sensory deprivation chamber. A couple of deep breaths and the next thing you know, it's 20 minutes later.
Totally agree. Although I actually use a thick black sock where the top and bottom are sewed together :). I lose face masks all the time so I started to just make my own and not worry about losing them.
You're lucky that you can do that! I've never been able to sleep with a voice speaking nearby. I don't think I've ever fallen asleep while watching a movie, ever, for example. Even after a big night out, exhausted, wanting to sleep, I had to go and switch off the TV to be able to fall asleep.
You're lucky that you can do that! I've never been able to sleep with a voice speaking nearby. Yeah, but the problem is if I don't, I have a voice in my head talking instead. Literally, my internal voice is "talking" in my head non-stop all day coming up with ideas, figuring out what to do, complaining about crap, etc. Perhaps it's a mental illness but I never considered it a problem (yet). :-)
Perhaps you could take up meditation to help clear your mind.
I wouldn't call this a 'mental illness', but non-stop mental chatter is a sign of disease -- in that your mind is not at ease.
You might find the symptoms to be relatively useful (non-stop idea factory!), but I think it is already causing you problems if you have to drown out the voices in your head with other voices just to fall asleep at night. Can this state be considered healthy functioning of the mind?