"The painter Salvador Dali used to employ the following trick to have the best nap ever:
Hold a coffee spoon (or something else—use your imagination) in your hand.
Sit and relax on a comfy couch or chair with your arm hanging.
When you go into deep sleep (after about 20-30 minutes) your hand will relax and release the spoon, and the sound of the spoon falling will wake you up.
That is the perfect timing for the best nap ever."
Dali didn't do that to get "the best nap ever." He did this to sleep just enough to get some hypnagogic images to use in his art. He never claimed it improved the quality of the nap itself. And why would it?
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.
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). :-)
Oh, so do I. But if I have the voice outside my head, that also keeps me awake. The voice inside my head eventually tires out or drifts off, but the voice coming out of the TV is infatigable. It keeps going all night.
I must just have inherited my dad's skill. My mom used to have entire conversations with my dad and he'd admit afterwards that he "hadn't been listening" and couldn't answer a single question about it. I do the same with my wife.. oops.
I used to go into work and have the operations staff thank me for solving last night's problem and have no idea what they were talking about: seems I can perform perfectly rational problem-solving when answering the telephone in my sleep.
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?
I was a practicing Buddhist for several years in the early 2000s and did this - it worked (mostly). The downside was, as you suggest, that I lost my inspiration and personality (and ended up almost broke).
but non-stop mental chatter is a sign of disease -- in that your mind is not at ease.
It once irritated me enough that I ended up in front of some sort of mental health practitioner. They came up with some things that involved taking poisonous metals as a "cure" but I privately went to a meta-cognitive therapist instead.
The result was that I can now "ignore" the errant part of my mind with the more usual, conscious "executive" part (I don't know all the terminology, sorry) but enjoy the fruits and spontaneity of what the uncontrollable side has to offer when I choose. It works, because I couldn't be much happier or productive now! :-)
I spoke with friends who had depression and were taking reasonably pedestrian drugs like Prozac, and while they were "happier" in the typical sense, ultimately they were less satisfied with life because the drugs dampened their vitality in a way they couldn't define.
(I know, a serious overshare, but that's part of the deal ;-) I suspect the majority of people have these sorts of issues at times, but society has entrained most people to keep it under wraps.)
I think it's more like "a majority of high achieving people have these sorts of issues". You don't make it to interesting places without some form of overactive mental processes; it's those of us who can deal with it and harness it who can achieve great things (or, er, above-mediocre things.)
It's the same for me. (Only that I do not have a TV.)
Interestingly that trait may not be very heritable, or at least the effect of training/environment may be quite high. My anecdote for that is that my mother always falls asleep at audio books.
Meetings are special cases, on the contrary to podcasts and audiobooks they are designed to be boring :-)
But yes I think I'm the same as you, I can ignore what other people are saying to me (my girlfriend hates that) but it's hard to ignore my own internal voice.
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?
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.
I frequently evoke envy in people with my ability to nap virtually anywhere - airports, trains, arms folded across knees with head resting on arms, noisy living rooms, whatever. (I don't get sleepy at work usually, I have too much to do).
My method: first, only works if sleepy, or if conscious that sleep is really necessary. Second, obviously, avoid stimulants pre-nap. Third, get in a position where your head won't flop around if when you fall asleep. Then, with eyes closed, imagine your consciousness as a sphere - sort of like the world of wakeful attention. And then mentally, push that sphere away, distancing oneself from conscious thought. Finally: wake up 20 minutes later.
I have no idea if that will actually help anyone, but it works for me every time, with no gadgets, masks, whatever. I think the key is the ability to mentally distance oneself from conscious attention. If you can let the world slip away, you will fall asleep.
I have a similar system, I imagine myself in an elevator going down and as it goes down I fall asleep. Before finding this system, I would need at least an hour to fall asleep.
I think it works by quieting my internal voice and giving an image to the process of going to sleep.
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.
In my experience, a good sleep mask makes napping during the day much easier. It'll also help with falling asleep at night in rooms that aren't as dark as they could be. And if earplugs don't bother you, combine them with a sleep mask, and you'll be able to nap anywhere.
There's a world of difference between $3 drugstore sleep masks and more expensive ones, in terms of comfort as well as light-blocking ability. I've been quite happy with Bucky brand sleep masks. They're available on Amazon along with a number of other masks in the $10-$15 range (including the Mindfold).
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.
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, however, is natural and good.
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.
Did anyone else try the pzizz example tracks after reading this? I was suprised at how quickly I started sinking into wooziness! $40 is kind of a lot for napping software, but I may have to check out some of the free binaural beat apps.
I did, and I also looked at similar products. I found this (not software): http://www.vth.biz/driver/imusic/products . They have three different products under "Relax, Sleep": ZenMeditate, DeepSleep Suite, MaxRelax.
The samples for DeepSleep are actually pretty nice, especially "Silky Ambient." But for $90(!) I hope it's potent. This is some serious stuff for some people.
Back in the days, you could download the sample tracks. I'm sure with a bit of rummaging around the HTML, that's still possible - those are just standard Flash mp3 players, I think.
I actually stayed on the sample tracks for about a week when I started. By the 10th time you listen to the same track, though, it gets really tedious.
Btw, you have to listen to them with earphones to get the proper effect (which you probably did, but worth noting).
I did. The sounds were relaxing but the talking was disruptive. Even with my sound settings maxed out, I couldn't hear what he was saying, so the voice was doubly distracting. That said, the software might be worth it if there is no mellow, therapy-guy yakking in the background.
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).
Yeah, at most this seems like something to use occasionally, to be more alert despite being sleep-deprived. Possibly an alternative to just piling on caffeine. But I would definitely not read it as a technique for reducing the amount of sleep you "need", since sleep is a lot more than simply a thing that decrements your drowsiness meter. Twenty-minute power naps don't do fun things like memory consolidation, for example.
sounds like what the author is describing is not so much napping but guided meditation .. nothing wrong with that, anyone interested in this stuff might want to use those keywords if they are going to do a websearch or something.
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 groups one by one, from your neck all the way down to your toes. Take a good minute or two to do this properly. Then finally you relax your thoughts. Let them drift off. It’s important to gently nudge those thoughts towards more relaxing topics – you won’t nap very well if you’re rehearsing a conversation with the boss – but at the same time, they need to largely drift on their own. Keep your eyes closed, your body relaxed, and let your thoughts meander from subject to subject without much order.
You may be right... but if I derive all the typical benefits of napping (increased alertness, ability to go for extended periods of a few weeks with a lot less sleep, etc), is it not fair to call it napping? After all, if it quacks like a duck...
Also, it does happen, though probably no more than 1 out of 5 times, that I actually drift into a dream state while napping, which I would consider equivalent to being asleep.
Perhaps -- but your list of benefits matches a list of typical benefits of meditation as well. And falling asleep while meditating isn't terribly uncommon, especially when you're tired. When I first started meditating, it was a lot more than 1 out of 5 times for me.
I'm willing to overlook that every dictionary I've checked includes sleep as an essential part of what defines napping, since they all suck at defining meditation. To my mind, if we take successfully falling asleep out of the definition, a nap would still mean lying down, closing your eyes, and not engaging in a specific mental practice, but rather letting the sense of sleepiness overcome you. You might fall asleep, or you might just lie there, consumed in sleepiness for 20 minutes.
As soon as you start an exercise to control what your mind/attention does or does not do, however, you're getting into meditation territory: directing your attention to specific parts of your body and willing them to relax, directing your mind to relaxing thoughts, directing your mind away from distressing thoughts, and trying to culture a state where your mind drifts freely all qualify as meditation techniques to me.
I think intentions also matter. If you goal is to fall asleep for a while, then you probably napped, even if you didn't manage to fall asleep. If your goal is to let your mind and body relax and refresh, without preference to whether sleep happens or not, then that's meditation to me.
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 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.
It seems these ways of falling asleep are really just creating favorable conditions for sleep.
A number of years ago I learned how to relax and fall asleep in a very effective way.
I was at a friend's house and tried a biofeedback device.
If you google search "GSR2" I think you'll find approximately the device I learned with. Later I bought my own similar device (like ~$10) from radio shack (google search "radio shack biofeedback monitor"). I don't know if they make that anymore.
What these devices do is teach you to relax. You have a tone, and when you relax, it decreases in pitch. If you just think you are relaxing, but the pitch doesn't decrease (or goes up), you can't cheat. By the end, the pitch is very low and you're almost asleep.
Once you learn how to do it, it's quite easy to relax and fall asleep. Using the other tricks like darkness, earplugs or relaxing sounds can then help you.
"I will lie in bed, awake, forever thinking and rethinking whatever happens to be on my mind at the time."
I can sympathize. I used to have a ton of trouble falling asleep until I learned some basic meditation techniques to shut off the inner dialog.
I quite literally focus on turning off my brain. I'm not really doing that, of course, but that's how I visualize it. With a little practice you can drift off at will.
Also, I read once that the meditation masters would carry a bamboo stick for students that fell asleep, for a good reason. :-)
I feel so old school in the way i take naps.
just have lunch, drink and espresso, lean comfortably on the couch and 20 minutes later (when the caffeine kicks in), my alarm wakes me up, ready to knock out the rest of the day. Well... the rest of the day until the next nap, right before dinner.
I use radio static to fall asleep; it has the same effect on me as those binatural beats. I focus on trying to conjure up an image out of that noise (a waterfall or a rainstorm is often what I get) and that consequently drowns out my thoughts until I just pass out.
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 ;)
Hold a coffee spoon (or something else—use your imagination) in your hand.
Sit and relax on a comfy couch or chair with your arm hanging.
When you go into deep sleep (after about 20-30 minutes) your hand will relax and release the spoon, and the sound of the spoon falling will wake you up.
That is the perfect timing for the best nap ever."
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/08/from-the-tips-box-coffe...