As I get older, I find myself getting more and more anxious after a nap. I have to put myself back to sleep for a few hours in order to feel rested. I like to know that I will wake up feeling refreshed. I can’t shake the feeling that I am going to fail at something after a nap, and so, I start to get anxious.
It’s probably something to do with the fact that we’re all naturally wired to be very alert after a nap. I know this because I’ve had friends tell me that they feel just as anxious about leaving the house at five PM as they do at eight. And as an adult, I know that it’s a good thing to be alert and that I should make my body as fresh and ready as possible to get up and deal with the day.
I don’t like to leave the house, but I am glad that I am not like my friends. I like to take a quick nap after being in an office all day, and I like my body to be fresh and ready to go. But I also know that, if I am not alert and in the zone, I am not going to be able to focus and keep my mind on what is important.
A couple weeks ago I read that there’s a “sleep cycle” in which we become more aware of our body. The reason for this is because our bodies are so busy, they go into a survival mode that is hard to switch back into. When we nap, our bodies are more calm, and we stay alert while we sleep. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s actually true.
Sleep is a brain function. So if we nap to be more alert we are actually working and learning. There’s a difference.
The reason I don’t think these nap time tutorials are as crazy as they sound is because I’ve talked to many people who suffer from insomnia and/or chronic fatigue. If I know about a method of reducing insomnia, or help people manage chronic fatigue, I will use it. But I know that there are people who suffer from both.
Many people report that they can only sleep so long during a normal day, and that after about 8 hours of sleep they wake up with a pounding heart. And the reason? Their bodies are still trying to restore their internal clocks to a baseline balance, which is why we can’t fall asleep and then wake up with a pounding heart after a nap. The problem is that we have no idea what our biological clock is doing when we sleep.
Well, we know that our biological clock is a very important aspect of how our body works. When your body falls asleep, the brain shuts down and the whole body goes into hyper-drive. This is referred to as the “sleep state”. Hyper-drive occurs when our body is going so fast that it’s not possible to breath. This is when our internal clocks go haywire and we start having trouble waking up.
The problem is not the actual time it takes to sleep; it’s that we have no idea when we should be going to bed. We have a body clock that tells us when we should sleep, but we have no idea how to figure out when to wake up. The good news is that we can use our body clock to schedule our sleep. When we fall asleep, we go into a sleep state.
This is a sleep state that’s different from the sleep we get during the day. It’s one of those sleep states where every cell in our body ceases to be awake and becomes completely asleep. The brain wakes up, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like it’s just a very slow, yet steady, process. When we get that nap we actually feel a lot better.