Since retiring, Peggy Blake enjoys a daily 20-minute siesta after lunch. “I love naps,” she says. “I put a small pillow under my neck, cross my arms on my chest and stretch out. It’s a light sleep; I guess that’s why they call it a cat nap.”
This is the type of nap consistency and appreciation William Anthony extols in The Art of Napping (Larson Publications). It offers some “naptitudes”—skills and techniques that stand nappers in good stead. Which rhymes with bed, but the bed isn’t at all necessary for nappers.
Herny Riechmann, for example, completed a morning Hawaiian dance class at the Walnut Creek Senior Center, stretched out at home for half an hour on the sofa, then dashed back for her family history writing class. What about lunch? “Oh, I ate a big breakfast, so I wasn’t hungry,” she says. So there’s another possible benefit. You can slim down by napping through an occasional meal.
Six out of ten adults nap at least once a week, says Anthony, who directs Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation when he isn’t snoozing. Despite this ratio, prejudice exists. Certain nap police rouse people or make them feel guilty even though scientific studies reveal many Americans are “sleep deprived.” He notes that in the Bible it says that “on the seventh day. . .God rested.” What better role model could we ask for?
Arliss Harmon likes “a little nap” of 20 minutes. “Any more than that and I feel groggy,” she says. It refreshes her to the degree that she can recall, while waiting for a class to start, pithy sayings like “The trouble with doing nothing, you don’t know when to stop.”
A little inertia after a nap is nothing to worry about, Anthony says. The grogginess disappears within 15 minutes at the most.
“I zonk out for 20 minutes to a half-hour after lunch,” declares Dean Chapman, a senior who lives in Concord. “Then I get up and have a cup of tea with Elsie and we chat for a bit.” Elsie is Dean’s wife and, since “she’s so much younger,” she doesn’t require daily rest. But if she’s really pooped, she’ll go into a trance-like state for an hour or so.
In his book, Where Was I When Time Went By?, Chapman’s essay on napping advocates redesigning our schools so children can stretch out for 20 minutes of shut-eye. Businesses could chart the circadian rhythms of employees to ensure the maximum rejuvenation rate of their naps, he suggests. You can help by donating, say, $3,000 for his new organization, Save American Naps. “Donations will be recognized in your dreams,” he adds.
Nappers score the highest points when, for example, they drift off at the dentist’s, even with a hand and several instruments in the mouth.
Mary Rizzo, naps, but not too often. Her husband, Carmen, rates as a true aficionado. “He’d be lost without his naps,” she declares, then recalls that she dozes while watching TV. “I never see how anything ends,” she confesses. During one interval, her head fell back and her mouth dropped open, and that’s the time a visiting relative snapped her picture. She’s still making weekly payments to keep it out of circulation. Well, that last part is conjecture.
Anthony’s book debunks the view that napping reduces one’s ability to sleep at night. “A good nap and a good night-time sleep can go hand in hand,” he says. Another tip: groups and families should try synchronized napping. And if you’re searching for a gift to give a napper, consider a napsack for napnomic devices such as a pillow, or a tape of sea sounds.
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