The art of resting fully.

"I fully agree with this article and have practiced this for years especially the years I’ve been chronically fatigued which is a different kettle of fish!

What you will find is; if you put your alarm on for 20 minutes that in a week or so you will be able to just lie down, nap and wake up in 20 minutes without the alarm. I understand that lorry drivers are adept at setting a nap time. Apparently my granny used to say that she’d just have 10 minutes in her rocking chair and she always woke up in 10 minutes time.

Similarly, if you time yourself 20-30 minutes and then stand up from your studies with an oxygenating stretch being beneficial before going back to your work. You will find that you do not lose concentration; you do not lose the flow but that you can maintain a high level of work for as long as you want or need to.
You might wish to scroll down and check out my article Grounding in the Centre of your Space to find more about being able to go to sleep at night." M'reen

The art of resting fully

by Yan

I didn’t sleep enough last night. But I have a ninja trick to quickly cor­rect this:

I prac­tice the art of rest­ing fully. Want to know what it is?

When I say that I didn’t sleep enough, I mean just that — I didn’t “have insom­nia”. I just went to bed too late, at around mid­night. Then I was cold, and my body couldn’t warm up while lying under the sheets. Feel­ing cold, I couldn’t fall asleep. After 45 min­utes of feel­ing cold I got up and took a warm shower. Then I went back to bed and fell asleep promptly — until my alarm rose me up at 6:45.

Sleep­ing six hours is not enough for me to feel fully rested (I rather need 7.5/8 hours). So I felt slightly grumpy, a lit­tle fatigued, and def­i­nitely unin­spired by what I had put on my to-​​do list.

Feel­ing the blah

That gave me a lit­tle taste of the ordeal most peo­ple who come to Sleep­Tracks expe­ri­ence — and a reminder of what I used to expe­ri­ence in a much more pro­nounced way a decade ago, when I was label­ing myself as an insomniac. Any­way, after about an hour of respond­ing to SleepTracks’s clients and a few other tasks, I started to feel the urge to procrastinate. That’s what hap­pens when we are under-​​rested and sleep-​​deprived, right? We eas­ily crum­ble under the slight­est pres­sure. We feel eas­ily over­whelmed. We can’t con­cen­trate. So we start to pro­cras­ti­nate. Or we get back to an old habit: using worry as a project instead of work­ing on what­ever is in front of us. Blah.

What is the ninja trick then?

In three words: tak­ing a nap. I actu­ally took three naps that day. Yes, three. Now please hear me: most days I don’t nap at all. Some­times I’ll nap once in the after­noon. But yes­ter­day I lis­tened to my needs and rested three times. Did I waste my whole day doing that? Hardly. First nap lasted 20 minutes. 

Sec­ond nap lasted about 15 min­utes — because I fell asleep and then woke up think­ing that the alarm had already rang. The last one, spent on the couch, lasted for about 30 minutes.

Yes, I was overindulging. And doing so with­out the slight­est bit of self-​​judgment. With­out telling myself that I “should be” doing this or that instead. In fact, when I lied on the couch I told myself “I’m going to stay there until I actu­ally want to get up and do something”. It felt great, because I actu­ally needed it. 

I know because I felt so much clearer and ener­getic and moti­vated after each one of those naps. Instead of sit­ting stu­pid and con­fused in front of my com­puter, I was able each time to be pro­duc­tive and inspired again.

Rest fully when you need to

Rest­ing fully when you need to is the best act of self-​​love you can pro­vide your­self. And nobody else but you can give your­self this pre­cious gift. Rest­ing is more impor­tant to your over­all health than nutri­tion. More impor­tant than phys­i­cal activ­ity. More impor­tant than any­thing else.

Let me repeat that and be obnox­ious about it: When you need it, phys­i­cal rest is more impor­tant to your over­all health than nutri­tion. More impor­tant than phys­i­cal activ­ity. More impor­tant than any­thing else.

Most peo­ple have for­got­ten that they even have the pos­si­bil­ity of lis­ten­ing to that need and to fill it. They take cof­fee, choco­late, load up on carbs instead, or stim­u­late them­selves with the news, with fran­tic activ­ity… or with worry. All of these are crappy sub­sti­tutes to the real deal: rest. Your need for rest won’t nec­es­sar­ily come from lack of sleep. It can man­i­fest itself after hard phys­i­cal exer­tion, demand­ing con­cen­tra­tion at work, or an exhaust­ing rela­tion­ship con­flict — any­thing that taxes your energy sys­tem more than usual. In any case, hon­or­ing this need will make a big dif­fer­ence in your day. And even help you turn your back to insom­nia (more on that later).

Sim­ple nap­ping instructions

1Don’t make it com­pli­cated. And don’t focus on falling asleep. Just have the inten­tion to “rest” for 20 min­utes or so. Peo­ple will say “I can’t sleep dur­ing the day” as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for why they won’t lie down even though they are clearly exhausted — but the goal is NOT to fall alseep, but sim­ply to answer your body/mind’s need to rest for a moment. If that is your inten­tion, then your nap will always be a success. Call it “a lit­tle quiet time” if you don’t want to call it a nap because you’d feel lazy

2Just lie down on your bed (keep your clothes on, this is a quickie, remem­ber) or on your couch. Under your desk, or over. Any­where, really. Put a sleep mask on.

3Set some timer and let go for 20–30 min­utes. Not more. Even if it takes you 15 min­utes to doze off.

4Use Power Nap, the audio ses­sion cre­ated specif­i­cally for that in the Sleep­Tracks Sleep Opti­miza­tion Pro­gram. The back­ground sounds will make the world around you fade out, and the brain­wave entrain­ment will help you to let go and guide you to sleep. I’ve used Power Nap for a few years reli­giously — but now I’m so used to nap­ping when I need to that I just put on my sleep mask and off I go. Peo­ple around me are always sur­prised to see me get back from a nap so quickly with a spring in my legs. “Already?” they say. “Did you sleep?” “Yes, of course I did. »

And you can too. It’s just a mat­ter of practice.

When to do it (and when not)

Sim­ple, again: do it when you feel the need to rest (and when you can get away with it). But will nap­ping ruin your next night’s sleep? Some sleep experts warn you not to take naps if you strug­gle with sleep. They say it will make your insom­nia worse. I say on the contrary. Use those short naps as train­ingto get good at let­ting go quickly and fall asleep when­ever you lie down. Even if you don’t sleep you’ll get the ben­e­fit of rest­ing and rejuvenating. Just don’t do it after din­ner at night in order to avoid dis­rupt­ing your night ­time sleep. DON’T nap for an hour in front of the TV after dinner!

A good rem­edy against the fear of not sleeping

Nap­ping reg­u­larly will also lessen the fear of not sleep­ing you may be har­bor­ing right now. Know­ing you can always take a nap (or, like me, a few ones) if the need arises and wake up refreshed will lower the pres­sure you put your­self under when night­ time comes. As far as I’m con­cerned, next time I don’t sleep enough I’ll just resort to my favorite rest­ing trick, and I’ll go for a short nap. Even if you think I’m a lazy bum. (btw, I’m a lazy bum only when I decide to. Next week I’ll be locked at home on a writ­ing retreat, attempt­ing to write the full draft of a book in one six-​​day burst. It will be intense! I might nap a few times along the way.)

Pic­ture: Julia Manzerova                           

http://www.sleeptracks.com/wp/the-art-of-resting-fully/

Perhaps you’d like to checkout my sister blog www.innermindreading.blogspot.com

and find easy, fast and efficient ways of working with the issues or little unpleasantness’s in your life.

I am now featuring aspects of my upcoming internet programme to teach Inner Mind Reading.