How To Get On The Nap Ladder

PLUS: Did you have a robot?

A Note for You, If You’re Having A Bad Day

Hi My Friend,

I’m curious: do you have a rest practice? Have you ever? Do you sometimes? 

Last week, I traveled to New Orleans with my husband Luke and our two-year-old daughter, T. One of these people is, and seemingly always has been, terrific at napping. The other person is (newly) anti-nap. If you know even one two-year-old (or one 40-year-old man), you’ll know which is which: children with consciousnesses tend to feel slighted by the amazing gift of a few hours in the afternoon to sleep. Husbands on Saturdays feel entitled to it. 

In New Orleans, T would not nap. Well, she wouldn’t nap on purpose. She napped for 15-minute intervals in the car, and on Mardi Gras Day, she gave up a half-hour in her stroller while we bounced alongside a full-volume marching band (which was capital-a Amusing to the festively drunk revelers spying her). Mardi Gras is a season where I need to nap, so T’s refusal to have quiet time was potent. I cried daily. Un-napped Luke was annoyed with me. (Or was he also just very tired?)

When I came back, I revisited a thought I had back in June: maybe everyone should nap every day for at least 45 minutes in the afternoon. Back then, I had this thought, was jettisoned by the vague memory that most Latin American countries are culturally beholden to a daily siesta, and decided that human bodies are probably supposed to nap. I did no research, but how could this not be true?

Returning from New Orleans, I googled it, and found a 1989 New York Times article that cited research about the evolutionary pull of a mid-afternoon nap. But that was 1989, when science believed that margarine was the second coming of Health-Christ. More recent studies on naps have found that the propensity to take them is genetic; some people benefit more than others, and the Why is in your DNA. Other studies say that hunter-gatherers likely slept in two shifts — once at night and once in the afternoon; and still others cited a variety of statistics on how often people take them. (Most people have taken a nap in the past three months; only 7 percent of people take them every day.)

This is science. Here is my anecdotal opinion: everyone who sleeps at night for any length of time and gets up in the morning should have some sacred time in the late afternoon. I’ve really never heard of anyone accomplishing or producing anything extraordinary in the late afternoon. (Also I don’t listen that well, so don’t at me.)

But over the past few days, since T has returned to a place where she has her own dark room whose slumbering properties swallow her up, even if she doesn’t think she wants them to, I’ve composed the following ladder of options for grown-ups, who have various schedule flexibility. It is not science. But on the other hand, maybe it is!??! Basically, my recommendation for you is that you get on this ladder and see where it takes you. Tell me how it goes.

LEVEL ONE: Take A Nap

Put on your loose clothes and get into a room that is cool and dark. Lie on top of the covers and have a pillow. Or, lie under a blanket on a non-bed surface. A sweater can be a pillow. A backpack can be a pillow. There are pillows all around us! A cat basically cannot be a pillow — which I only share because I’ve tried and I want to save you the heartbreak.

Maybe put on a lulling storytelling podcast or something like that (there’s a meditation app that has stories about bookshops told very slowly against a background of pouring rain). Maybe get some white noise going. Set a timer for 45 minutes, turn your phone upside down, and close your eyes, inviting your mind to wander wherever it wants. Rarely is your mind this free. Wow.

Suddenly, your mind has slipped through a back door, and now it’s prancing around your subconscious, telling YOU a story about your favorite high school math teacher wearing a rosy gown and holding you beneath a starry sky, while a rainy bookshop looks on. Thanks, subconscious. You can talk about this in therapy, if you want.

LEVEL TWO: Take A Lie Down

Maybe you aren’t interested in finding your old math teacher, or you fear the brutality of the inevitable alarm. You know, children aren’t wrong: it’s scary to surrender your brain to something so unknown as a nap. So, OK: don’t take a nap. Take a lie down. A lie down is where you get your feet off the ground and you unbend your legs, and all your body mass sinks into the earth. Gravity takes over. You exert nothing. 

During a lie down, you might read a book. You might have a think or a daydream. You might listen to an old fashioned CD. I think you should do something novel and not phone-related during a lie down. Gaze at the window and observe stuff. Play with dough. But you do you: it’s your lie down.

Set a timer for 45 minutes. Maybe you’ll close your eyes. Maybe sleep will take you anyway. 

LEVEL THREE: Take A Close-Eye

If you can’t lie down because you are in a business space with aggressive floors, that’s fine: find the comfiest chair and instead of resting your whole body, rest the most sensitive part of your body: your eyes. Close these. What’s back there, behind your eyelids? What colors and shapes? 

Wait, open your eyes again real quick. Set a timer for five to seven minutes. OK, close your eyes again. Look: 45 minutes is a super long time to have your eyes closed. Five or seven is effective! I’m not sure about six. I’ve never done this with six. Let me know.

LEVEL FOUR: Take A Tap

I’ve changed just one letter in “take a nap,” and here we are, taking a tap. Tapping is sometimes called “emotional freedom technique” or EFT, and it’s been experimented with as a remedy for anxiety and PTSD. I have done it many times, and I really like how it feels. If you can’t close your eyes, because you need to be vigilant while on your aggressive work floor, head to the bathroom, get in a stall, and try gently tapping the following areas with two fingers:

• the side of your hand

• the top of your head

• along the bridge of your eyebrows

• lightly along the side of your eyes

• under your eyes

• your chin

• beginning of the collarbone

• under your arm

For your first try, maybe use a guided practice video:

(You don’t have to do it exactly like this next time. I find an imperfect tap to be just the ticket sometimes.)

LEVEL FIVE: Take A Water

Maybe you don’t have time for any of this. Hey, man: life is busy. It’s the late afternoon and you just have to keep going. I get it.

So get your hands on some water. EXPERIENCE the water. I am a big fan of experiencing water; in the summer I prefer to submerge myself in it. But you can put some in a cup, too, to experience it. It can be hot or cold or neither of these. Try taking a nice big sip of the water and feel what it’s like in your mouth. Introduce it to your teeth — HOW WILD to have bones always poking out of us! The water will like your teeth; it’s balletic around hardness.

Swallow the water and see if you can feel it go into your body. If you can’t, that’s fine. Pretend you can.

On your next sip, privately instruct the water to take a little nap for you. At least you can have a magical water energy napping on your behalf, if you can’t take it on yourself.

So, I’ve gotta know: what’s YOUR feeling about the late afternoon? Do you get stuff done? Or do you make microwave nachos?

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Loose Thoughts:

• I have been given, as a gift, a money tree. It’s quite small. I have a big one in my house and feel confused about what to do with the stems. The trunk is braided. Do I braid the trunk now? Someone who is reading this knows the answer.

• Luke wants me to record somewhere that T is now singing entire songs. She’s always had snippets but now she knows the beginnings, middles, and ends of them.

• She is also obsessed with a tape-playing robot from the 1980s that Luke found at a thrift store. Like, she really loves this robot. It’s called Casey the Robot. Did you ever have a toy robot? I had one called Alphie, I think.

• What’s the scariest kind of mask?

• I think the next two months are very productive. Plants start to grow, and I think people think, without actually thinking, “How about me? How will I grow?”