Day Fifteen: Take a Nap

FIFTEEN
Take a nap

Sometimes we feel great when we slow down and lie down.

Often this can be as little as five minutes of lying on a firm but slightly yielding surface, such as a lawn, or a wood floor or deck, or even better, a wood floor or deck with a rug or thin mate of some sort.


Sometimes if requires a twenty minute or so period of shut eye that turns into sleeping.

This is known as a nap.


We all know, or most of us do that have allowed ourselves to indulge in naps, that if we let the naps go “too long” we wake up quite groggy and it takes us a long time to get back to normal. Then we often feel great, with the minor problem that we keep going and going way into the night and thereby cut ourselves off from have the night’s sleep be as full as we would like it to be.

Oh, well.

This is the occupational hazard of taking naps, they can be “too long.”

However, the other end, the end of no nap, is many a times too short.

Now, we don’t need a nap every day, or maybe we do. Winston Churchill, under the stress of leading the British in World War II, was famous for getting two days out of one by taking a long nap.

So, what are we to do today?

Take little two breath pauses, mini naps, where all that matters is being present and our breathing and know we are alive. Closing our eyes if it’s safe. Letting our faces swing easily in the sun for those two breaths, if there is pleasant sun around.

And, if the day is that kind of day, play with a “real” nap.