The A to Zzzzz elixir of the afternoon nap
Hooray! Validation at long last for those of us who like a little zizz in the afternoon. The idea that non-nocturnal slumber is the pursuit of slackers and drooling ancients is firmly embedded in the language. “Caught napping” is supposedly a bad thing. It means a lack of attention has left you unprepared when, as any postprandial snoozer could tell you, a nap is the perfect restorative, a reboot for the weary, balm to the frazzled mind. In my experience, no day is so bad that it cannot be redeemed by a nap.
And science finally agrees. Sleep experts have discovered that daytime naps can improve alertness, perception, motor skills and creativity while lowering stress and blood pressure, which reduces the risk of heart attacks. I believe we nappers knew that instinctively, didn’t we?
I am not talking about that executive abomination, the “power nap”. There is no such thing. It is a term adopted by high achievers who are scared of using “snooze”. True nappers adore snooze and its hammocky double vowel into which, should you so wish, you could tumble and take 40 winks.
For the perils of the so-called power nap, look at Salvador Dalí. The artist believed that one of the secrets to being a great painter was what he called “slumber with a key”. Basically, a siesta designed to last no longer than a second. Dalí sat in a chair with a heavy metal key pressed between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. A plate was placed on the floor underneath the hand. The moment Dalí fell asleep, the key would slip from his fingers, clatter on to the plate and wake him up. Dalí seriously thought that this pitiful excuse for a nap “revivified” an artist’s whole “physical and physic being”.
Yes, and just look at the state of his paintings! Nightmare in
every sense. Dalí could have been Matisse had he got some decent shut-eye like John F Kennedy. The president actually changed into pyjamas. Winston Churchill also removed his clothes for two solid hours of napping, even keeping a bed at Westminster. “Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts 20 minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces,” he said, making the nappers’ case with characteristic eloquence.
A nap gives your day two mornings; if the first was a grumpy false start, try again.
If naps are good for cranky children, how beneficial would they be for adults? A colleague says she goes to the office yoga session purely for the lying down and the bit at the end when she can close her eyes.
At the Pixar HQ in California, Himself crawled into a burrow and found some of the world’s most creative minds curled up like kittens. We would be less anxious and depressed if we napped more; productive, too.
When I’m writing and I don’t know where the plot goes, I take a nap so my brain can figure it out without me getting in the way. In a better society, we would be caught napping every day. “My religion,” said the writer Garrison Keillor, “would be a gentle faith that believed in the sacredness of leisure. Napping as a form of prayer.” Amen to that.