How to Nap Like a Pro With These 6 Tips!

Napping always seems to get a bad rep these days. Often, it is frowned upon as a sign of laziness. However, studies indicate that a good nap per day could benefit you more than you might realize by boosting alertness, creativity, mood, and productivity in the later hours of the day. Naps make you brainier, healthier, safer. But to understand how you can nap best, you need to understand your body. Before we get into how this happens, let's take a look at the 5 different styles of napping:

1. The Power Nap: This is your quickie when it comes to napping, lasting only 10-20 minutes long. It is best when you have that spare moment to relax before getting back to work-such as on your lunch break.
2. The NASA Nap: The NASA nap is a nap with a duration of about 26 minutes long, yielding stage 2 sleep mainly. It is called the NASA nap because of the studies shown on pilots who napped while their co-pilots took over. This nap improved pilot performance by 34% and total alertness by 54%. This nap is ideal for when you have a long work day ahead of you, getting extra hours in on the clock.
3. The Bad Nap: The Bad Nap is 30 minutes long and is named such because it has negative effects on your body moreso than any other type of nap because it causes sleep inertia, leaving feeling very much "hungover." To put it simply, you wake up feeling worse than you did before you even decided to take a nap. It is best to avoid this type of nap if you want to make it throughout the rest of the day productively.
4. The Slow Wave Sleep Nap: 60 minutes long, this nap improves your alertness for up to ten hours and also benefits your cognitive state of mind and memory processing. This is a great nap for when you have a speech or a presentation due that day-or need to remember something very important.
5. The Full Sleep Cycle Nap: This nap occurs throughout a full cycle of sleep, which is exactly 90 minutes long and helps to boost emotional and procedural memory as well as creativity. This nap comes in handy right before a big test.

Here are 6 tips to ensure a successful nap:

1. Nap at the right time. The best time for napping usually occurs between 1:00pm & 4:00 pm.
2. Nap with the right position. Napping upright will help you to avoid the deep trance of sleep that will cause you to feel hungover.
3. Nap at the right temp. The ideal temperature for napping is between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. Nap with the right amount of lighting. Set yourself up in a very dim room or turn on a nightlight in a pitch black room. The orange glow is said to boost Melatonin levels within the brain.
5. Have your cell phone handy. Use your phone as a timer based on the type of nap that you will need to take. If you do not time yourself, you could sleep too much or too little.
6. Have a cup of jo. Studies show that having a cup of coffee before your power nap increases the alertness for when you wake up. Basically, you will wake up feeling energized instead of sleepy still.

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