Thread: Napping Tips?

Are you able to nap if you have insufficient sleep for a week, let's say 4 - 5 hours every night?

But why would you want to nap, it's better if you can have a good night's sleep with enough hours every night.

Yes I can nap if I miss sleep the night before. I heard that it is easier to become lucid in naps so I thought I would try it out!

Thanks for your reply

I think the key about getting lucid in naps is when you can enter REM straight away which means you have a lack of sleep, otherwise normal sleeping procedures (where you don't have a lack of REM sleep) will take an hour or more before you get into REM and getting your dreams.

Thanks! That makes sense now that I think about it. In general though I have a hard time falling asleep during the day which kind've sucks

If you can fall back to sleep during a WBTB in the morning after you wake up, I think it increases your chances of lucid dreams too. The WBTB doesn't have to be long, can be as short as a couple of minutes.

Thanks! Do you mean a WBTB in the middle of the night?

Originally Posted by Carrot

I think the key about getting lucid in naps is when you can enter REM straight away which means you have a lack of sleep, otherwise normal sleeping procedures (where you don't have a lack of REM sleep) will take an hour or more before you get into REM and getting your dreams.

Sorry but I'm pretty sure this entirely wrong. I think the reason our brain goes straight to rem is because we usually take a nap where our morning energy ends but our evening energy hasn't started yet, so when we take a nap we wake up with cleared mind, it has to do with your circadian clock.
Thing is it is perfectly normal to get into a WILD just as quickly in a nap than WBTB. It only takes roughly 15 or less mins for me.
Have you tried sleeping in a completely dark room, maybe working in there half an hour before trying to sleep.
Usually naps work best around the time when the sun is at its highest, I.E 12-3 o'clock. This assumes that you have been awake between 5-7. So depending on when you wake up, the best time to nap is 5-7 hours afterwards. If you try to nap 8 or 9 hours after sleep your body might have already enetered the evening awaking stage.

Thanks for that informative post!

I guess you learn something new everyday

Originally Posted by MarineRecon

Thanks! Do you mean a WBTB in the middle of the night?

I usually do a WBTB in the morning but that's because I sleep at 4 - 5am.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

Sorry but I'm pretty sure this entirely wrong. I think the reason our brain goes straight to rem is because we usually take a nap where our morning energy ends but our evening energy hasn't started yet, so when we take a nap we wake up with cleared mind, it has to do with your circadian clock.
Thing is it is perfectly normal to get into a WILD just as quickly in a nap than WBTB. It only takes roughly 15 or less mins for me.
Have you tried sleeping in a completely dark room, maybe working in there half an hour before trying to sleep.
Usually naps work best around the time when the sun is at its highest, I.E 12-3 o'clock. This assumes that you have been awake between 5-7. So depending on when you wake up, the best time to nap is 5-7 hours afterwards. If you try to nap 8 or 9 hours after sleep your body might have already enetered the evening awaking stage.

He didn't mention he was doing a WILD so I assumed it to be a DILD. So if we're going to look at the sleep stages before he reaches REM for a DILD, it will take quite a while for a nap unless he's sleep deprived and he'll have a REM rebound.

I've never read anything about the morning and evening energy before? What's that?

Oh I've just read up some things about nap, that you get into REM quicker in naps because you have spare REM periods after your sleep. You tentatively get faster into REM sleeps during naps because of that. But the moment it reaches night the REM periods are gone and you'll need another 90 minutes before you get your REM sleep? I never knew about that, my naps usually last from 3 to 4 hours, anything less and I can't wake up because I'm still too tired. Plus my whole body clock is screwed up, I wonder if it can even tell the difference between morning, afternoon and night.

Edits again: Ultimately I haven't found anything scientific that proves that if you have your full 8 - 9 hours of sleep everyday, you get straight into REM during your naps. I'm not exactly convinced. I understand you can get dreams quickly during naps if you had a few hours short of sleep but if you are well-rested, how is it even possible to get REM straight away when you sleep?

Originally Posted by Carrot

I usually do a WBTB in the morning but that's because I sleep at 4 - 5am.



He didn't mention he was doing a WILD so I assumed it to be a DILD. So if we're going to look at the sleep stages before he reaches REM for a DILD, it will take quite a while for a nap unless he's sleep deprived and he'll have a REM rebound.

I've never read anything about the morning and evening energy before? What's that?

Oh I've just read up some things about nap, that you get into REM quicker in naps because you have spare REM periods after your sleep. You tentatively get faster into REM sleeps during naps because of that. But the moment it reaches night the REM periods are gone and you'll need another 90 minutes before you get your REM sleep? I never knew about that, my naps usually last from 3 to 4 hours, anything less and I can't wake up because I'm still too tired. Plus my whole body clock is screwed up, I wonder if it can even tell the difference between morning, afternoon and night.

Edits again: Ultimately I haven't found anything scientific that proves that if you have your full 8 - 9 hours of sleep everyday, you get straight into REM during your naps. I'm not exactly convinced. I understand you can get dreams quickly during naps if you had a few hours short of sleep but if you are well-rested, how is it even possible to get REM straight away when you sleep?

The timing of sleep in humans depends upon a balance between homeostatic sleep propensity, the need for sleep as a function of the amount of time elapsed since the last adequate sleep episode, and circadian rhythms which determine the ideal timing of a correctly structured and restorative sleep episode. The homeostatic pressure to sleep starts growing upon awakening. The circadian signal for wakefulness starts building in the (late) afternoon.
Thus, in many people, there is a dip when the drive for sleep has been building for hours and the drive for wakefulness has not yet started. This is a great time for a nap. The drive for wakefulness intensifies through the evening, making it difficult to get to sleep 2–3 hours before one's usual bedtime when the wake maintenance zone ends.

Just a quick extract on circadian rythm there. We can see that there is a natural dip during the time people take naps. The reason our body goes through all the N-rem stages during normal sleep is because our body has been producing melatonin due to the dim light. Melatonin causes us to go quickly into a dreamless restorative sleep. Since our body knows it has just worked for an entire day, it knows there is a need for deep sleep before REM sleep. The que to start this is a drop in body temperature and increase in melatonin levels.
In the time span of a nap there is little use for deep sleep, also melatonin levels are almost non-existant and our body's temperature is level since we have usually just eaten. These signals tell the brain that it is only having a nap allowing it to go straight to REM since all we want is to sort the mind and not any bodily processes.
I believe it is around 45 mins of nap time before we truly fall into REM sleep, compare this to the nightly time of 80-100 minutes it is quite a bit faster.

Assuming you have chosen a good time to nap, you can try the things listed in my tutorial on how to fall asleep faster.