Embrace the Body Only Nap
Napping isn't all about losing consciousness
It’s hard to believe that we’re almost half a year into TND — some new friends, nearly 150 posts, approaching 40000 words, and seemingly infinite conversations! We’ve also found a lot of folks accepting our offers (and even themselves offering) to write guest posts.
To that end, I’m proud and excited to introduce Featured Guest Friday, inspired in large part by and his series on napping and entrepreneurship, which somehow happened to occur on a series of Fridays. It’s not just a clever name: the plan is to include a guest post every Friday, whether by a familiar face or someone you haven’t met yet.
We’ve already got another guest post lined up for next Friday from a new contributor (whose name that may sound familiar), and we’re open to submissions from anyone who cares to get their napping or napping-adjacent content out there!
In the meantime, enjoy this post from your friend and mine, , with a post that in many ways happens to address somewhat of a rhetorical question I posed mere days ago!
As previously mentioned, there was an epic journey last week that led to many well-earned and well-enjoyed naps. During one of these naps, I couldn’t turn off my mind, but once I found a comfortable position, it was almost as if I couldn’t move my body. Sure, I knew I could move if I wanted to, but also, it felt like any movement whatsoever would interrupt the rest my body was getting. This quasi-sleep paralysis felt very good and quite relaxing, so I embraced it and meditated to pass the time as my body recovered a bit from the previous two days of concert-going and climbing the Red Rocks stairs.
While lying there, I realized it was a rare “Body Only” nap. There was no doubt that my body was asleep – that bed was fully supporting my physical being and the feeling of sleep paralysis was quite real. But my mind wasn’t tired at all since I had slept in that morning and gotten a really good night’s sleep. After the initial frustration of not losing consciousness faded, I embraced the Body Only nap and had a really nice meditation session which ended just a few moments before the alarm went off. I allowed myself to move again and found that the Body Only nap served me well – I felt refreshed and ready for the rest of the day’s activities.