Volume 5 | Issue 1 | April - May
2011 |
Siesta, My Sweet Siesta
Dr. Sarojini Sahu
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I came to know that the people around the equator prefer midday napping as the excessive temperature in these areas makes them tired, and to regain fresh energy, a short midday rest to their brain and body is essential.
I found the Spanish word siesta is also used in English vocabulary as well as a word for midday napping. In Oriya, my own language, the word for a midday nap is known as bhat-need or rice-sleep. In Chinese they call it xiuxi or wushui. But it does not have any relation with the heat or too much eating at lunch time.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted a research study led by David F. Dinges, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, to measure how effective naps were, tests probing memory, alertness, response time, and other cognitive skills. Volunteers spent days living on one of 18 different sleep schedules, all in a laboratory setting.
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) also conducted a study and funded a team of doctors, led by Alan Hobson, M.D., Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., and colleagues at Harvard University. This study showed a midday nap seemed to reverse information overload. Their study also proved that in some cases, napping could even boost performance to an individual's top levels.
The NIMH team found that our bodies are programmed for two periods of intense sleepiness: in the early morning from 2 am to 4 am, and in the afternoon between 1p.m to 3 p.m. They also concluded that this midday drowsiness occurs even if we skip eating. They wrote, The bottom line is: we should stop feeling guilty about taking that power nap at work.
To determine your best time for napping, you need to discover what your chronotype is. For example, if you wake as early as 6 a.m. and go to sleep around 9 to 10 p.m., you are going to feel a need for your nap need around 1 to 1:30 p.m. If you are an owl, preferring to go to bed late at night and wake around 8 to 9 a.m., you will probably feel drowsy between 2 to 3 p.m.
Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati runs a website at www.swamij.com where he claims Yoga Nidra is more beneficial than a power nap. His website claims that in Yoga Nidra, you leave the waking state, go through the dreaming state and into the deep sleep state, yet you remain fully awake. His website also claims that Yoga Nidra has been known for thousands of years by the sages and yogis.
Of the three states of consciousness of waking, dreaming and deep sleep, as expounded in the Upanishads, particularly the Mandukya Upanishad, Yoga Nidra refers to the conscious awareness of the deep sleep state, referred to as prajna in Mandukya Upanishad.
This is the third of the four levels of consciousness of AUM mantra, relating to the state represented by the M of AUM. The four states are waking, dreaming, sleep, and turiya. The state of Yoga Nidra, conscious deep sleep, is beyond or subtler than the imagery and mental process of the waking and dreaming states.
As I am not that familiar with yoga therapy, I couldn t say how much of the Swamiji s sayings are correct and authentic. And likewise, I am not sure at all if the Metronap machines would be beneficial to their customers or not. But I am here to support my siesta in its original form, beyond its commercial applications.
In our home, all except me are siesta lovers and though I don t nap at noon (because this is the only suitable time for me to engage myself in writing), I am a strong supporter of the siesta as I have very nostalgic memories of siestas from my youth.
In my childhood days, in summer seasons when we were observing the long summer vacation after promoting to the next class, my mother would try to force me to have a nap with her in the afternoon hours, and I was always looking for the time when my mother would start snoozing and I would run to the street with my bicycle to roam aimlessly.
I also have memories of napping in my college days when one of my boring college professors delivered a non-stop lecture on his favourite poet or writer. I often felt sleepy and found it difficult it to keep my eyes open as I pretended to listen to his bogus nonsense speeches very mindfully.
Now, I think if I were a principal of my old college, I would certainly allow the students to take their power nap in their classes during those lecture periods. Metronap might have another market.
Stay tuned (or awake). You can read more after your siesta! Happy dreams.
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Dr. Sarojini Sahu - Born in 1956, Dr Sarojini Sahoo has an MA and PhD degrees in Oriya Literature, and a Bachelor of Law, from Utkal University. She now teaches at a Degree college in Belpahar, Jharsuguda, of Orissa.
A distinguished bilingual South Asian feminist writer, and an associate editor of a feature oriented English journal Indian AGE, she has been conferred with the Orissa Sahitya Academy Award, 1993, the Jhankar Award, 1992, the Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award and the Prajatantra Award.
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