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Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

My napping routine is to lay down, tell Siri to set a timer for 25 minutes, tense all the muscles in my body for 10-15 seconds, the relax every muscle and imagine black nothingness, letting go of all other thoughts for just a few seconds. 9 out of 10 times, the next thing I hear is my alarm going off, and myself saying "fuuuuck!" because I feel like I had just drifted off and I want to keep sleeping. But I force myself to get up and go on with my day because if I nap longer I'll end up super groggy the rest of the day and have trouble sleeping at night. For me, 18-24 minutes napping is the sweet spot.

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What you are doing is called yoganidra, popularly known as guided meditation. You prepare your body, your mind, relax all your muscles, determine what this session is about(relaxing), visualize something that helps you not get distracted and the next thing you know is you are deep into nothingness.

And its smart to not stretch it beyond 20-25mins, our single sleep cycle generally is between 90-120mins, of which the first 20-25mins is the a first stages of non-REM sleep(this gets shorter after the first sleep cycle in a way) in which our body is relaxing but our mind relaxing but fairly active. This is light sleep. Beyond this stage we slowly enter into deep sleep stages in which if you wake up you feel very groggy, if you find yourself waking up feeling groggy, its better to finish the complete sleep cycle of ~90mins, like a complete sleep cycles.

It's neither guided nor a meditation. It's a physical trick to make my body fall asleep.

Those things are not mutually exclusive.

Doesn't matter, you achieve meditative state guided by your actions. It doesn't need to be external nor is there a strict guideline to be in the state of meditation.

That's a nice routine, but the alarm going off sounds to me like pulling out the power cable while the hard drive is defragmenting or while the OS is applying updates.

Well done sir, this is a well crafted analogy

all depends on the alarm. I took the time to find a gentle one and it's probably why I nap a lot more often now. There's still the danger of it putting my day to a dead stop but quite often it feels like a net good. Also sleep on the floor to help prevent a deep sleep

I heard soldiers use a similar technique to be able to sleep while in stressdul situations (e.g. during a siege) I try it as well and while i havent got it down as well as you have it works well for me 80% of the time

>if I nap longer I'll end up super groggy the rest of the day

this basically comes down to human sleep cycle, if you get woken up during deep sleep you will feel like shit. So you either have to go for a short nap like you are doing or around 90 minutes

How can you achieve that? I just can't nap, it takes me around an hour to fall asleep.

You don't need to actually fall asleep for a nap to be beneficial. I like to lay on the floor, feet up, and alarm set. 10-15 minutes and I feel completely refreshed.

This isn't a replacement for actual sleep, but I've never been a napper and the above I found super useful for me.

I second that, even closing the eyes for 10–15 min feels refreshing. Learned that when our kid was younger.

I literally described how I achieve it. I don't "try to fall asleep", that never works.

I used to do it in army. Just roughly 20mins of nap and warmth can really get you back on the feet, just enough boost to survive the day. And after some time you don't even need to set the alarm, you just wake up, brain learns the routine.

I thought I was alone doing this "body tensioning" technique.

That sounds a bit similar to progressive muscle relaxation[1], where one goes through different muscle groups and tenses, then relaxes them one after the other.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation

I like this guided NSDR session with Andrew Huberman. He pulls you out after 10 minutes in a nice way that gently reintroduces your CNS to reality.

https://youtu.be/AKGrmY8OSHM

Black nothingness doesn't work for me, I think of loud ocean waves bashing against rocks.

I listen to my tinnitus.

Same. Self hosted white noise. Forever.

11.5khz so not as white noisy as I'd like. Got turned up to 11 last month, reshuffling my life deck. Learning awesome new coping skills and burning thru todo lists.

The ideal time to nap is 18-25 minutes as you said, but I find it hard to fall asleep at the "right" time. So it's always a trouble to set the alarm for me.

Jealous - as someone with Insomnia I will never be able to do this.

Obviously this may or may not work for you. What worked for me is finally letting of this thought that I can’t sleep. Started keeping the devices and distraction away and just trying to sleep, by lying down and closing my eyes and doing nothing else. Even if thoughts kept hitting I just kept in bed, eyes closed. Kept at it. Started improving. Now it’s much better. Again, this may not work for you. Just thought I’ll share.

But even if I couldn’t sleep and sometimes I still can’t - at least now I have stopped worrying when I can’t sleep. It relaxes me a lot.

Although I wouldn't qualify it as insomnia, I usually have troubles sleeping due to racing and intrusive thoughts. One thing that worked is counting backwards from 40; whenever my mind drifts, I start from 40 again. Eventually, it (or I) succeeds.

Yup very similar to you. 15 minute Power Nap and feel super good a few minutes after.

Perfect to do anywhere but not in the office. Now that RTO is plasteted all over

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