The twenty-minute power nap has been talked about for years, but napping doesn’t have to be so confined. You can gain a lot of benefits from as little as five minutes, and as much as two or more hours (but, please, no more than three). As mentioned earlier, if you can achieve full cycle of sleep through slow-wave, or deep, sleep, you stand to the most out of a mid-day snoozes.

If you’ve tried to nap in the past and you’ve awakened grog feeling worse off than beforehand, this is most likely because haven’t timed it right and you’ve awakened in the middle of that wave sleep stage. During this stage, your brain’s activity is polar o to how it functions while you’re awake. At this stage, you’ve corn tuned out the external world and your entire brain rhythm synchronize into a slow, uniform pattern instead of multitasking and operating many frequencies.

If you suddenly come out of slow-wave sleep forces your brain to desynchronize and fire off high-frequency electrical activity. Until your brain catches up to the fact you’re actually you’ll feel slow, sleepy, and probably cranky, too. Your limbs will heavyweights, your eyes won’t focus well, you’ll have a hard time sounding articulate, and your mind will feel left behind. A quick way to slap your brain into wakeful shape is to do something physical, listen to stimulating music, or splash cold water on your face.

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