08/03/2026
My therapy clients love it when I prescribe a daily nap because did you know, a twenty minute nap twice a week could be the best thing we can do for our business and our health?
Even a twenty minute nap helps your heart, emotions, your attention and memory and much more. A ninety minute nap can have the benefits of a full night’s sleep!
If need facts to take naps from an indulgence to a valuable part of your working week, here’s some research, from the fabulous Radio 4 programme “Just One Thing” with the late Dr Michael Mosely.
Are you a napper or is it an indulgence you don’t make time for?
My delicious one hour nap just now is why I have the concentration and focus to write this. At 2pm I was having a lull and I was useless!
It takes me half an hour to get back to speed afterwards but then I’m set for a productive rest of my day.
😌A nap can boost your thinking skills according to the University of Berkley. Nappers did better in tests and improved their capacity to learn later that day.
❤The health of your heart benefits from a nap as it’s the only time typically in each twenty four hours your cardiovascular system really calms down and gets a break. Fight and flight is dominant in the wake time but when resting the heart can recover from life’s pressures.
👨🔬Dr Sara Mednick from University of California found a nap gives us better memory, our emotions are more regulated, our attention is increased and we are less sleepy.
😊Anxiety and depression are better regulated when we are not sleep deprived and a nap can be a powerful habit just a couple of times a week.
In an Indian study, those who slept only five and a half hours a night got benefits from a thirty minute daytime nap that they didn’t get when they had an extra thirty minutes at night.
I know some find they are sleepier or groggy after a nap but it’s found that most of those studied benefitted.
Sometimes when we try something new, we create a powerful new habit to replace the old “pushing through” that we have been taught is the right way to work.
With a longer nap, of 60 -90 minutes, we enter REM sleep which shuts our frontal thinking lobe of the brain down for a while and helps us to process and connect new experiences.
It also helps us process what we have just done earlier in the day.
That’s why I’m now ready to share my learning from this morning, I feel I’ve absorbed it while my brain had a rather delicious break.
Do tell! Are you a napper? Is it something you build into your self-employed lifestyle? What does it do for you?
And I still treat a few clients for massage, Bowen therapy and reflexology in Leigh-on-sea so do message or phone me if you would like to see if I can help you! 07967 121167
