Photo by Julie Johnson on Unsplash

The said it was bad. They were wrong.

My guilty secret: I take a nap after lunch every day, and I’ve been doing it since my late 20s. Why guilty? Napping has always had this faint whiff of wrongness, something to do with naps being the exclusive province of geezers, folks who are so used up that they don’t have the juice to get through the day. But there was nothing vague about the words of my spiritual teacher. In typical terse take-no-prisoners style, he said, “Naps are suicide.”

I heard these words a few years after the nap habit had become entrenched. I was an obedient disciple, but my nap was dear to me. And these words came to me second-hand, from the teacher’s wife. So I told myself his advice was only for her, though I knew better. Still, I admitted this dirty habit to no one aside from my own wife.

The cult eventually fell apart, and I was free. Though he hadn’t put it quite so pungently, my teacher was down on therapy. Though I’d been on a few rough psychological rides during my time in the group, I never once saw a shrink.

Soon as I was out of the cult I saw a skilled therapist  to help me deal with the fallout from twenty years inside what felt in retrospect like a prison. When I finally trusted this shrink enough I confessed my nap habit. Her words were almost as harsh as my teacher’s. She said,  “Stop doing it. Naps are a way of covering up depression.” I stopped.

For the better part of a year I gave up my nap. Now lest I give the impression that I’m some lazy-assed slackabed, I must mention that I’m a morning person who often got to work composing by six am and slammed away at piano and synthesizers with barely a break until noon. After nap time I made phone calls, but often socked in a few more hours of composing before dinner.

Without my nap, afternoons became excruciating. I don’t know that I’d been particularly depressed before, but by three every afternoon I was. I could phone in my phone calls, so to speak, with my voice on autopilot. But music just wasn’t happening. Making that quantum leap from nothing to something—the essence of creativity—requires a lot of positive energy. When eyelids are drooping and the couch across your recording studio is beckoning with sweet lullabies, nothing remains nothing.

After a year or so I started napping again. Afternoons were more productive, not to speak of more pleasant. My life was better. I didn’t tell the shrink.

Years passed and the shrink retired. I traveled to France and Italy where businesses closed in the middle of the day for lunch and, I presumed, a nap. Nobody’d shamed these populations out of their siestas. As I returned to those countries over the years I saw how Americanization was steadily eroding those midday breaks.

Then I started seeing articles, here, here, and here suggesting that my napping instinct hadn’t been wrong. This article is the best, with practical advice on how and when to nap.

I’ve been working on my nap for forty straight years, seeking midday perfection. Here are a few personal tips:

1. I lunch at noon. I head right for the bed and start by getting really physically comfortable, then occupy my mind with something simple and engaging that has nothing to do with work, and that isn’t upsetting (that means no browsing the news.) I use one of the New York Times math puzzles. I’ve graduated from Sudoko to Ken Ken. It sweeps my mind free of the hassles and worries of the morning.
2. Soon as I’m done with the puzzle I place a pillow over my eyes and consciously relax. Sometimes I count breaths Vispassana mediation style.
3. I try not to sleep more than ½ an hour, unless I’m jet lagged, utterly sleep deprived or sick. Twenty minutes is even better.
4. Ironically, now that I’m of proper age to nap (if there is one—some folks will still be scowling at your nap when you’re 90 and on your deathbed) more middays than not, I don’t sleep. It doesn’t matter, long as I
5. Soon as I wake I get right up and have a cup of tea. Within minutes I’m fresh, ready to face the afternoon.

If you’re retired or one of the 10% of Americans who are self-employed, you might want to start working one your own perfect nap. If you’re reading this at the office, I’m truly sorry. Maybe you can get the boss to read this? Maybe you can go out to your car, or sneak off into a closet…I’m not kidding. I’ve been resourceful over the years. I’ve napped in parked cars, on trains, on park benches and even once on the ground in front of the gates of the Sforza Castle in Milan.

So, judge me if you must —if you’re one of those literally upright people who soldier on through the day, wide awake, taking life by the horns. Or join me if you want. It’s just a nap.

Only I can’t help seeing something deeper here. (It must be a disease in the DSM-5, the shrink’s diagnostic Bible, this constant searching for deeper meaning in the most trivial of things.) That deeper thing is the realization at this late age that I’ve spent my life looking up to others for answers. Looking to parents and teachers, holy books and spiritual teachers. Doctors and shrinks and wise friends. Expecting them to tell me what to do, to give me a map for my journey through this time, the instruction manual for how to live this life.

And while others can provide valuable clues, and sometimes at the right moment can nudge me in a new, better direction, it’s ultimately up to me.

When I was thirty an inner voice told me naps were good for me.  But I was too busy listening to those voices outside—and their echoes inside—to hear the truth.

I have more deep thoughts, but it’s time for lunch. Then my nap.