One of biggest questions I get asked all time is “Are naps good for you? Or bad? I've heard both sides of story.” I'd like to settle this argument once and for all right here, and reveal to you how you can properly manage your sleep to create an abundance of energy in your life, with LESS sleep.

Yes, naps are VERY good for you, IF you understand how sleep system works, and you know how to nap PROPERLY.

In my “Powerful Sleep” course I teach people how to properly understand their sleep system, circadian rhythm, light exposure, and how it affects their inner sleep system. While we can't get in this article, here's what is true:

Most people don't realize that sleep is actually quite a complex and fascinating inner system. When we're sleeping, we're not just dead zombies off in an unknown universe. Your inner sleep system is a mechanism which follows specific time periods and stages to energize your body.

So how do you nap properly?

You take what are commonly referred to as “Power Naps”, or what I usually refer to as “Stage 2 limited naps.”

You see, when you sleep you go through what are called “sleep stages”, there are 5 stages in total. The first two stages, Stage 1 and 2 are your “Light Sleep”. It's during this stage that we sleep “lightly”, we are easily wakable, and our circadian rhythm isn't altered enough to create a disturbance in sleep system.

The Energizing effects of Stage 1 and 2 sleeps are very beneficial, just 10 minutes of sleeping in these stages can restore your energy to point where you feel as if you slept for 8 hours.

However, why do most people do more HARM than GOOD to themselves by napping?

A lot of people feel "tired", and blame it on getting not enough sleep, or other external factors. Basically, fact that they're tired is always "out of control." What they don't know is that there's a reason for feeling "tired", and that there's a simple method to change "tired" to "energized" in a heartbeat....

Most of us feel tired during one of four: 1) After waking up in morning. 2) After intense physical activity, or long hours of work. 3) After sitting in one place for a long period of time. 4) During evening, or in late evening hours.

What do all four of those have in common? There's one very common process that happens in our bodies in all four cases. During all of these we all experience very similar"symptoms" of tiredness. These include yawning, rubbing our eyes, feeling sllooowww, and having urge to just get into bed and sleep.

Why Do We Get These "symptoms?" Our bodies have a natural temperature rhythm. Our body temperature rises when we are awake, and promotes feelings of alertness. Our body temperature also falls when we're sleeping, and promotes feelings of drowsiness, and a desire to sleep.

The natural DROP of body temperature in our bodies is a CUE for our body to produce feelings of tiredness, drowsiness, and strong urge to sleep. I call this "natural sleep response". When we're exercising, or putting excessive physical demand on our body, our body temperature RISES rapidly, however when you END physical activity, there is a RAPID body temperature DROP until your body temperature regulates sometime after. It's during this DROP that most of us think there's no other way out but to sleep, and we usually jump into bed and do just that.

The feeling of body temperature drop after long hours of work is usually mistaken by us as a deep need for sleep. In reality, we don't need to sleep, we just need to "cool down". Allow me to give you a personal example:

As a kid I used to work at a FULL SERVE gas station for 8-9 hours in a row. This meant I had to be on my feet running around pumping gas for 8-9 hours with one 10 minute break. It was hell! Even when I had early morning shift I would come home and feel TOTALLY DRAINED and TIRED, I usually fell asleep and slept till evening.