This is probably the biggest mistake some people make when napping, and it is the very reason why some of you have problems sleeping at night. By definition a nap is short, as opposed to a full night of sleep. O.K., now do you remember when we talked about bed associations? Let me refresh your memory; we said that your brain needs to associate the bed to sleep; there needs to be a special physiological response occurring in your body as soon as you think about going to bed and as soon as you lie in it.

The mistake people make when napping in bed is that they train their brain to associate the bed with a short sleeping session (nap), and when comes the time to sleep at night, their body automatically thinks, they are going to take a nap and they end up waking up. Of course this doesn’t happen in a day; it takes a while for the brain to create the association, but if repeated enough, you will unknowingly create your own sleep problem and as you take your daily nap in bed, you are re-enforcing the erroneous message.

Or even worse; if the bed is already associated with night time sleep, you may find yourself taking too long of a nap, which is totally the opposite of what napping should be. I am not going to tell you all the places where you can take your nap, because besides behind the wheel or a few other inappropriate locations you could virtually nap anywhere, except for your bed of course. As a general rule, if it’s comfortable and quiet enough, then it’s somewhere you can nap.

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Tags: Sleep, Nap