Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE

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National Siesta Day, 2007

It is now that time of year again when my focus of attention must be put on preparing for National Siesta Day, on Wednesday 11 July 2007. If you have been following my blogs for as long as a year, firstly please allow me to apologize for anything and all things that I should apologize for, and secondly to let me refer to previous blogs that announced the success of the UK's first National Siesta Day in 2006.

Do you ever take a nap? Do you ever feel slightly drowsy shortly after lunch? If so, then please allow me to congratulate you on being quite normal, and if you do not, then let me offer you my entire admiration, as a drop in energy levels and sense of fatigue happens to almost everyone, about 8 hours after rising. You might like to do a quick calculation to see if this matches with your own experience.

It was a year ago after I'd had my usual nap at lunch time, that in discussion with a number of people I found that although many would love to have a nap, their work situation prevents them from doing so; it would be frowned upon by their boss, there are no facilities, they would be seen as a wimp or weakling. "It's just not done in Britain!" Well let me assure you that there is plenty of evidence to show that we can all benefit from a short nap and it's such a shame if we are prevented from doing so, particularly if we feel the need. I have had a daily nap for over 15 years. So I decided there and then to set up a National Siesta Day in the UK and it happened on June 28th 2006 resulting in a great many radio and TV interviews as well as press. If you didn't hear about it, don't worry; it is estimated that around 15 million people either heard or read about it at the time, so maybe you were one of those others! I also set up Siesta Awareness, a site for information about National Siesta Day, and relevant research, history and facts about having a nap.

Having a regular 10-20 minute nap as part of a lunch break has been shown to be extremely beneficial to our health, well being and performance. Recent research from the sleep labs at Harvard University and University of Athens show that a regular nap can reduce the risk of heart disease by 34%. Research from NASA the space agency shows that a short nap can increase your alertness by 100% and your productivity by over 30%. These are big numbers and not to be dismissed too quickly.

The research shows that if we were to have a nap, we can reduce the risk of accidents on the road and at work, increase our productivity, increase sales, creativity and idea planning, negotiate better, communicate better and generally be healthier to live a longer life. .....not bad for the simple nap.

The ideal nap is around 10-20 minutes long. It's not the 'Spanish Style' siesta that can go on for several hours, but a quick restorative nap. An important point is that we should not sleep beyond 30 minutes because we would then enter third stage of sleep and we will feel groggy aferwards. Keep it to 20 minutes maximum and use a mobile phone alarm or timer.

It's my understanding that we are the only species of mammal on earth that tries to go through an entire 24 hour period with only one session of sleep? All other mammals nap regularly through the day. So why shouldn't we? Productivity, sales, global economy and communication that's why. It comes down to money....time means money.

But all those bosses who believe that they are avoiding waste of money by preventing their staff from having a nap, should consider the up-side if they do...more sales, more creativity, more profit, better communication, happier staff.

The BBC contacted me earlier on in the year, asking me if I would be willing to do a television documentary about National Siesta Day and the benefits of the siesta or short nap. It was all planned and finance put in place and scheduled to go out on BBC1 at the time of NSD, but their schedules had to be revised owing to the likely extended news coverage of on the departure from office of our Prime Minister later this month, and a different slot couldn't be found. So it's been cancelled for the time being. But I have hopes of a documentary for next year's event.

So with my practice for the Alexander Technique busy as ever and often starting with my first clients around 7.00am, I now need to find time for the marketing and PR of National Siesta Day. The press release needs finishing and sent out to around 400 news desks around the country within the next couple of weeks.

National Siesta Day is a non-profit making awareness campaign, the sole function of which is to draw people's awareness to the benefits of having a nap and to encourage everyone to do so. National Siesta Day is the day when we can do so, without fear of criticism. We're changing culture in Britain to adopt the nap as a way of life. And why am I doing this, you may ask? IBecause I feel that it needs to be done. The communication of health and well being issues are what I do with teaching the Alexander Technique for posture health, and this blog is also about that and more....it's about being healthy, happy and successful. We can all probably do more to help ourselves.

So with such a lot to do, I guess I'd better get on with it! I'll keep you posted on progress.

:-)

Posted by Noël on June 4, 2007 10:30 AM | Permalink