Even before I attended the retreat where I learned about Daoist napping, I had flirted with another sort of napping—high-tech napping using the MotionX Sleep app for iPhones.
Used during the night, Motion X monitors your movement so that it knows when you’ve fallen asleep and when you’re cycling from light sleep into deep sleep and back again. It triggers your phone’s alarm to wake you in the morning within the time window you’ve specified but while you’re in light sleep, so that you don’t get out of bed with that risen-from-the-dead feeling. (It also calculates things like your “sleep efficiency,” which I find ironic since I always thought sleep was when you didn’t have to worry about being efficient.)
I bought the Motion X Sleep app to find out if I might have sleep apnea, but I discovered it had a feature I didn’t expect—the Power Nap!
If you napped with the app, your iPhone’s alarm would wake you prior to the first time you’d enter deep sleep. By default this would be 26.5 minutes after you’d fallen asleep, although as the app got to know your sleep habits, it would adjust the time.
I slept with the app for two nights and one Power Nap. I was fascinated. Continue reading