We all sleep at night, and hopefully most of us wake up refreshed. When we look back at yesterday, suddenly all of those worries seem to have answers or at least worry us a little less. While you were sleeping, your brain helped bridge certain connections and helped figure out some solutions that you may not have thought of.

I haven’t done any research for this, so this is all coming out of my memory, but some really famous people in history used the Power of Sleep to Boost Productivity as well as find the unknown answers to certain questions. Thomas Edison and if I’m not mistaken Ben Franklin were guilty of taking many naps throughout the day, because they knew how much it would help them immediately.

There was a study done that two groups of people were taught information, and were tested on their recollection of the information several hours later. The only difference being that one of the groups got to take a nap between the learning and the testing. The results; The Napping group had scores of TEN TIMES that of the other group. 10 Times. That result is gigantic, and only further supports the evidence that napping can help you.

So there are five stages of sleep. Off hand I really don’t remember them, but the one that does stand out is REM Sleep. This stands for Rapid Eye Movement, and is the time when your brain goes into the dream state. For your naps to help you, you need to go into the REM State. In the test above, all of the participants who napped went into the REM State, and that is the key to making your time spent napping valuable.

So next time you feel like taking a nap, don’t call yourself lazy, rather call it a productive investment of time. Just make sure that you have a dream while you are sleeping, and it will all be worth it.

Since this article is a little short, I am going to ramble on about 2 more things that you should definitely look into. The first being Lucid Dreaming. Have you ever wanted to fly, go through walls, move things with your mind, hang out with celebrities, or basically do anything else your mind can think of. Now have you ever been in a dream when you knew that you were dreaming? If you have good, you are part of the way there, but if you haven’t there are a few easy steps you can take.

Always be on the look out for something that doesn’t obey the laws of gravity or some weird situation that wouldn’t make sense in the real world. There was just an American Dad episode where the son knew he was lucid dreaming because of a red ball bouncing. Feel free to check that out too. When I was in college, I took a lot of random classes, one of them being “States of Consciousness.” This class was very interesting mainly for the fact that we learned all about weird mind states caused by drugs, lack of sleep, and many more cool subjects. We also covered lucid dreaming.

The teacher was probably the closest I have ever come to a real life “hippie,” but still, he was a fantastic guy. He taught us to draw a big letter on your palm, and constantly look at your hand many times throughout the day. When you see the letter, ask yourself if this is a dream. By doing this many times, if you look at your hands when you are actually in a dream you will automatically know you are dreaming. It doesn’t matter if the letter is there or not, because after the repetition you will be used to asking yourself if you are in a dream.

The first time you catch yourself being in a dream, rub your hands together while looking at them. From this point it is easy to wake up or to slip right back into your unconscious dreaming. By rubbing your hands together you will be able to keep reminding yourself where you are, and will be able to stay in the lucid state for longer.

Now for the Second ramble on, this will be a little bit shorter, and goes perfectly well with the sleeping topic. I looked around for what it was called, but couldn’t find it anywhere. It’s something like “somnambulist state (maybe hypno…).” Although when I type that in, it pops up with sleep walking. Some famous inventor used this technique also. We will call it the “SPOON” Technique.

When you ever fall asleep at night, do you ever get crazy ideas or hallucinate right before you actually are asleep. This is the state that you are aiming for. I remember when I would fall into this state and then be jostled suddenly, I would be talking of the most random things ever. Anything from fighter jets to farm animals, but sometimes crazy business ideas that sounded like they would work.

How do you get this state to work for you??? This is where the spoon comes in. When you are asleep, you have no control over your muscles, and that disappears right after you pass the “state.” To wake yourself up right when you are about to cross over, it is recommended that you hold a spoon vertically in your hand between your thumb and forefinger as your arm lays by your side. This way when your muscles give way, you will drop the spoon and it will fall to the floor, and ideally wake you up.

When you get woken up, you will still have all of those ideas in your mind, and just have a pen and paper ready to record them for further thought.

I know this article rambled about a few different things, but I promise there is some good information. So good luck trying it all, and let me know in the comments below how it all worked out. Thanks.



Source by Ryan England

By mike