A Surprising Reason Why Lying Down and Closing Your Eyes for 20 Minutes Might be the Best Productivity Tool of All
Author: Benita Jackson, PhD MPH
I have seen the United Nations reports about the climate crisis. And I wonder, what possibly can I do in this critical next decade or so that is calling for decisive action? On my campus we have students, staff, faculty who strongly identify as activists—and so many activists on campus and beyond are saddled with fear, sadness, and anger, simply exhausted.
Part of my passion project is how we can support people to rest better. So they have the resources for themselves to go out and do the things that they want to in the world, and that the world sorely needs.
It’s not just self-identifying activists who are tired. People more generally are tired and even burned out for so many different reasons, whether it’s taking care of families, working multiple jobs, or just living in the current world and all the different stressors in the current period.
In many cultures, especially those in industrialized nations, we don’t have a lot of external permissions and supports in the course of daily life to pause for ourselves, even though we know we’re supposed to take care of ourselves. For most of us, we need to be intentional about setting up these structures, that work for the particular seasons of our life situation.
My scholarship as a health psychology professor is about how our thoughts, feelings, and identities affect our physical, mental, and societal well-being. I think a lot about the importance of our perspective and how perspective transforms our experiences, even very literally embedding them “under the skin.”
As academics, how do we cross the various finish lines in our career path—for example completing a graduate program, landing a post-doc, securing a job, moving through the academic system in a way that aligns with our values and purpose, where we can most effectively and I daresay joyfully contribute—while being pleased and ready for the next chapter, instead of simply falling down from sheer exhaustion?
Seeing something as a challenge versus seeing something as a threat is a really different signature in your body physiologically. Let’s take the example of giving a lecture, a core part of the daily life for many of us academics. You might be afraid of it, even if you’ve done it many times. That’s natural. But if you tell yourself a new story, and come to view it as an interesting challenge compared to as something that is wholly threatening, your body is going to respond differently. Your bodyguard is a little bit less in the way when you can view the task at hand as an interesting challenge.
In deeply studying the power of perspective I have been intrigued by Jennifer Dumpert’s work. Her 2019 book is called Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep and in it she writes, “I think that the main reason liminal dreaming opens up visionary possibilities and helps unlock problems is because different modes of thought come together, a kind of two-for-one deal. Most of the time you spend in liminal dream states, you retain at least some semblance of your waking self. The logical linear and focus part of your mind remains active to varying degrees. But you’re also dreaming, adrift among intuitive, visual, emotional thought processes and associations.” (p. 31).
Basically, in this state called hypnagogia, your mind is still awake, but you are resetting your physiology to be more primed and open to tapping into your deep well of creativity.
Being a world changer in whatever domain that is meaningful to you is inherently a creative endeavor. We put ideas and perspectives together to create something new—new coalitions, policies, social structure, actions. I’ve wondered if the practice of getting into states of liminal consciousness can be used not only because they feel great—most people report feeling deeply refreshed, and more open-hearted and empathic—but also because they can allow us to come up with creative solutions to our lives’ and worlds’ most pressing challenges.
We come into hypnagogia right before falling asleep, but there are simple intentional practices that allow us to get into this state. One of them is called yoga nidra, which involves lying down for about 20 minutes with eyes closed, and listening to a carefully-tailored audio recording that allows withdrawal of most senses to go into an internal state, but while still being awake. The body becomes relaxed, and in so doing, the mind can better access stores of creativity that our bodyguard usually keeps inaccessible.
This can be a boon to any of us who do creative work. I am intrigued about the creative possibilities and flipping the idea of what it means to be productive—instead of pushing through the to-do list, sometimes the better solution in the long-run can come from lying down for a few minutes to invite a fresh perspective to a thorny challenge you’ve been struggling to handle. We all have had the experience of our mind getting a break (from a shower, or a walk, or a chat with a friend) only to come back with a better way to approach our task at hand. This is why social media often ends up being so appealing because it can feel like the mindless scrolling affords us some respite. But that ends up not offering nothing near the same degree of potent recharging benefit that something like a truly hypnogogic state would.
You don’t have to do this perfectly or train for years to benefit. As my mentor and colleague Karen Brody says, it’s time to chuck perfect. She is a master teacher of easy, doable, health-promoting ways to enter into hypnagogic states for deepening personal creativity and larger world change. I have studied with her to start to figure out how we as academics can learn from these practices. She and I look forward to introducing those who want to learn more about these ideas in our upcoming NCFDD webinar.
Regardless if you join us, I invite you to ask yourself: what’s the next right imperfect action you can take in your life? Sleep on it—or just lie for 20 minutes with your eyes closed—and see what thought, feeling, or impression comes to you in response. The world needs you better rested, and more importantly, you need you better rested!