Nikki McKee , travel agent

“Most days I get up around 4 am so between 11am and 12 pm I find myself getting tired. Fighting it is painful and I much prefer to surrender to it and take myself off for a nap. I don’t always wait until my head starts nodding off by itself, I pre-empt it and having a nap is part of my daily rhythm in my work day.

I am blessed to live next door to my workplace so I actually come home for a nap and lie on my massage table. Generally I nap for around 30 minutes each day. I prefer the massage table to the bed as it has a different quality and if I nap in bed I end up sleeping for much longer and wake up tired. In the past when it wasn’t easy to come home I would either have a cushion I would rest my head on at my desk or, if appropriate, I would lay out a little mat I had with a sheepskin rug and blanket and nap on my office floor.

As I begin to feel tired in the middle of the day, the quality of my work begins to drop. I can often want to rush through things and I can go into drive. Sometimes the opposite happens and I just want to check out and begin day dreaming or wanting to scroll through Facebook.

Once I’ve had my nap I come back refreshed and awake and am able to give my fullness to what needs to be done. I’m more in a state of flow with what needs to be done as well, instead of fighting and resisting my body and my work.

It has taken a while for me to stop resisting the fact that I get sleepy in the middle of the day. Years ago I would have had a coffee to mask how tired I was but it was always a mask and in truth did nothing to support me or my body. In the past I’ve thought that there was something wrong with me and I would get quite a few comments on my napping. But it works for me, it feels very loving to care for myself in this way and then I’m back in full for the rest of the day with a spring in my step.