Lunchtime Vision Anyone?

I usually break for lunch around noon after a morning of depth psychotherapy. There’s time to quietly read, reflect, and have a period of rest and meditation. Not infrequently, a vision surfaces. In a liminal state, my brain downshifts from beta waves to alpha and theta, images and symbols from the psyche emerge.

University of Pennsylvania research in sleep and chronobiology reports, "Humans are biologically programmed to sleep at night, and to take a nap in the midafternoon, though scientists aren’t sure why. “There is no melatonin triggering the sleep, it just seems to be this harmonic phenomenon,” Dr. Dinges says. The consensus among his colleagues, he says, is that human civilization evolved mostly in equatorial climates, where it got very hot later in the day, and napping during the extreme heat optimized work performance. "(A Window of Opportunity WSJ 9.1.9.17)

Without a regular time for an afternoon rest and meditation, I’m not quite myself. To take the descent into the unconscious, simply put—to nap, permits not only physical replenishment but psychic healing and balancing. When we have a vision, it’s different than a dream during sleep. It’s a single image or scene that informs, inspires, and helps set us right for the rest of the day.