[taeric]

Obviously YMMV, but I've found having an exhausted body works wonders for falling to sleep. So, don't just exercise, do something physically tough that drains you. If you have to do that in the form of running/jogging/biking, fine. But you can also tend a garden. Clean the house. Organize something. Lots of things that are physically demanding.

I'm also skeptical of the advice to not nap. I'd go so far as to say that if you are avoiding naps, you are effectively teaching your body to avoid sleep. Don't do that. Try to move napping, sure, but don't be shocked if eliminating it has bad effects.

[bitshiftfaced]

Napping reduces sleep pressure, making it more difficult to fall asleep at bedtime.

[taeric]

That is certainly a view, there. Resisting sleep also teaches your body to resist sleep...

That is, I don't think it is cut and dried. I can concede that napping too often is bad. I can also think that napping is not necessarily bad.

[bitshiftfaced]

A good example might be to look at sleep consultants and books about sleep training infants and small children. What they will tell you is that a baby can learn to go to sleep for bedtime independently, and they can learn to take naps independently, but learning one doesn't mean they learn the other. You have to do it for both naps and bedtime. Babies "know" when a nap is a nap, and when nighttime sleep is nighttime sleep. That is to say, humans are diurnal.

Also keep in mind the context of the article. We're talking about insomnia. You're invoking the idea of behavioral habits ("teaches your body)". In fact, the recommendation for not napping comes from behaviorists, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. I imagine that the idea is to do things that maximize the chance that you actually get the behavior you're aiming for and building on that (maximizing sleep pressure felt during bedtime).

I don't think there's anything wrong with napping for someone who doesn't suffer from insomnia.

[taeric]

I have probably an unhealthy level of skepticism that has mostly been fine for me. But, I am wary of a ton of the dialog around sleep that has pervaded everywhere. Raising several children, and never having an alarm clock in the house, a lot of what I've been exposed to in the learnings has been... susp. Obviously, YMMV, and I do NOT think they are liars or frauds.

My specific confusion on advising folks to skip naps is that I did not think that was a thing insomniacs even had to worry about. My clearly outdated model of insomnia was people that have trouble sleeping. Period. This did not include people that have shifted their sleep to the day, as that advice seems to imply to me. (That is, I thought insomnia wasn't "can't sleep at night," but "can't sleep." Appears the definition I learned was wrong, or we have expanded it since i learned it. (Or several other possibilities, of course.))