Revisiting "controlled rest" for pilots

Jet pilot dozes off, co-pilot busy on iPad as Mumbai flight to Brussels plunges 5000 feet over Turkish airspace

In a major scare, a Jet Airways flight from Mumbai to Brussels, carrying around 280 passengers, plunged 5,000 feet while overflying Turkish airspace last week as the commander was asleep and the co- pilot busy with the iPad containing flight information.
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Clearly, the above story is quite scary. Indian regulations seem to allow taking a nap ("controlled rest") upto 40 mins on certain flights over 3 hours.  

I write below to share an efficient yoga technique that I use for rapid recharging myself when I am absolutely terrible  --- either at work, or while driving a car on highway.  Half an hour of practicing this technique gives me the rest I get from 1.5 to 2 hours of sleep.

It is called Pranayama: essentially deep breathing.  There are various versions of it.  In a certain variety, you take slow deep breaths, retain breath and release maintaining a ratio of times of 1:4:2 for these.  Sometimes, when I am not upto it, I just watch my breath. I play a music tune (sometimes mantra tunes) for 30 mins to time it.  In addition to being efficient, it also has the other advantages that you retain your consciousness during the process.

For example, today, I was conscious for the first ten minutes, and then unconsciousness (sleeping) for next ten minutes and then consciousness after that. So I got the benefit of 1.5 hours of sleep from just 10 minutes of sleep.

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A large number of people operate in misson-critical situations; e.g. surgeons, business leaders, programmers, soldiers, pilots etc.   They could try these out these methods for efficient resting.

Lots of books discuss Pranayama and Yoga.  I have found the book Uddavgita to be the best in this context ("perfection").