Sleep Patterns

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Swami Nathan
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Source: Hack Your Brain: Polyphasic Sleep
Is your sleeping pattern irregular ( or rather unconventional)? Want to sleep less?
Here is one of the greatest sleep hack...
Scientists really dont know much about our sleeping patterns, which is a shame
because we spend about a third of our lives sleeping. There is no defined biological
reason why we sleep so much. In fact, you could go so far as to say its a major
disadvantage in our evolutionary process.
Imagine how much more you could accomplish in your life by sleeping less.
You may know that sleep is divided into five stages. Polyphasic sleep concentrates
on the fifth and most important stage of sleep, rapid eye movement (REM.) This is
the most beneficial stage of sleep; it is when the brain is most active and is when
dreaming occurs. REM is the only stage of sleep that is actually required to survive
and function normally. The interesting part of all this is that you only spend 1 to 2
hours in this stage of sleep every night. The other 6 or so hours spent asleep every
night are seemingly wasted.
Polyphasic sleep cycles basically cut out the other useless phases, giving you an
additional 4 to 6 hours of time awake.
The trick involves tricking your brain into immediately entering the REM stage of
sleep, skipping the other four. Everyone has experienced this at some point in
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1 of 8 4/18/2014 12:34 AM
up on lost REM sleep. The premise of polyphasic sleep then, is to train your body to
enter REM sleep at multiple set times during the day with short 20 minute naps. If you
are a fan of lucid dreaming , you will enjoy this even more because you will pretty
much automatically become lucid while you sleep, without trying, multiple times per
day.
There are six different ways to accomplish this, which I will outline below.
Monophasic Sleep
This is the most common way that almost everyone sleeps. However, it is completely
unnecessary and only popular because you have been raised to sleep this way and
are now conditioned to it. It involves sleeping 8 hours, with 2 hours of total REM
sleep.
Polyphasic Sleep Cycles
This is where the fun starts. There are five commonly accepted polyphasic
sleeping cycles, and none is better than the other.
What you need to do is pick what works best with your schedule. The Uberman, for
example, would not work for a 9-5 worker. The siesta might be more effective in that
case. The five different cycles are listed in order of difficulty, with the Siesta being the
easiest, and the Uberman being the hardest.
The Siesta
This sleep cycle is actually pretty common around the world in warmer countries such
as Latin America, where the temperature is so hot during the middle of the day that
people retire to take a short nap after lunch. It involves 6 hours of core sleep and one
short 20-30 minute nap. You will find in these countries that most shops close during
the early afternoon, as everyone is busy taking their siestas!
The Everyman (2 nap, 3 nap, 4 nap)
The Everyman is basically like a climbing ladder that details how much many naps
are required depending on how much core sleep you want to cut. Each nap shaves
off an astounding hour and 40 minutes from your core sleeping time.
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2 of 8 4/18/2014 12:34 AM
The Uberman
The Uberman is only for the most hardcore polyphasic sleepers. It involves six evenly
spread out naps every four hours and completely eliminates any core sleep you may
have needed before. It is the most difficult cycle to get used to, but once
accomplished, you sleep for two hours a night, freeing up the other twenty-two to do
whatever you want.
So, ultimately your sleeping schedule can be one of the below:
Important Things You Must Know
Do NOT oversleep or skip naps. If you oversleep you WILL throw off the entire
schedule and feel exhausted for up to 24 hours. If you skip a nap (by more than a
couple hours with the Everyman, or by 30 minutes with the Uberman), the same thing
will happen.
Tips
Make sure you have a period of free time (up to a month) to adjust to the cycle.
The first week or two is the most difficult part when trying to adjust to any of these
cycles. Beat this phase without oversleeping or skipping naps, and you will have
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and work on it throughout the adjustment phase.
Enjoy your newfound freedom. Dont worry about negative effects as people have
done each cycle before, and after being examined by doctors after years, and been
found perfectly healthy. In fact, people only stop these cycles because they find it is
difficult to run on a sleeping cycle which contradicts the entire rest of the world. Who
knows, one day we may all be Uberman sleepers!
EDIT: After getting many comments about the references, I would like to clarify
certain things. I myself, havent tried this personally. Many people stop trying this after
few weeks/days since this way too difficult to start (Including myself). Currently
research is going on this topic. I have recently found out my quora friend who ha
successfully adopted this method. Let me share his experience. You can also go
through his comments.
Jelle Saint-Germain
I have successfully adopted the Everyman 2-nap schedule a few years
ago. I had my core sleep from 3a.m. till 7.30a.m. and a 20-min power nap at noon
and at 8p.m. It took me about two weeks to adapt, and it was really hard to hold on.
One of my friends joined me in the beginning but gave up after 5 days or so.
However, once I had adapted the schedule, things got awesome really quickly. I was
still a student back then, and exams were getting close (which is the reason I tried
this sleeping method in the first place), and I could succesfully study for 10 hours a
day and still have more than 8 hours of spare time for myself!
Besides that, the lucid dreaming was just plainly awesome. Of all things, I believe this
is the thing I miss the most nowadays.
Ive maintained this sleeping schedule for several months, feeling a lot better than
usually - both physically and mentally. People got used to me having to take a nap
surprisingly well, and I didnt have much trouble sticking to the schedule. A few times,
mostly while going out, I missed a nap or I slept for too long. You then feel basically
the same as if you were to skip the night with a normal sleeping pattern. But once
youve adopted the schedule and this happens, you can just return to your schedule
and one or two regular naps later, youre OK again.
Ultimately, I had to stop doing this because I had a holiday job with very irregular
hours, not allowing me to keep to the schedule. Its been 4 or 5 years since Ive done
this, and I still regret to this day that I had to stop doing it. Its also impossibl e to pick it
up again, as I am now graduated and have to go to work to earn a living, not enabling
me to stick to a tight sleeping schedule. It often still makes me sad that I need more
than 8 hours of sleep per night not to be tired all day, while I know I can improve my
mental and physical condition by sleeping only 5.2 hours a day.
But heck, if theres anyone out there who wants to try this and has the possibility of
doing so, I can only advise to try it and see for yourself that this is an extremely
awesome brain hack!
I have indeed noticed the comments being extremely negative towards this article,
thats why I wanted to share my experience.
And to be honest, you cant blame them either. There is little to no scientific evidence
concerning this subject, and it all sounds far too good to be true.
That is also why Im very happy to have tried it, because its the only time ever in my
entire life that something "too good to be true" actually turned out to be completely
true.
I didnt really experience any negative side effects. My social life kept going (I might
even say it improved a little, as I could go out every day till 3 a.m. without getting
tired). Some people thought it was a funny idea, some people thought it was crazy,
some people were actually very interested in the "science" behind it. But eventually,
after a few weeks, everyone who knew me could see it was working very well, and I
encountered no further disbelief. Only respect and support. Also, since every nap felt
like an entire nights sleep, I have never, ever, felt so alive in my entire life as I did
while practicing polyphasic sleep. You can really feel the difference. Your brain
processes more information, you learn faster, you are more active, and so on and so
forth.
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4 of 8 4/18/2014 12:34 AM
it is perfectly safe. During my polyphasic sleep period, I also met various other people
doing the same, and they all had similar awesome outcomes.
Right now, Im at work, and we are having our noon break. I feel kinda tired. Four
more working hours to go, and then I can return home, only to remain "kinda tired"
while preparing my evening meal, and eventually go to bed, only to be "kinda tired" all
day again tomorrow. Damn, I miss polyphasic sleep.. "
Thanks for patience!
Source: Hack Your Brain: Polyphasic Sleep
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