Saturday, July 9, 2011

Sleeping

Ever felt like wasting your time while you sleep? As you could be doing a thousand other things instead of sleeping? Or even worse, ever felt as your internal clock didn't fit your schedule? Well, i did.

Since i was a kid, i always felt as my body was a little incompatible with the "normal life", it happens that i have a sleep-wake cycle of 28 hours instead of 24.
A common person sleeps 8 hours and stay awake for the other 16 hours, but i can stay up 4 hours longer.
It sounds great at first, doesn't it? Actually it is not, as time passed by i realized that sometimes i went to bed at 6 am, waking up at 2pm, and a few days later i was going to bed in the early afternoon.
 It kind of messed up my life a bit, school was harder because i was always tired, my father kept bothering me, calling me crazy and telling me to have a normal life. But it was not my fault!

Some time ago i found something really interesting on the Internet. A guide to Polyphasic Sleep, teaching how to actually sleep well.
I made some research and tried to learn a bit more about sleep and how to use Polyphasic Sleep in my favour and i found some good information, of people teaching how to do it, posting about their experiences, giving us tips and stuff. At first i was a bit afraid of trying it, but a couple days ago i started my own schedule of Polyphasic Sleep.

I go to bed at midnight, sleep for 3 hours. Then at 7:40 i take a 20 minutes nap, then after lunch i take my second 20 minutes nap, and another 20 minutes nap 4.5 hours later.

It is working great! i never felt that good sleeping this little. You may be wondering how can i sleep only around 4 hours/day and go on with a normal life. No? Ah, OK. I was going to tell you anyways.

To tell you the secret, i have to quote the guide i read on lifehacks.com

"In the late 30's, a wealthy amateur scientist named Alfred Lee Loomis and his colleagues watched an EEG monitor for brain electrical activity during sleep, and they made a pretty remarkable discovery: there are actually five main parts to each of several phases of sleep. The main stage is called REM, and it is where most of the benefit of sleep comes from[...] You spend only 1-2 hours in REM sleep during any given night, and the rest is wasted[...]


One of the ways to force your brain into REM sleep and skip the other phases is to make it feel exhausted. If you've gone 24 hours without sleep, you might notice that you drift away into dreams straight from being awake. You goes instantly into REM sleep as a protection mechanism. So you have to train your body into entering REM for short periods of time through the day.
This is how Polyphasic Sleep works. "




And that's just a little about Polyphasic Sleep, tomorrow I'll try to post a few schedules you could use.

23 comments:

  1. I tried a ton of different stuff because like you, i thought sleeping was a waste of time. It isnt, if you dont sleep well it will mess up with you and your health will start to deteriorate. I know you wont believe me, but sooner or later you will notice this. thats just my 2 cents.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds interesting.. i wish i could do that..

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't go to bed till like 6am every morning.. :/

    ReplyDelete
  4. im the same way, i have to literally force myself to sleep. +1

    ReplyDelete
  5. It's called the "everyman 3 nap cycle", I'm on it too and never felt better. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. crazy stuff. keep em comin. a3

    ReplyDelete
  7. i sleep at like 2 am and wake up at around 8-9 feels great

    ReplyDelete
  8. interesting post man. following ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yeah, really interesting post for sure, im following this too

    ReplyDelete
  10. I wish I could sleep forever..

    ReplyDelete
  11. Lol I agree with unevenlove.. Sleeping is what I do best and being awake is just a waste of my time =]

    ReplyDelete
  12. holy shit I LOVE reading about this, makes me motivated to try my hand at polyphasic sleeping again! +1 followed for rizzledizzle, hit me back homes: http://cryptozen.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  13. Wow if this actually works I'm definitely interested... I always feel like I could be doing so many things but then I sleep and when I wake up I feel worse than before I went to bed!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I will start in 2 weeks with my schedule. 3-4 hours sleep a day. Some core sleep at around 2am. Looking forward to read a journal about your experiences.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I'm always knackered even after 8 - 10 hours of sleep, probably more to do with my diet then anything else.

    ReplyDelete
  16. wow thats really interesting!
    +1 and follow

    ReplyDelete
  17. Same here, some people tell me I should sleep during the day but I just can't bring myself to do it. Feels like wasting time.

    ReplyDelete
  18. i think the hardest part is to get into REM as fast as possible

    ReplyDelete
  19. wow! What an amazing post. Lots of insight. You're an amazing writer

    ReplyDelete
  20. Oooh I hate sleep, and it hates me, it takes me like an hour or so to fall asleep. If I want to nap, normally by the time I'm falling asleep I've been resting long enough :) Which means I'm up quite a bit, giving me more than long enough to follow and read your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I work nights, sleeping during the day screws with you. Its just not the same

    ReplyDelete
  22. amazing! ive heard of alternative periods of sleep before, but never got around to trying them out! one schedual I've been wanting to try is a cycling power nap type thing. taking 6 20 minute naps throughout the day, going instantly into REM sleep each nap. certainly time efficient in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete