Hey everyone, I’ve recently convereted to a polyphasic sleep schedule, I’ve been on it over two weeks now. For those un-aware, polyphasic sleep is sleeping 20 minutes every 4 hours, instead of the usual 8 hour chunks. These shortened sleep cycles causes the body to drop into REM sleep much faster than usual, so some people believe that this is all you need. Da Vinci, Jefferson and some of the other greats are rumored to have used it. Check out my site UberSleep.com for my running blog, resources, and forums.
Now, this has one mjaor benefit for lucid dreaming. You have 6 chances everyday to remember your dreams, as opposed to just one. I haven’t had much success in remembering my dreams so far, but I also may not be fully converted to the schedule yet, and therefore I may not bereaching REM sleep everytime I nap.
I was wondering if any of you had experimented with polyphasic sleep, and if so, what your dreams were like during it?
I think youre well dedicated to your activities on dreaming, but personally I would do it for a week then have a week off rather than stretching it to two weeks, reason for this is you might wear your body clock out, your regime will be all over the place and if you work it will be twice as worse. NightShiftworkers I have known are much more distressed than day workers, because theyre body clock is out of syncro. If you think about it humans and some animals are designed to sleep during the night and be awake by day, its always been like that from the dawns of time (caveman times etc etc.) so have a little break, remember youre not a salmon.
No need for that, in fact doing that might be worse, because you would never fully adjust to the polyphasic sleep schedule. Check out some of the links on my blog, it’s been pretty well thought out, just not a lot of reasearch in the area.
Surely any dreams you get in just 20 minutes would be very short! This sounds terrible to me, as I hate it when dreams end just when they’re starting to get interesting! I’d much rather sleep for a long time and have nice long dreams.
I agree with you stormthunder, I would prefer to have a nice long nap, its a must for any person. Nickabusey your mind must be acheing my good friend. Dont you get any bad headaches using this method.
It does not matter how long you sleep for as time is relative.Theres no problem with dreams lasting hours even if “in real life” you only napped for 20 mins.
Whats important here actually is how much it can influence your ability to have a stable ld.Its not a comfortable situation when you start having ld and first thought is "oh its a lucid dream and i have only 10 minutes or less!"Such thought can ruin it right off.
Psychological/empirical tests have been performed on people who were deprived of deep sleep (which I think, is essentialy what this ‘polyphasic sleep’ does), and it was found that they had considerably reduced daytime functioning and retarded coordination and verbal abilities.
That being said it still intrigues me a little, but I doubt the potential benefits are worth the risk.
Who knows, we certainly seem to be hard-wired to sleep at night and be awake during the day - but what has biology or mother nature done for us lately? I mean, look at our spine, it’s just wrong… we’re not even supposed to be walking upright. Hell… go for it! Nature shcmature!
(Like the way I just talked myself around? Yeah, me too.)
My experience of it was that I felt MORE alert after adapting to it somewhat.
I don’t know if my naps are purely REM, or some hybrid pattern.
One thing is for sure: nutrition has a lot to do with how much deep sleep you require. Eating junk food will almost guarantee your failure.
Don’t try this if you don’t want to eat healthy.
If you want to know why: Why the world hibernates at night
Irrelevant. Dream time != normal time. I’ve napped for half an hour, but had a dream that “lasted” for much longer than half an hour. There is no such thing as time within a dream. It only SEEMS to last for a certain amount of time, because that’s what we are used to.
To take it a step further, any comparative judgement does not exist within a dream. Time, distance, color, light…they are all just figments of your imagination. Theoretically all of these things could be very different from RL. But they typically aren’t, because your mind makes sense of things based on your experience.
This is quite true. Sleep is the most effective form of detox. The more toxins that are built up in the body, the more tired you will be. I used to eat like crap, and sleep all day. Now I usually sleep anywhere from three to six hours a day, and I still have massive amounts of energy levels.
I’m starting out polyphasic, and it’s hit me up some ld’s already. Unhealthy, for the first week mabye, if even. Once you adjust, you don’t experience these symptoms.
Polyphasic Sleeping, which is sometimes referred to as the Uberman Sleep Schedule, is a drastically different sleeping routine that aims to maximize the amount of time you spend awake each day. To put it briefly, the technique involves napping for 20 to 30 minutes every 4 hours, rather than sleeping for a number of straight hours once per day. While the adjustment period is apparently quite torturous, I’m told that once you adapt, it’s no less demanding than adhering to a normal sleep schedule. You end up getting approximately three hours of sleep per day, without feeling tired or exhausted. And perhaps the biggest surprise, you dream more each day than you would by sleeping normally. This is because each nap (once you become adapted to the routine) consists entirely of REM sleep.
Recently, a friend of mine has decided to give this unusual sleeping schedule a try (due to a severely twisted ankle, he’s been granted a couple of weeks off work). As I write this, he’s on day 7, and appears to be well on his way to fully adapting. It’s unusual having to accommodate his nap times when we spend time together, but he’s eager to see how long he can last, and he even has plans for continuing the routine after returning to work next week.
I was just curious to hear if anyone was familiar with Polyphasic Sleeping, or if you’ve had any experience with it yourself. I’ve been reading an interesting blog written by an individual who managed to keep it up for six months, claiming that the only real downside was the fact that nobody else is the same way. He reports a strengthened ability to solve logical problems, better recall dreams (due to experiencing more REM sleep than we normally do, I would guess), a heightened sense of awareness in general, and improved fitness. The additional 5 hours of waking time each day would probably come in rather handy as well.
If you want to read more about it, the detailed blog can be found here. (There’s also a Wikipedia article here, but it seems to be offline at this time.)
I’m not intending to try this myself, but I’m fascinated by the idea, and I’d love to hear anything you may have heard about this unusual sleeping pattern.
It is an interesting sleeping pattern, I agree. If people have flexible jobs that will accomodate for the 2-3 naps you would take during work time, you could really benefit from it. The fact that most of your sleep is REM sleep is like a dream come true for LDers. Maybe I will try this out until school starts, it sounds like fun.
Thanks, Q. I remember seeing that old experiment, but I figured it would be better to create a new thread than to revive one from a closed forum. Perhaps some of the members who have joined in the last 18 months can shed some more light on the topic.
I wasn’t sure where to post this, as it isn’t really related to lucid dreaming at all. But The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of seems like the appropriate place for it.
I’ll update this intermittently with my friend’s progress, in case anyone would like to hear how he’s dealing with issues such as work, and social events. He gave up caffiene for this, and considering he rarely drank anything other than Coke before last week, I’d say that shows dedication.
My uncle does this. He’ll take naps whenever he can so he ends up being able to stay up later and waking up earlier than everyone else in the house usually does. However, he still sleeps for probably 4-5 consecutive hours each night, probably because he doesn’t take naps for as long and frequently as aforementioned.
This seems like a good way to work around a very busy schedule. I might try this out and report.
I have heard of this, and I also heard Leonardo Da Vinci tried it himself, as he did it more and more he noticed his work slowly deteriorating…it may be good for a time being, but I think it has some negative effect in the long run.
Ok, my first day of PS is half over. I’m sleeping for 15-30 minutes every 4 hours and I started at 2:00 PM today. Just 1 more hour til I can sleep again.
i believe that this was the discussion in the last topic in this or another subforum here.
Uberman sleep schedule definitely sounds like a good idea, however even with a longer core sleep, it might be an awkward pattern for someone at work or school
I must confess I have absolutely no experience in Polyphasic Sleeping. That said, the green toothy commonsense in my head is jumping and yelling “that’s wrong, that’s torture, that’s not healthy!” Indeed, I don’t think I would be one to give this a try, sounds a bit of an amiss technique.
I’d love to read more about it, though, does anyone know a good article, or a detailed account on a person’s PS trial?
also moved this topic to 
