I want to try it, but im going on vacation a lot this summer and I have school, so... yeah. When I'm on my own then I will try it, if I remember it that is...

 

I tried it last summer.

It's horrible to get used to, but once you get used to it, you become a fucking machine.

The downside is that you sort of feel unnattached to everyone else. There is no Monday, Tuesday, etc..there is only night, day, night day.

I didn't like it.

 

I find a schedule like that to be impossible, I've tried to sleep 6-7 hours total in day, with a few hours in the day for a nap. It always catches up with you, but I also need more sleep because the gym kills me, to the point where my body just shuts down. I modified my sleep schedule, so that I could eat every 3-4 hours, so as soon I wake up, I'm eating like it's my job. I gained wait on this schedule, but being tired all the time wore me out, especially if you're in school.

I don't think you can just make your body just instantly hit REM sleep whenever you feel like it. Hell, I might even try this if my schedule ever allows it, but honestly, who here doesn't work at least a minimum of 6-8 hour shifts? I know my work and school schedule won't allow this 20 minute napping business.

 

I wonder if this could be used to cure insomnia? This sounds like you could right your internal Circadian rythms by sleeping on a set schedual.

 

Oddly enough, I believe I have done something approaching this before. I slept from 1 AM until 5 AM during the night, and made up the rest of my sleep with short naps.

As this was during high school and during the school year, these naps were before class, during half of lunch, during an afternoon break between classes, right after I returned from school, and at 9 PM. It does work, but I got really good at falling asleep almost instantaneously - good enough that some people suspected I had narcolepsy.

If anyone here does try it, good luck. I found the situation mentally stressful, and ended up breaking it and sleeping 22 out of 24 hours.

 

I've had a similiar experience, my parents suspected that I was taking drugs and confronted me about this. The reason why was that I stay awake at night because my sleep, work, school, and gym, schedule always changes, so I would sleep in the day for 1-2 hours sometimes more, then continue with my day and sleep 12:00-4:00am in order to go to the gym, give or take a few. This would alternate with a 2 hour nap at night and 4 hours of sleep in day, I would alternate ditching 1 class per 2 weeks in order to get more sleep, also I would fall asleep in the hall during 2 hours of break, or pass time doing Home work. One thing I did notice was once a week I would sleep 12 or so hours usually on a friday, but I would wake up to eat during this slumber. Also, my muscles would spasm usually lower back, legs and sometimes an arm would jerk (I was very self-concious about this, while sleeping in public), could be from gym? But I never experienced that before, very awkward, but not painful at all. I felt like I was just "there" it was very difficult to follow what teachers were saying during the end of the day. I would just act like I was paying attention and not draw attention to myself.

If I was a fire fighter or had similiar job, I wold definetly attempt this method of sleep, don't know how well it would work on someone into fitness as that really makes you tired.

 

I took a course in Autogenic training when I was a teenager. It was lead by a professional psychiatrist and I had to learn to relax, it was not some free mediation group but part of an approved therapy to get rid of psychosomatic disorders (they called it).

Anyway, the guy that taught the technique did something similar and told me that if you do it long enough, the conditioning goes so far that you cannot help but fall asleep at these exact times. he had always trouble scheduling his travels because of it, because he was afraid to fall asleep when driving the car.

I dont know if he did exactly what you mean and quite frankly, I didnt believe that at the time. But I didnt take the therapy serious either. He said he did it for more then ten years at the time and he was fit for his age.

 

Basically, and correct me if I am wrong, in a monophasic sleep cycle you have 6 sleep cycles of 90 minutes where you have 20 minutes of REM sleep. If you have 6 sleep cycles of 20 minutes spread evenly throughout the day, your body would adapt and the 20 minutes naps that you would take would be REM sleep.

So you could have all the benefits of a continuous 8 hour sleep in 2 hours?! Holy shit...

I have an unlimited amount of free time during my summer vacation which is, let me check, right now! I am going to attempt to try this thing. My sleep schedule is as follows: 3:30pm, 7:30pm, 11:30pm, 3:30am, 7:30 am, and 11:30 am where I would take 20 minute naps. Right now as I type this it is 3:27 pm, so in 3 minutes I will take my first polyphasic sleep cycle step.

I hope I can pull this off....

 

I am seriously considering doing this!

I just finished reading Steve's blog about polyphase sleep, and it looks to be harder than I thought. The first week is going to be extremely difficult because of the sleep deprivation, but after that you have to adapt to a 20 hour work day. The chance of one being constantly bored is a high possibility.

I am not a vegan like Steve, in fact I eat my share of junk food, and animal products so that might make it harder for me to get through the first week. Exercise will be another problem because I love to go to the gym, or the pool. It is right across from my apartment... But besides the iron will power needed, I don't see any problems.

If I start feeling extremely sick, or start suffering from a serious medical condition, I will stop immediately.

Did you know that when we were babies we actually polyphased? We learnt to monophase... Interesting.

In this first weak I will be seriously doing a 180 degree change on my diet. I usually eat fatty foods, like fried items but now considering that I am going to be sleep deprived I will be eating more fruits and vegetables.

A person can still survive on 4 hour continous sleep instead of the polyphase sleep patterns by going on a diet of pure vegatable and fruit juice. It was mentioned on his site somewhere...

I am going to make my own blog on my fanfiction profile account and see if my experience varies from Steve's. Following in his footsteps so to speak.

 

Ok, I will do that. The only problem I see in this experiment is the risk of oversleeping, because I am prone to ignoring the alarm clock.

Another thing, when I took my first two naps, I didn't even hit the light-REM stage. Hell, I was wide awake, except with my eyes closed. Is this a normal thing? Maybe some relaxation techniques would work...

 

1-2 minutes?! It normally takes for an average person to fall asleep about 7 minutes. I heard it on the radio somewhere. Unless one is really tired, or has trained their body to instantly fall asleep that seems unrealistic. Especially for a beginner polyphaser like me.

Edit: I googled it just to be sure, and it seems that I was right about an average person falling asleep in about seven minutes or less. Links: http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/17393
http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=apreci8_1337hax0r&tab=weblogs&uid=306846506
http://www2.gvsu.edu/~feenstrk/useless.html

 

I'd love to see if this cures insomnia. If I could capture more hours of the day, using polyphasic sleeping I might be able to sleep.

I'd be interested to see how far you get f77.

I've not had a decent sleep in 11 yrs, so it would be good if this cures insomnia. I'm seriously considering trying this method myself, the only problem would be falling asleep to start with.

Litha