So. I'm back here again. For the last week or so I've tried to wean myself off of afternoon naps for practicality reasons, after about a month and a half of taking them almost regularly. Bad idea. It really hasn't been working. My body had been trying to compensate at night and I just feel shitty all over. As far as I'm concerned I may as well be sleeping normally. Which sucks. That's why I've decided to go triphasic again, but with a twist.
Last time on triphasic I found that my morning sleeps were quite restless due to going to sleep after sunrise, and that was confusing my body. After sleeping with a 3 hour morning core for the last week or so I've come to realize how important it is to have the morning sleep before the sun rises. However if I did that on a standard 3x1.5hr triphasic schedule I would have to push everything back a couple of hours, and that's not something I can do.
Instead I've decided to keep the 3 hour core, and tone the other two 1.5hr naps down to 45 minutes. I know most people have a problem with waking up after 45 minutes as their body's will be in deep sleep, but after observing my sleep charts for such a length of time, I've noticed that this doesn't apply to me. I always tend to have a light dip, perhaps even possibly REM at the 45 to 60 minute mark. I'm not sure if this is a compressed cycle or not, or just marks half a cycle, but either way I've decided to go with it.
Today I decided to start. Last night I slept 2 hours at 10:30pm followed by 3 hours in the morning at 4:30am, which I woke up naturally from, and then a 1.5hr nap at 2pm. I had to have it at an earlier dip at 2pm rather than 4pm because for me trying to get a late nap on the weekends is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but surprisingly enough I found it didn't really differ to say if I'd had it later at 4pm..
I know this is a lot of sleep, about 6.5 hours altogether, more than I originally counted on, but I've decided to cut down gradually over the weekend just to get my body back into the habit. Also, though, for some reason I have just felt so tired. I think it's probably down to having to sleep more at night recently to compensate for not having an afternoon nap. I've just felt so rubbish this last week. I'm hoping this will be resolved once I get back into triphasic again. I'm not sure this hybrid schedule will work as well as the original, but it has to be tons better than what I've been doing recently.
Seeing as I prepared my body for triphasic by starting with the afternoon nap, I should be good to go to cut down my next nap tonight as I would've already got at least good amount of deep sleep for my afternoon nap. Therefore, I'm planning on sleeping between 45 and 60 minutes tonight, followed again by a 3hr core in the morning, and then a 1.5hr nap again early tomorrow afternoon. Then come Monday I'll plan to cut the afternoon nap in half.
This should theoretically work, but as this is more of a personalized schedule I can't really seem to find much information on others' successes. Today though I feel great for having my afternoon nap, if a little yawny because I had too much. I really hope this schedule will stick. I loved triphasic too much last time. This should get me the best of both worlds of biphasic and triphasic.
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