Last night was very successful. I woke before the 45 minute mark of my alarm. Again I didn't actually realize I was awake until my alarm actually went off, and I put this down to the fact that coming straight out of deep sleep can be disorienting and requires to be awake for longer than 5 minutes to realize that you're actually conscious. I'm not sure if given a little more time whether I would soon fall back to sleep too soon to realize this, for the memory to be all but forgotten, or whether I would come to and properly wake. Either way, I've now woken before my alarm for the last four of all five days doing this experiment, leading me to conclude that sleeping 45 minutes at a time is just as natural for me as it is sleeping 80 minutes, perhaps even more so. Also, I had more progress last night in the form of for the first time in the last couple of weeks I didn't awake to sleep inertia. I was was able to read and to complex mental tasks straight off the bat, no problems at all. I'm hoping that my body will accept this as habit every night.
I had no problems staying up till 4:30am, and once the time of morning rolled around I had no problem falling back to sleep. I shortened my core time to a period of 3hrs, and woke at 7:30am. I'm not sure why exactly but this morning was the hardest time period of all. I would've expected that least of all seeing as my morning sleep is the longest, and I use it to prepare for the day, as the day is the longest period of time that I'm awake, however this itself maybe the problem. The only thing I can do is to gradually decrease the core and see how I feel. I woke with quite sharp sleep inertia, which I chased off with exercise, yet an hour and a half later I was literally falling asleep whilst reading. I decided that if I didn't take a short timed cat nap then I was at serious risk of falling asleep accidently anyway, but instead for a period of at least another hour and a half, and that certainly wasn't acceptable. I gave myself the shortest time period of 10 minutes, any longer and I was afraid of falling back into the deep sleep I woke up from in the morning.
10 minutes proved to be perfect enough. It was all light sleep, it was one of those sleeps where your brain is still active enough to understand the sounds that are going on around you, yet it pays no attention to them due to being in a light sleep trance. On waking I was initially doubtful that it would be enough, yet 5 minutes laster and I had perked up considerably, enough to keep me farely alert until my 2:30pm nap. I don't particurlary know why I was feeling so tired during my first wake period, but I will be keeping an eye on it. Come my 2:30pm nap though and I was exhausted. It's not really something that builds up, the tiredness just suddenly seems to descend on me 5 to 10 minutes before I'm actually due to have my next nap. I went to bed, and the last thing I remember is getting comfortable. I woke up after an hour, but it's hard to distinguish whether I actually slept for an hour. I'm not actually sure how long it took me to fall asleep. It felt like 20 minutes because there was so much going on around me and I was feeling a little anxious, yet my sleep graph says I fell asleep almost instantly. The sleep itself was mostly light sleep, starting with more deep sleep randomly interspersed in there towards the beginning, before leveling out a little.
So today, or rather, over the last 24 hours, I've succeeded in sleeping about 4.8hrs, which is markedly different to the previous two days. I know initially I said I would have my afternoon nap at 4:30pm if I could, yet I've found it a lot more conductive to have it at 2:30pm. So far I'm feeling really pleased with my progress, and hope that I can keep this up long term. One thing though, I'm not really having any REM sleep. At the moment it's pretty much all deep, which is weird seeing as REM repartitioning is supposed to come first. I'm hoping this will sort itself out after a few more nights, maybe two weeks tops. Whilst I've personally noticed that for some reason I feel much healthier mentally the less REM I get, I don't actually want to forfeit my REM. That's the one thing I miss the most about monophasic sleep. I would always get bat shit crazy dreams. I was saving the world from an apocalypse every night. It has to be said I freaking loved it, it was awesome. I've only had one type dream like that in the whole last two months since starting polyphasic though, and that I barely even remember. But of course this is only an aesthetic problem, I couldn't go back to monophasic in a lifetime. I'll find some other way to get my dreams back, maybe when I'm more adjusted by splitting my morning nap into two 20 to 30 minute naps. I don't know yet.
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