Back to Biphasic - Day 3

Last night I almost had a lapse in will power again. I kept on thinking that if I wanted to feel better I needed to sleep more, and almost went monophasic again. I guess this is years of conditioning at work here. The only way I got past that was to drill it into my head that more sleep creating better health is an illusion. Then I decided that I can't go wrong with one night of biphasic just to be sure. It's not exactly going to kill me. And if I felt worse the next day for half as much sleep then and only then could I make the decision to go back to sleeping monophasically.

Thank God for my spatial reasoning. It was only that that pulled me through. Every weekend I tell myself not to sleep in because I'll regret it the next day. Yet every weekend I end up repeating the same mistake over and over. It really isn't worth it. After sleeping biphasically again last night for 4.5 hours altogether, I feel so much better. I've yawned about three times today, in comparison to the thirty times I must've yawned yesterday. Nothing aches, I'm not sleepy, my mind is clear, and I've felt bright and dandy all day. I'm currently approaching hour 9 after my core sleep of 2.45 hours, the time my smart alarm woke me, and I still feel as good as the minute I woke up.

I definitely won't be doing that again. No way. Nuh uh. That's what she said...

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Polyphasic Sleep Week 5

Today marks the end of my fifth week conducting this polyphasic sleep experiment and the third week of sleeping biphasically. It's been a good week. Very stabilized and normal. I'm still feeling twice as good than I was on monophasic. I no longer have high levels of background anxiety, something I wasn't expecting, the dark circles under my eyes are now virtually non-existent, and my health is twice as good. My muscles and bones don't ache half as much as they did before, and of course my mind is more alert throughout the day. I rarely feel sleepy. You'd think it'd be the opposite but it's not weirdly enough.

I now have an application to compile graphs for me and measure how much sleep I'm getting average. Over the last week it reports that I've had an average of 6.2 hours of sleep. This average obviously went up on the weekend, which by the way, I regret. Friday night I slept-in, waking up naturally after 7 hours, almost 2 hours more than usual and although it was the best sleep of my life I felt super ill all day. I really should stop doing that.

Earlier on in the week I was having trouble with the correct times to wake up as I'd become pretty reliant on my smart alarm to wake me up at the right stage and because I was falling asleep too fast, under 5 minutes, I found myself waking up in deep sleep. I had to shorten my core sleep from 5.5 hours to 5.1 hours. That fixed the problem and I felt ok again.

As for my mid afternoon naps, they are a force to be reckoned with. I love them. They no longer feel like an inconvenience, I absolutely love them. Now that my body's adjusted I have an average of 15mins sleep, although occasionally I'll still sleep up to an hour, just because it feels so good. I've also started dreaming at the beginning of my mid afternoon naps, which is an odd experience to say the least. It feels like I slip straight from wakefulness into dreaming, and although I don't actually realize that at the time, it's made the beginning of about half my naps this week pre-lucid. I'll often question whether I'm awake or asleep, often to wake myself up twitching realizing that I was actually asleep and dreaming. I call them micro-dreams, brief periods of REM unlike hypnogogia.

Wrapping up, this schedule is the best I've ever slept, and I highly recommend it, but now my curiosity is getting the best of me and I've decided that from today I'll be going triphasic, which I'll go into in my next post.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 4

Day 4:

Today was a good day. This morning before my core sleep I had almost no trouble in staying awake. I wrote quite a productive amount of fan fiction, caught up watching some Heroes, and then did some more research. I feel like I'm adjusting to this new schedule really quick. I'm really beginning to appreciate the extra hours seeing as I'm not feeling too zombified to do anything during those hours anymore.

I went to sleep at 3:30am and woke up accidentally three hours later exactly, feeling like I'd slept a full night. I almost decided to wake up there and then, but then figured it was probably best to stick to the schedule as much as possible, and I fell back to sleep for another hour and a half.

For the first time today I remembered a dream I had during my core sleep. It was something about insects and the end of the world, I think. Also, the time dilation when sleeping is becoming more pronounced. After 4.5 hours of core sleep I felt like I'd slept at least seven hours, not to mention the first three hours before waking felt like five.

I've noticed that the first couple of hours after my core sleep is difficult to wake up from. It basically feels like I've woken up drunk. Very weird indeed. During these first couple of hours I find myself walking into things and stumbling around more often than what should be considered normal. After a tardy shower though that disappears.

My first nap was at 2:30pm like usual. I used the iso-chronic tones to help me drift off to sleep again, and lo and behold results! I drifted in and out of stage 1 sleep until what felt like the penultimate five minutes, and then I had a dream!

I dreamed I was angry with someone and I kicked them, hard. However, the action caused my leg to flinch whilst I was sleeping, thereby waking me. I was probably only dreaming for about half a minute, but a dream is a dream. The flinching should go away once my mind learns to put my body under sleep paralysis more rapidly.

My second nap, which I had at 10:20pm, I didn't manage to dream to, but I was falling in and out of sleep again. I've noticed that with each nap the time I spend falling into sleep increases by a few seconds before suddenly waking again.

I'm still trying to find the optimal time to nap in the evening because unfortunately I have to work around my family. I've noticed that I start to get really grumpy though when I have a nap coming up, it's difficult to wind down with the house so alive.

I haven't really been feeling unusually tired since day 2. I do get light dips of tiredness between certain hours, but that's natural in everyone. Otherwise, it's going good, and I feel great, it's incredible how much more alert I feel in general over the whole day. It's a strange concept because I'm actually sleeping almost half the amount as before.

I can't think of any negative side effects today, bar pre-nap irritability and morning inebriation. I still have awful dark circles under my eyes mind, which is sort of hilarious seeing as I don't feel as tired as I look.

I would say this adjustment phase is like experiencing jetlag, except it feels better. Only day four in and already I feel like it's become habit. I would be devestated to lose the extra hours and general feeling of well-being over the day.

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