Polyphasic Sleep: Day 1

I am three hours from the end of my first 24 hour day of the Dymaxion experiment. Although technically it's been about 38 hours since my last monophasic sleep session, I count the beginning of my day at 7:30am Monday morning because that's when I took my first nap.

So far the experience has been pretty positive. I started out planning my day around what is known as the Uberman schedule which is 6 naps a day instead of four, but a couple hours ago I decided that I would aim for the more efficient 4 nap routine supplemented as needed until I get the hang of speed sleeping (I still have to reset my alarm calendar).

This whole thing is definitely a trip to get used to. I've already had two minor slip ups so far. During my noon nap I couldn't fall asleep, so after filling my belly with soup I decided to give it another try an hour later. I ended up falling into some sort of repose about 10 minutes before my alarm when off but then foolishly reasoned that I should go for a full half-hour, stifled my alarm without adding a backup and ended up being out for almost an hour and a half. It didn't feel like REM sleep, so I'm hoping it didn't set me back too far, but its still a bad precedent to be setting this early on. On a positive note, I felt great after the nap. I ended up going on a nice long jog over to Jake's where I communed and took a very successful nap in his basement-of-a-room, and then jogged over to my parents house where my mom is looking after the Valenzuela children while Leah has her 4th kid. The exercise was fantastic and I ran better than I've ran all year (which isn't much, I've ran maybe a total of three times since I've been home).

After some visiting at my parents I came home, took a shower, and prepared for my midnight nap. I was feeling pretty tired and was a little worried about my ability to retain consciousness within 30 minutes of losing it. I decided to precede the nap with a meditation session, which seemed to work fairly well, although I stopped and began my nap a little early. I'm not sure if I ever actually slept, I didn't have any dreams that I can remember, I all seem to remember was this weird surreal struggle with myself after my alarm went off. I officially came to two hours later, once again bummed that I broke my rules. Again though, I'm not sure I achieved REM sleep, although I felt really good upon getting up. I decided to skip my tentative 330am nap and go straight through to 5:30, witch I think I'm going to make my official morning nap time for now on.


A side note on how I got into this whole experiment, I stumbled upon this article http://www.highexistence.com/alternate-sleep-cycles/ by Jordan Lejuwaan, which led me to this blog http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep-log-day-1/ where Steve Pavlina apparently successfully incorporates the Uberman routine (I haven't finished reading it yet). I also followed Lejuwaan's recent attempt at the Dymaxion schedule here http://www.highexistence.com/polyphasic-sleep-cycle-day-1/ Lejuwaan started 2 weeks ago and reported good results the first week, but was since been MIA :S. There are also a number of forums and sites dedicated to those attempting more efficient polyphasic sleeping patterns. I highly recommend anyone who's interested to google this shit.

I'll keep updating