Polyphasic - Everyman 3 for lucidity

I have been trying out polyphasic schedules for the past 2 weeks. The way I see it is that these schedules are really just organized WBTB techniques. The more times you get to nap, the more opportunity for WILD there should be. Right?

I'm not really sure yet, that is the point of this post. If you've tried it before, please feel free to share your results. I will be posting periodically to share mine. I will try to edit this post as time goes on to consolidate the most useful information on this. Realistically, that might not happen.

There is a lot of scattered information out there on polyphasic sleep. I've been reading this stuff since I started and find that it is mostly incomplete. A good start for learning about this would be at polyphasicsociety.com. Also, there are bloggers (puredoxyk and steve pavlina to name the two most cited) who have shared their success stories. It is difficult to find someone who successfully used this for LDing. Many report increased vivid dreams and LDs but none really document it that well. I hope to do just that.

My LD history is not impressive. I've had about 20 since my first one that was 8 years ago. Recently, I managed to get better...but then lost it. Since starting polyphasic I have had 3 LDs. But they have been the kind where I cannot move or just wake up from the excitement. Still, 3 in 16 days is better than 3 every 16 months. This is how it went:

4 days on the "siesta" schedule.
Core: 1am-5:30am
Siesta: 2pm-3:30pm

4 days on "E4.5" - This is Everyman with a 4.5 hour core. The only difference from above was that the 90 minute nap was split into 2 - 20 minute sections.
Core: 1am-5:30am
Nap: 11am-11:20
Nap2: 3pm-3:20

8 days on E3
Core: 12:30am-4am
N1: 8am-8:20
N2: 12pm-12:20
N3: 5:40pm-6pm

These are just rough estimates. The nap times are flexible for these plans, unlike the uberman schedule that shouldn't really be moved. On the second day of Siesta, I had a lucid dream during a horrible 90 minute nap where I kept waking up. Then during E3, I began to have lucid dreams during the first nap of the day. According to Polyphasic Society's ("PS") site, this is because dawn is when there is the most pressure for REM. And of course, REM periods are longer in the later portion of sleep (that I had deprived myself of). This is how anyone does WBTB in the first place.

I was told by someone on the PS forum that if you move the core sleep up earlier (closer to post dawn), it will contain better SWS which will somehow result in a more solid REM sleep in the early morning. I will try to shift the whole schedule up by about 2 hours to see if that advice works.

More later.

I have researched this and read several blogs by people who maintained various sleep schedules for long periods of time.

The indications suggest that your body needs considerable time (3-7 weeks) to adapt to a different schedule. During this stage your body learns to enter REM at a different time and at different speeds. For example, in one blog the guy was going 20 minute naps every few hours. He did this successfully for about a year.

After passing an extremely difficult period of about 4 weeks, if I remember correctly, he adapted to falling asleep instantly and going straight to REM. Basically his body learned how to immediately start REM sleep by shortening the entire sleep cycle. After he stopped he still found that he would enter REM within seconds of lying down to sleep (this "skill" appears to be permanent for him).

Doing your experiment the way you are, I think you are wasting your time unless you pick a schedule and stick with it for at least 3 weeks without "cheating". Some schedules need much less adaptation than others, depending on how much they vary from the regular monophasic sleep we are used to and how much total sleep they give you (the triphasic one where you do 3 ~90 minute naps every day is the easiest). For more detailed information on various schedules and the best way to adapt to them check out this site:

Sleep Schedule Overviews | Polyphasic Society

Thanks, I think that you are right about that. My schedule was only inconsistent for the first week as I switch from siesta, to E4.5, to E3 in the end. From this point forward it will be E3 with no real changes to the schedule. The people at polyphasicsociety have been responding to my posts with tips for this exact thing that we are talking about.

I was wondering why it was so apparently "easy" to adapt to the E3 schedule. I love my sleep and i'm the first person to hit the snooze button a million times. But for some reason, I have been disciplined to wake up after only a 3.5 hour core. But hasn't been a complete success. Just recently I overslept by an hour on two nights out of 3. Stuff like that can really mess up the adaptation process. The 20 minute naps haven't been difficult to fall asleep nor wake up. Actually waking up from a 20 minute nap is much easier than from a 3-3.5h core.

From what I've read, the body has to learn to repartition your REM sleep into your naps. Not being consistent with your sleep times, you body cannot adjust to your patterns. It will be confused and you will constantly get shitty sleep and feel tired.

So, even though I am not having that much trouble following the schedule, it hasn't been long enough and I am probably not getting the REM sleep in all of the naps. I can say for sure that I can consistently expect REM in the first nap but the later two seem to be dreamless and I often wake up feeling brain dead. I'm hoping that the second and third naps become rem as well because that will mean increased attempts at WILD. And since these REM periods occur without a SWS cycle, it's more likely that there will be the alertness necessary for any sort of LD induction.