Thread: Will Polyphasic Sleep Affect Lucidity

I'm considering trying a polyphasic sleep schedule (the everyman schedule) and I was wondering if there is potential affect on my attempts at getting lucid. As it stands now, I haven't gotten lucid very many times, but my recall and vividness has been increasing.

To further elaborate, the everyman schedule consists of a 3 hour nap taken during the night supported by three 20 minute naps during the day. Originally I was considering going on the uberman schedule, but quickly realized that my work schedule would not permit it. I can just see my boss flipping out when I tell him I have to take a nap. With the everyman method, there is more flexibility in when you take the naps.

Your opinions are welcomed and I will report back on my progress with the schedule and it's effect on my lucidity.

I can't find my copy of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming right at the moment, but I'm pretty certain that the book mentions a certain Paul Tholey, who adopted a roughly biphasic schedule to encourage lucid dreams. The way LaBerge wrote of it, it sounded sort of like a take off the wake-back-to-bed-method.

Steve Pavlina mentioned that he ended up having more lucids than normal while on the polyphasic schedule.

Other than that, I can't say. I attempted the Uberman last summer, but I didn't keep very good records-- I remember a few lucid dreams, but nothing out of the ordinary for me at the time.

I've actually done polyphasic sleep for about 2 months during the winter. Unless you can lucidly dream as of now, don't expect being able to suddenly do LD's. I've had a few LD's but the rest of my dreams were significantly more vivid than when I wasn't doing polyphasic sleep. GL adjusting to the schedule.

It's going to require much more will power than I had originally believed. Last night, I woke up at the appropriate time ( using my subconscious clock) but I just couldn't bring myself to getting out of bed.

Does anyone have a good idea on how I could force myself out of bed.

As for the lucid dreaming part, it's good to know that it's still possible on polyphasic sleeping. I'm not doing this to have more lucid dreaming, but I also didn't want to completely ruin my chances of getting lucid.

Thanks everyone

Originally Posted by GODLIGHT

Does anyone have a good idea on how I could force myself out of bed.[/b]

Turn on as many lights as you can right away. Put your alarm in a different room. Drink lots of water before you go to sleep.

#asher

I have misgivings about polyphasic sleep cycles. From what I've read biphasic is best, but even then you are still getting 7-8 hours of sleep per day.

Polyphasic sleeping is way popular these days because internet geeks all have a common vested interest in finding ways to defeat sleep forever (caffeine, anyone?), so it gets tons more hype than maybe it deserves. This website has a lot of good counterevidence for why polyphasic sleep probably won't work for you long-term. If you go and read polyphasic blogs (as the site notes), it's really true that common threads start appearing: the dreadful difficulty of it (you never entirely adapt), feeling like you have to exercise and 'do things' to keep awake, and generally just kind of zombie-ing out, no matter how long the effort made. I've read Pavlina's blog and I know he's kind of the figurehead for the entire 'movement,' but one manic, oppressively self-motivated man does not good evidence make.

Good luck anyways, though, since like everyone else I'd love polyphasic sleeping to be a viable life(sleep?)style, but I just don't think it is.

As for waking up on time, Godlight, try setting multiple alarms. Put them around the room, out of reach. If it's too easy to turn your alarm off, you're likely to go back to bed, and this is a Bad Thing. If you have supportive/nagging-inclined friends, get them to phone you when you should be getting up. I found that I'd ignore an alarm but jump up if the phone rings. It's a reflex.

PureDoxyk, the originator of the whole Uberman meme, once suggested this:

This is a weird [tip on waking up], but I've seen it work: If you really can't wake up, try this. Before you go to bed, prepare a bowl or wide-bottomed glass half-full of cold water (add an ice cube to keep it cold). Balance it on or next to your body, where you won't knock it over just by breathing or twitching, but where it's nonetheless guaranteed to soak you if it does tip. Now tie a string to it, and tie that string to your wrist -- preferably the wrist of the hand that you're going to move to turn off the alarm. You get the idea, right?[/b]

It's drastic, but I'm pretty sure that even in the pit of sleep deprivation this could NOT fail to get me up.

Somehow, I don't think my GF will appreciate any of those techniques. Just the fact that I would set an alarm to weke me at 3pm pissed her off. I told her that she would get used to it, but it didn't seem to appease her.

Thanks for trying. We will surely find a solution to this dilemma

No, you only get like 3-4 hours a day spamtek..

The reason its easyer to attain lucity, and especially WILD (iv read this) This bcuz you skip all the other parts of sleep and go directily into REM. So you get 3-4 hours of REM sleep, which is just as much if not more then you would get in a normall 8 hours of sleep. the problem with this is that you dont get any of the BETA/Theta type sleep were your body rests. So if u push a mouse all day its beautifull, but if you workout or have a labor job you cant do this.

On a biphasic sleep schedule you're sleeping ~7.5 hours per night, with a half-hour nap sometime around noon (when our circadian cycle naturally experiences a dip - siesta, anyone?).

Polyphasic exclusion of deeper sleep states suggests that REM is more important, but I think just being awake necessitates a certain amount of wear and tear on the body that we need deep sleep for to regenerate. The fact that we don't get it in polyphasic sleep doesn't mean to me that it's optional, it just means that it's less of a priority than regenerating your finer mental faculties (in REM). You'll die without water sooner than without food, but that doesn't make food optional or extra or skippable under certain "low stress" conditions.

[edit]And I'm not even necessarily sure we do skip deeper sleep states. I've heard that they all just get compressed into microphases that last a few minutes each, but I don't know for sure.[/edit]

"I've read Pavlina's blog and I know he's kind of the figurehead for the entire 'movement,' but one manic, oppressively self-motivated man does not good evidence make."

HAHA.. I always knew I didn't like that guy and have been trying to come up with a good position against him in my mind. I think this is an excellent start.