A New Polyphasic Sleep Blog

[PaulBradley]

Hi all, Just to let you know I am going to be readapting to polyphasic sleep (I did uberman for 3 or 4 months last year) and this time I'm going to be blogging my experience. I adapted to uberman last time round, this time I'm going to try the Dymaxion sleep first (30 minutes every 6 hours) to see if I can get longer waking periods out of this, if I don't get on with that I will transition back to uberman or something similar. My blog is at http://www.paul-bradley.com Hope to see you there. Paul

[Placebo]

Yup, seems like a lot of us are starting a new run (esp. the guys on the google polyphasic mail group) I hope you aren't going to just post your blog url and then run away again. At least check us out now and again New polyphasic attempts just started: Me (Placebo) => http://www.placebo.serv.co.za and here on dreamviews Paul => http://www.paul-bradley.com John Lacquey => can't find a link Kirk Kahn => http://kirkkahn.com/blog/ And then there's ZeThomas, who's 4 weeks into it already: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ZeThomas Historically, polyphasic sleep amongst civilians doesn't have a high success rate. But the guys above are fairly dedicated, I think. I'll be interesting to see who folds and who doesn't.

[PaulBradley]

Yup, seems like a lot of us are starting a new run (esp. the guys on the google polyphasic mail group) I hope you aren't going to just post your blog url and then run away again. At least check us out now and again [/b] Yes - it's very strange that a bunch of people all seem to have started around the same time. I know Steve Pavlina posted his 1 year after retrospective a little while ago, but I'm not sure who got inspired to start again by that? I'll certainly be sticking around a bit, but not posting many updates - more for discussion. John Lacquey => can't find a link[/b] http://opusday.blogspot.com/ is John's blog And then there's ZeThomas, who's 4 weeks into it already: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ZeThomas[/b] Thanks for this. I hadn't seen it before. I may get a webcam tomorrow and start video blogging this myself. Historically, polyphasic sleep amongst civilians doesn't have a high success rate. But the guys above are fairly dedicated, I think. I'll be interesting to see who folds and who doesn't.[/b] If it's physically possible to adapt to dymaxion I will do it, it's either dymaxion or a total mental breakdown - whichever comes first. No, seriously, I will be pushing very hard for dymaxion sleep, and so far it seems to be going really well. I'm taking 30 minute naps (timer set for 40 minutes) every 6 hours at 4 and 10 am/pm - I really like having the 5.5 hour waking periods. If I find with time that dymaxion is impractical for me I will transition back to uberman, but the reason I quit that last time (after about 3 and a half months) was because of the social issues of everyone else not being on a polyphasic schedule - I'm hoping dymaxion with the longer waking periods will mitigate this disadvantage so I can keep it going for longer than last time. I may even consider going triphasic eventually for the nearly 8 hour waking periods, but the problem with that seems to be that the only way I've seen it recommended is with 1.5 hour naps, so a total of 4.5 hours of sleep a day, and I would like to go much lower than that. Once a quick REM adaptation is made though I don't see why triphasic with say 45 minute or 1 hour naps wouldn't be possible, so I might try that. For now though, it's strictly dymaxion until adapted or until I decide an adaptation on that schedule isn't possible for me. Look forward to positive feedback and results from all of you. Paul

[Placebo]

Perhaps Steve Pavlina does have a lot to do with it... I was hoping I could start at the same time as him. Since there's no more talk of him starting again, I decided to give it a shot again. Any my wife was the proverbial push over the edge and into the deep end - strangely, she wants me to do this again. The social pressures are definitely the number one killer once you succeed. I had to stop previously because of family events. Regarding triphasic, I'm less confident that 45 minute naps will be enough. But don't let that stop you - the only way to find out is to try

[Spritely]

Good luck to you, Paul. I haven't read much about the dymaxion. Compared to the Uberman schedule, there seems to be far less information on it out there, so I'll probably be popping by your site once in a while to see how you're getting on. I'm curious! And thus, a question for those of you who've adhered, for a while, to a polyphasic schedule: once you were past the sleep deprivation of the first week or so, did you notice any change in your dreaming or dream recall? I remember that Steve reported having more lucid dreams while polyphasic, but I'm curious about the results of others. I'm impatient for this fall-- it's the nearest time I'll be able to attempt polyphasic sleep again. This time, I'll be living on a college campus-- an environment that provides more to do than an isolated country house does, which is where I staged my first attempt.

[Placebo]

I found that I could usually induce lucid dreams at will, but they weren't as good quality as the onces I had from dream induced monophasic LDs. Maybe I just need more skill at WILDs...

[PaulBradley]

Good luck to you, Paul. I haven't read much about the dymaxion. Compared to the Uberman schedule, there seems to be far less information on it out there, so I'll probably be popping by your site once in a while to see how you're getting on. I'm curious![/b] As far as I can tell Bucky Fuller was the only one to have ever done the dymaxion schedule. Ok, well, the only one to have documented it anyway. I'm not sure why, but it seems a few people have tried it and not got on with it. I'm only 48 hours in so far but it doesn't really seem any worse than an uberman adaptation to me, so I'm hopeful that it's going to work out well. If it does, I'm going to play with it and see if I can do triphasic too with 1hr naps. Being able to switch between that and dymaxion would be fantastic flexibility, and if I had that I really can't see me ever going back to monophasic, but we always say that. I said it for about 2 months after I adapted to uberman last time, then the reality of being out of phase with the ordinary people started to become a bit annoying. I don't know, if I can find a way to make it work I'd like to make it a long term thing, but I don't actually know of anyone who's done what I would call pure polyphasic (say 3 hours or less per 24 hours in at least 2 phases) on a permanent basis - it's interesting to wonder why, surely there must be some combination of lifestyle and sleep pattern that would make it practical. And thus, a question for those of you who've adhered, for a while, to a polyphasic schedule: once you were past the sleep deprivation of the first week or so, did you notice any change in your dreaming or dream recall? I remember that Steve reported having more lucid dreams while polyphasic, but I'm curious about the results of others.[/b] I had about 2 or 3 short and partially lucid dreams in the course of about 3 months, and was recalling dreams every day. Normally I don't remember a dream from one month to the next, and I had only had about 2 (recalled) moments of lucidity in dreams in my entire life before that, despite the fact I had been making efforts to have LDs for quite some time, and quite concerted efforts at that. When I had the LDs whilst polyphasic I was making no effort at all, I suppose the possibility of LDs were on my mind, so you could say I intended them, but I didn't use any induction techniques. Paul

[Nathaniel]

i gotta get in on this... and as far as dreaming goes WILD is my prefered method when im TRYING to have a lucid dream, otherwise i just get them as i get them *shrugs* i've managed to do that 4 or 5 times thus far. im also extremely interested in the shifting back anf forth between "alternate" sleep patterns, that would make things quite a bit more convenient... i didnt spell that right did i...

[PaulBradley]

i gotta get in on this... and as far as dreaming goes WILD is my prefered method when im TRYING to have a lucid dream, otherwise i just get them as i get them *shrugs* i've managed to do that 4 or 5 times thus far. im also extremely interested in the shifting back anf forth between "alternate" sleep patterns, that would make things quite a bit more convenient... i didnt spell that right did i...[/b] I wouldn't go so far as to recommend it since no-one really understands the health implications of doing this - I will say this much though, I've not heard of any serious complications from it and my own experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. Check out my latest blog post which I'll be making shortly after this post. Paul http://www.paul-bradley.com - polyphasic sleep and self improvement blog

[Spritely]

Cool! Thanks for answering, Paul and Placebo. In EWoLD, I think that LaBerge mentions that Paul Tholey keeps a roughly biphasic schedule in combination with a sort of WBTB technique, so perhaps polyphasic sleep does, on some level, encourage LDs.

[PaulBradley]

Just a quick update. I'm going well, day 6 now of Dymaxion sleep, only a couple of small oversleeping incidents, averaging about 3 hours sleep a day and keeping to the nap times. I haven't started remembering dreams from the naps yet, I'll be back for more information as soon as I do and trying to get lucidity as quickly as possible. Paul