Uberman for Ubermensch only?

My son sent me the abstract at the bottom.

Note the part in bold. Apparently among the sailors that Claudio Stampi? studied, 2 hours was not a regular practice. "Mean sleep among the sailors was 6.3 hours and best performance was 4.5 to 5.5 hours."

I have never done long distance solo sailing, but have read about it. Even with automatic steering systems, the sails must be constantly trimmed to adjust for changing wind conditions.

Perhaps the successful pattern wouldn't be Uberman. Rather a pattern where the nap would be repeated as often as needed especially at night to get enough sleep but never more than 20 minutes. Only rare indivicuals can get by on 2 hours of sleep a day. Never sleeping more than 20 minutes at a time may allow for considerable reduction in total sleep time and a sustainable life.

I remember reading Farley Mowat's book, Never Cry Wolf. This was the first advocacy of Polyphasic sleep I've seen. He copied the sleep habits of the Arctic Wolves. Even when they slept for longer total periods, they would only sleep for 10-15 minutes before getting up and shifting around. I found this quote: "Farley is fascinated by the sleeping patterns of the wolves, who take ten minute naps, and then get up, turn around and take another nap. He mimics this process and becomes proficient at wolf napping." (quote is from the Never cry Wolf study guide chapter 9 ... couldn't find the book) I only found one other ref for this book on the forum.

When he was studying the wolves he resorted to the same pattern so that he could observe them when they were awake. He found it so useful that he continued it after returning to civilization.

Farley Mowat claimed that he liked his new sleep habits so well that he continued them after he returned to civilization. As I understand it, he would sleep briefly, then wake up and move around without necessarily getting out of bed. I don't have any evidence as to whether he kept it up for life. He is 87 now in spite of being a hard living type.

He did say that he slept with a women whom he was planning to marry. She said she would rather spend her life with a bow-legged grasshopper than spend one more night with him!

This pattern should be called Wolf Napping as this is what Farley called it.
I was never a proficient napper so never really gave it a try.


TruthHunter


Abstract

In situations where continuous prolonged work demands exist, the habitual nocturnal monophasic (6-8h duration) sleep pattern can rarely be accomplished, and performance effectiveness may sometimes be severely compromised by accumulation of sleep debt. Several studies have shown that naps can be disproportionately effective in recovering functioning during continuous work (CW).

In this study, sleep-wake patterns and their relationship to performance were studied for 99 sailors involved in solo and double-handed ocean sailing races (a model of a highly demanding CW situation). Most sailors spontaneously adopted multiple nap sleep-wake schedules and adapted without major difficulties to such polyphasic patterns. 66.5% had mean sleep episode durations (SEDs) ranging from 20 min to 2h. Overall mean Total Sleep Time (TST) per 24h was reduced from a baseline of 7.5 to 6.3h. Race performance correlated negatively and significantly with mean SEDs and TSTs. Best performance results were obtained by those sleeping for periods of between 20 min and 1 h and for a total of 4.5 to 5.5h of sleep per day.

The results are discussed together with several chronobiological, phylogenetic and experimental studies and issues, all of which suggest that adult humans may have a damped polyphasic sleep-wake tendency. It is also proposed that polyphasic sleep schedules could become promising and feasible solutions for the management of sleep requirements under prolonged CW situations.

Thank you for the interesting read.

Any idea how much sleep he was actually getting on his wolf napping schedule with the wolves and when he took the sleep pattern back to civilization with him?

Exactly the question I was going to ask :)
Wolf napping. Nice name.

BTW, this means I was an uber-dude for a short period of time then, if this is true
Was one of the hardest things I've ever gone through though :/

Placebo, u stopped the lucidman schedule?

No, still trying it, and not succeeding - I need to take it more seriously I guess.
Can't even get through one day of it without screwing up. Babies don't help either.

I suppose I'm being too nonchalant about it... it's essentially a modified uberman routine, so I should give it more respect, and stop screwing around, place more safeties, etc

Third day lucky, eh?

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Originally Posted by The Subatomic Level

Thank you for the interesting read.

Any idea how much sleep he was actually getting on his wolf napping schedule with the wolves and when he took the sleep pattern back to civilization with him?

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I don't believe he said exactly how much. He claimed it was much less than he normally slept as I remember. I read the book probably 35 years ago.

Ubermensch is German for Superman. It was title for some work by an apparently forgettable German Philosopher!

The key difference between "Wolf Napping" and Uberman is sleep as much as needed, but only 10-20 minutes at a time.
Between WN and Everyman is don't sleep for longer than 20 minutes.
Farley Mowat was apparently somewhat manic and driven I think it helps. If it allows more flexibility while still cutting down on total sleep needs, it might have advantages.

TruthHunter

BTW, on the subject of length of naps, and sleep requirement.. a guy at work with me was involved in a hectic job with the bank, where the deadline was insane
In the end, everyone was forced to get very little sleep, and most people didn't even go home

This guy ended up with a very wierd napping scenario:
Whenever there was a backup, or some sort of wait involved, he held his car keys in his hand, and fell asleep in his chair, in a posture that results in the keys falling out of his hands as soon as he nods off.

He did this for weeks on end apparently.
He told me this because of my own wierdness with sleep, but he just sees the entire event as something he hated and looks back in relief that he doesnt need to do it again.

Interesting though, no?

So when his keys dropped he would hear it and wake up? Did he do this over many times during the night or just nap like this so many times a day?

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Originally Posted by The Subatomic Level

So when his keys dropped he would hear it and wake up? Did he do this over many times during the night or just nap like this so many times a day?

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I believe this method of sleep was invented by Salvador Dali. His version was to hold a fork in his hand over an upside pan or metal bowl. Apparently he needed a little louder alarm clock than the man with the keys!

Yep. I think he mentioned that one of the guys who did it with him mentioned Salvador Dali.
And he also mentioned that either the keys woke him, or one of the other guys would make sure he wakes up

Using the information provided in the OP by TruthHunter, I wanted to know what everyone thought about these ideas for alternate sleep patterns.

This is under the assumption that "Perhaps the successful pattern wouldn't be Uberman. Rather a pattern where the nap would be repeated as often as needed especially at night to get enough sleep but never more than 20 minutes. "... as stated by TruthHunter.

Maybe the time you take naps does not matter. Placebo, luke and maybe others have been experimenting with Lucidman(two 20min naps back to back, 3 times a day). If that becomes successful and the space between naps doesnt matter, I'm curious if something like 6 20 min naps at night all back to back to back, etc. could be successful.

I would think spreading out the time between the naps would have to help somewhat, so maybe 8 20 min naps all back to back at night would be the right number. That would still only be 2.66 hrs of sleep, which is nothing to scoff at for the most convenient polyphasic (not sure if you can even call it polyphasic) schedule ever.

There could be a ton of possibilities for different schedules. Maybe 5 20 minute naps back to back at night and then 2 or 3 different naps during the day. Who knows what might work!

BTW, I believe the possibilities above is what TruthHunter was getting at with his OP.

I've been very curious about something else relating to these back to back 20 min naps. I'm sure most of you know, but in case you don't, it is commonly known that in a normal monophasic sleeper, later sleep cycle consist mostly of REM sleep while early sleep cycles contain little REM sleep. So, the longer you sleep the more sleep cycles you go through and the more REM the later sleep cycles have.

A big part of polyphasic sleeping is that your body must adapt and get you to REM sleep because it is supposedly the stage of sleep that allows your mind to unwind so you don't go crazy.

I'm curious about whether or not the back to back to back etc. 20 min sleeps can trick your body into moving on to the next sleep cycle. Do you think it is possible you could sleep 20 mins, wake up fully for 5 mins, rinse and repeat 3 or 4 times and then go back to sleep in the 5th or 6th cycle of sleep? If so, you could attempt to get a normal 90 minutes of sleep in on your 5th or 6th cycle which would consist mainly of REM sleep. Hopefully, you would dream very vividly for a long time (possibly lucid) and wake up feeling refreshed.

I have no idea if this has any chance to work or not, but I can only try to find out by experimenting with it and seeing if it works. Does anyone know what the actual trigger to getting into the next sleep cycle actually is? Obviously sleeping a full 90 minutes of sleep followed by more sleep puts you into the next cycle, but is there a specific stage of sleep (or other trigger) that you must reach before you can wake up and then fall back asleep into the next cycle?

I know its a long post with a lot of different ideas, but tell me what you all think about some of these ideas.

Tonight I think I'll try to enter a later stage of sleep several 20 min naps at night along with anyone else who cares to try the experiment. I plan to get up for 5 minutes after every 20 minutes of sleep 5 times, then go to sleep for 90 minutes. During each 5 minutes of wake time, I will first try to remember any dreaming that may have occurred. I will wash my face, have a small drink and a tiny snack, walk around, do some reality checks, and surf the web for a minute if i have time. Before I go back to bed I will record whether I feel groggy, fine, tired, etc.

With a little luck hopefully I will be in the 6th cycle of sleep by the time I fall asleep for my 90 minute cycle. I will of course record any dreams and how I feel when I get up, and will determine if I need more sleep after that (I'm not currently polyphasic).

Well, I ran into a few problems with the experiment.

I didn't even fall asleep for my first two 20 minute naps, and I'm not sure about the third one. AFter I woke up from my 4th alarm I was very groggy and felt dizzy. I was using a cell-phone vibrating alarm and did not even wake up for my 5th alarm (another 20 min nap) or my 6th alarm (90 minute nap).

Conclusions: I probably did not wake myself enough after my 3rd nap, and when I fell back asleep I continued in the same sleep cycle causing me to wake up in deep sleep on my 4th nap. This is why I was really groggy.

I may try this again tonight. I need louder alarms, and i should probably add another nap for each time I don't fall asleep during a nap.

Quote from Subatomic Level 3:31 17th:
"I'm curious about whether or not the back to back to back etc. 20 min sleeps can trick your body into moving on to the next sleep cycle."

Excellent point...
Perhaps this is why Uberman works at all. Once a person is adapted, they get 6 cycles per day.

Perhaps Dymaxion doesn't work well because few people can get more than one sleep cycle during a 30 minute nap and 4 sleep cycles per day aren't enough. Success might mean getting two sleep cycles during 2 naps and only one during the other 2. This isn't very easy as one would tend to wake after 15-25 min and not be sleepy enough to get another cycle.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between length of sleep and amount of rest obtained. A micro-nap is surprisingly restful. 20 minutes gives relatively more rest than 30 minutes. People on Everyman need twice as much total sleep as Uberman. What is the best nap length? Too long and you can't sleep for hours.(8 hours and you can't sleep for another 20!) Too short and you didn't really get rested. 20 minute naps may be too long. If you can get 6 sleep cycles in 6 10 min naps maybe you can get by on 1 hour a day.

When people are mildly sleep deprived for long periods, they find that they transition faster. Apparently, the sleep cycles are compressed. As long as one gets the right number, sufficiently deep, they are ok even if they are shortened. There is just less wasted transition time.

Monophasic sleep is inefficient for 2 reasons. The 1st is because the brain is lazy and takes its sweet time changing states. The 2nd is that long periods of unconsciousness reduce the optimal functioning of brain and body. The brain needs rest, but not coma! Waking after only a few minutes teaches the brain to avoid deep coma states that cause body fatigue and low awareness.

I suspect that the depth of sleep needed depends mostly on a certain number of "disconnections" being made in the brain. Too short a sleep time and the brain hasn't flipped enough switches to get rested.

I remember reading of an EEG taken of a Yogi. His brain waves showed deep sleep but he had 85% recall for conversations going on around him. I remember he had total recall when he was fully awake! He apparently had sufficient connections even in deep sleep to function better than most people awake!

Geese are able to sleep on one side of the brain at a time.They sleep in a group and the ones on the outside change direction so they can keep the vigilant eye outward.

The man who holds the current record for wakefulness used techniques that would concentrate alertness on one side of the brain with the idea to let the other hemisphere rest.

Perhaps the ideal would be 5 10-15 minute napsspaced during the night and one in the afternoon.

This isn't exactly what the original "Wolf Napping" system was, though. I understood that one would awake after 10-15 minutes, move around enough to be fully alert and stretched, then repeat if sleepy. Thus one could get as many hours as necessary, but never be quiet long enough to create body fatigue or deep unconsciousness. If you needed 20 10 min naps thats still less than 3 1/2 hours sleep done in 4-4 1/2 hrs.

Here is what I understood:
11pm- 1:00 to 3:00 am 6 to 20 X 10min
If Needed:
3:30am 10min
6:00am 10min
1:30pm 10-15min
Total sleep 1 hour to 4 hours

Once you are adapted,you wouldn't need sleep deprivation to make it work. It would probably be important to limit light levels during the nap cluster. This would prevent premature suppression of Melatonin. This may be the key factor that would make Wolf Napping better that Uberman

Getting enough sleep and learning to transition quickly should make LD easier. Thats why we're here isn't it?

I might try this if I can make an effective 10 minute BWGen sleep cycle. I've tended to quickly become resistant to Binaural beats, though.

TruthHunter

If you did make a 10 minute Binaural beat mp3 and could upload it I would probably try this with you.

BTW, you seem to have a good wealth of knowledge on this topic. Have you tried experimenting with any of your ideas on WN in the past?

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Originally Posted by TruthHunter

I understood that one would awake after 10-15 minutes, move around enough to be fully alert and stretched, then repeat if sleepy. Thus one could get as many hours as necessary, but never be quiet long enough to create body fatigue or deep unconsciousness. If you needed 20 10 min naps thats still less than 3 1/2 hours sleep done in 4-4 1/2 hrs.

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I had trouble last night knowing whether or not I was fully alert when I would get up after 20 minutes of sleep. Would splashing water on my face and doing a few minutes of stretching be enough? What about some push ups? That might hinder my chances to get back to sleep if I raise my heart rate by doing push ups.

Is there any kind of test you would suggest so that one could know they are fully alert? There are some reaction tests online I could perform, maybe that would be sufficient alertness if I could perform consecutive reaction times similar to my times during the day.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TruthHunter

It would probably be important to limit light levels during the nap cluster. This would prevent premature suppression of Melatonin. This may be the key factor that would make Wolf Napping better that Uberman

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Would using the LCD monitor of my computer be too much light? I can always turn the brightness down before I head to bed. I would obviously need the monitor to perform the online reaction tests. I have 300mcg melatonin supplements I could take for a week or 2 to fight off the premature melatonin suppression as well.

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Originally Posted by TruthHunter

Getting enough sleep and learning to transition quickly should make LD easier. Thats why we're here isn't it?

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For a 10 min nap that doesnt leave much time for LDing, but hey, even a 7 min LD would be longer than any I have had.

I had trouble last night knowing whether or not I was fully alert when I would get up after 20 minutes of sleep. Would splashing water on my face and doing a few minutes of stretching be enough? What about some push ups? That might hinder my chances to get back to sleep if I raise my heart rate by doing push ups.

Farley Mowat claimed that he copied the wolves. They would spin around in circles like dogs flattening out their beds. I suggest things that would stimulate the vestibular system like making circles with your head,or spinning around a few times. Rather than doing pushups that might, as you said, hinder getting back to sleep, do stretching or chi qung. Incidentally there is a connection between LD and good balance. Also I am reminded of a Dervish exercise that involves moving the head in rather strenuous patterns while doing the equivalent of mantras. The key might be alert the brain without banishing all sleepiness. Wild animals have to check for danger in their environment.

Is there any kind of test you would suggest so that one could know they are fully alert?


the objective test would be GSR skin resistance. This is a very basic test of arousal. What we are interested in is a state of relaxed awareness(GABA state?). Doing different things to force the brain to be active, such as make or listen to music, read, do math, plan activities, etc. Anything that would counteract the tendency to the brain to slip into coma. Until you master the skill their may be some things to avoid. Things that act ike a cup of coffee or maybe reading http://www.ATS.com might keep you awake for hours :)


Would using the LCD monitor of my computer be too much light? I can always turn the brightness down before I head to bed. I would obviously need the monitor to perform the online reaction tests. I have 300mcg melatonin supplements I could takefor a week or 2 to fight off the premature melatonin suppression as well.
I really don't know what levels would be suitable. Perhaps there is some research. I do know that some people are much more sensitive than others. Anything other than complete darkness is too much for some. Others aren't activated by ordinary house lighting. Only use the melatonin if you have trouble falling back to sleep

For a 10 min nap that doesnt leave much time for LDing, but hey, even a 7 min LD would be longer than any I have had.

The key is trigger them at will. Length is partly dependent on time perception. Flexibility is the goal. Staying in the dream for as long as you want beats a coma for 1/3 of your life!

I am going to have to test my own advice a little more! :oops:

TruthHunter

About the lighting, I've heard mixed reports too.
On the one hand, some researchers have come to the conclusion that the lights in our houses are causing major circadian rhythm disorders.
And then on the other hand, the amount of lux that the sun produces eclipses (pun intended) the lighting produced by a standard bulb.

In my experience, using a floodlight aimed at the wall next to me has quite a big effect on my wakefulness (instead of relying on the usual lighting)
But YMMV.

Well, I gave this a shot last night.

Waited until I was tired which was at 2 o clock and took 20 minute naps back to back to back a total of 8 times. Depending on whether I took notes, used the restroom, grabbed a drink from the kitchen, and/or did a lot of stretching, the time between naps varied from 2 to 8 minutes.

My first nap officially started at 2:05 and I my last nap ended at 5:15. 3 hrs and 10 mins isn't bad at all compared to the 8-12 hours per day i've been getting the past week since I've been done with finals. The weird thing is... I feel great! I actually felt really good after the 5th nap, and I do not think I fell asleep at all in the next 3 naps. I do not remember sleeping at all for the first 2 naps as well, so it would appear that naps 3-5 is where I got some quality sleep. The first two naps were necessary for the good sleeping during 3-5. The last 3 naps couldn't have hurt, but were probably not necessary.

I will see how the day goes... If I get really tired at some point... I will take another 20 min nap... maybe two back to back, or possibly 2 separate ones.