Polyphasic Sleep, what is that??? Sounds like a very advance word to me the very first time I saw it in The 4-Hour Boby by Tim Ferriss (a book that I stumbled upon while reading News Straits Times last week). It is claimed to be an uncommon guide to RAPID fat-loss (I NEED THAT! lol), incredible SEX (wow~ worth reading right?) and becoming SUPERHUMAN (what? like becoming Captain America??).
In actual fact, the biggest reason why I picked up this book is because it mentions "How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested". And it's all about polyphasic sleep - sleeping multiples in a 24-hour period. The theory behinds it, to keep it short and sweet, is to increase REM (the quality deep sleep where we really rest) of our sleep by HACKING our brain to fall into REM immediately for all naps.
How can this BRAIN HACK work? Supposedly it takes about a week to adjust to it. A normal sleep cycle is 90 minutes, and REM sleep occurs late in this cycle. Our normal night sleep of 7~8 hours contains only 2 hours of REM only on average. REM is the most important phase of sleep, the one in which you experience dreams, and when deprived of REM for too long, you suffer serious negative consequences. Polyphasic sleep conditions your body to learn to enter REM sleep immediately when you begin sleeping instead of much later in the sleep cycle. So during the first week you experience sleep deprivation as your body learns to adapt to shorter sleep cycles, but after the adaptation you’ll feel fine, maybe even better than before.
There are a few variants to polyphasic sleep and the most extreme one is called Uberman whereby a person sleep 20 minutes 6 times per day, with equally spaced naps every 4 hours around the clock. This means you’re only sleeping 2 hours per day! Insanity! Just imagine that you have to sleep every 4 hours (on a fixed schedule), how inconvenient is that?
Luckily, there are other variants which are more adaptable and more practical like Everyman Sleep where a person has a core sleep of 3 hours with 3 times 20 minutes naps per day. There are also other variants with longer core sleep and lesser naps.
After some further research and review of the sleep logs / blogs of some practitioners, I've decided to give it a try for the simple reason of wanting to have more time and better quality of sleep (high REM). I am BRAIN HACKING myself for Everyman sleep schedule - 3 hours of core sleep with 3 times 20 minutes naps.
My schedule:
3am-6am 3hours Core Sleep
11am/12pm 20min Nap
4pm/5pm 20min Nap
10pm/10pm 20min Nap
Today is my first day and I've only sleep approx 4 hours for the past 24 hours. To be honest, I'm dizzy now and my eyes are tired but mind is still active. I'm gonna take my 3 hours core sleep in another 10 minutes or so.
The past 24 hours has been exciting and I'm gonna update you on this new experience in a couple of days. Night!
