Polyphasic Sleep / Sueño Polifasico

5:32 am

Tonight has been really difficult but we were saved by a friend of ours, Fora, who came over and played a board game with us. This was the engaging physical activity we needed to get us through the first part of the evening. We took our 30 min nap at 2am on schedule while Fora was here but we both woke up feeling tired and even a little disoriented at first. We walked downtown and had a sprite at an outdoor cafe (at 3:30 am we could barely get a set in one of the 8 or so cafes) and then we walked home. We got home at 5am and tried to watch an episode, but we are having a lot of trouble staying awake while seated. We played the game again and it lasted luckly until our 8am goal.

It is hard because when you have no idea how you are going to pass the time awake, you don’t have anything to look forward to. The reward of a 30 minute nap is not really a reward, because your mind is craving sleep without abandon. We know that we are getting closer now to adoption, but this is so hard. I hope tomorrow night is better.

At times I had the sensation that the world was getting more cloudy…the wakeful dream state that some people have mentioned.

Lucas did have caffeine both before our 2am nap and a little bit after. I think it is ok because it is night time and we don’t have much choice…but there is always the wonder if that is holding back our REM sleep, which to my understanding is the key. We did eat very close to our 2am nap…pizza around 1am. We don’t remember having dreams, and we don’t feel so rested.

I really hope we make progress tomorrow. I do know it is easier to get through the day portions, there is more to do and the body responds.

6:32pm

We passed the day fairly well, but I felt very listless and had low energy throughout. We left the house at 9am to walk into town and ran errands. We barely got home in time to do our 2pm nap. That is what makes this type of sleep pattern tricky…you can’t be too flexible when it comes to the sleep schedule.

This afternoon we ate and I have been tired and somewhat uncomfortable. We watched a movie and I nodded off a bunch of times. I MISS SLEEPING! And today was really rainy so it was such a shame not to even be able to sit on my bed and read… It is hard to keep going when you don’t see that the results are getting closer, you just feel uncomfortable.

But with that said, we are definitely close to adapting, and it is really hard to believe that we are doing as well as we are considering we have only had 2 hours of sleep per day total. Looking forward to not dreading night time. We invited Marco and Alejo over…this will certainly be what saves us tonight.

Well we almost gave in and slept last night. Thank goodness, when one of us wants to quit it all together, the other one holds the line and is supportive. We were really feeling the need to sleep especially in our 2am to 8am shift. It is really strange when the whole world outside the window is completely silent and still. Another problem is that when you are adjusting you don’t feel like doing much. For example reading a book would have put me to sleep. We definitely didn’t have enough physical activities to do, and as I said that is really important for that late night portion during adjustment. We ended up sorting through old CD’s and organizing our book shelf.

We had a long talk this morning about switching to the Everyman system, which can consist of for an exmple a 3 hour “core sleep” and three 20 minute naps throughout the day. This schedule is variable, some people do the core 2 or even 4 hours and the naps can be 2 to 4 etc. From what we have read about this variation on the Uberman is that you can ajust the time of your naps 1 hour in each direction. So for example if we set our core from 2am to 5am and kept our naps at 8am, 2pm and 8pm, we could ajust our nap to 8:30am or 9am some days if needed. The problem with Uberman and maybe even the one we are doing, Dymaxion, you don’t have much flexiblity. Your body has a hard time flexing the schedule without feeling it.

The other information we read about Uberman vs. Everyman is that Uberman is easier to initially adjust to, with total mental clarity in 2 weeks or less, where as with Everyman the total mental clarity can talk up to 4 weeks.

We have heard that it is very difficult to switch from one schedule to another once you have set your body to that scheulde. For example, Steve Pavlina claimed that he had problems trying to switch from Uberman to Dymaxion.

So we are still wondering if we should make the switch now to Everyman tonight before our body become totally set up for Dymaxion. The Everyman sounds more reasonable in the long term, however we would miss experiencing the Dymaxion, which would be a shame. It seems that the fact that your sleep expands to include more than REM in Everyman must be significant in terms of biological matters. Also, we have read that people like to experience the cosy feeling of sleeping those three hours. We also think that during the night we might want less time as well. We will be adding almost 40 hours more to our week which is a lot of time to do various things, but may be too much.

I think we will try to stick it out with Dymaxion, but hope that if we switch to Everyman mid stream that our keeping the other 3 naps at the exact time will help with the trauma the shift will cause.

Today I woke up after our 8am nap, feeling very tired and a little dizzy. I got a second wind after 30 plus minutes of feeling really drowsy. The good news is that we both entered REM sleep! We are getting closer to adapting. The shower didn’t help wake me up. I didn’t drink a coffee today. We are really going to have to plan for tonight, sitting in front of a computer or watching a movie is not going to work. We need to be doing something more active, such as cleaning or playing cards.

~5:00pm
After the initital drowseyness we made it through the day feeling really good. We worked all morning and in the afternoon went grocery shopping. We were tired after our 8pm nap, so we decided to start that stint off with a walk to the plaza, were we sat for 2 horus talking. This outside stimulous and being away form the computer was a great idea.

 Anoche fue horrible. Mucho sueño, ganas de dejar todo y volver a la normalidad. A eso de las 4am Sentia que cada celula de mi cuerpo quería ir a dormir. Y casi lo hago. Estuvimos cerca. Pero decidimos darle un par más de días. Me tomé una taza grande de café extra negro y pude llegar despierto a las 8.

Hablamos de cambiar a un cronograma Everyman, con una siesta de 3 horas a la noche y 3 siestas de 20 minutos durante el día. Supuestamente es mucho menos drástico. Y Dormimos 4 horas en vez de 2. Pero por ahora seguimos con Dymaxion. Por lo menos hasta esta noche.

En la siesta de esta mañana (8am del miércoles 6) los dos soñamos! Parece que llegamos al MOR en menos de media hora. Además, al despertarnos nos me pareció que hubiese mos dormido toda la noche, y me desperté fresco como una lechuga.
 Definitivamente el café no fue tan noscivo.

9:10 - Ya siento la falta de sueño de nuevo. El período de recien levantado me-siento-re-bien se está agrandando de a poco (de a muy poco). He decidido tomar mate sin miramientos para mantenerme despuierto. Por lo menos hasta que no me haga más falta.

13:45 - Llegamos a la siesta de las 2 bastante cansados, pero el estado va mejorando. Los altibajos energéticos se van suavizando, pude trabajar y de vez en cuando sentí que me dormía en frente de la computadora, y tuve que pararme y caminar por unos segundos para que se vaya la sensación. Estamos planeando invitar gente esta noche para que nos ayuden a mantenernos despiertos a base de juegos de mesa. Mis capacidades motrices están al 85~90% y mi capacidad de raciocinio se ve bastante reducida. Supongo que este es el período zombie del que todos hablan. Me cuesta enfocarme y concentrarme, y a veces me siento muy cansado, pero ya casi es hora de la siesta. Espero que sigamos con M.O.R. y soñemos algo divertido.

20:50 - Despues de dormir la siesta de las 8 sigo casi tan cansado como antes de acostarme. Y un tanto ido también. Se viene mate/café para pasar la noche.

23:50 - Sin café. Llegamos muy cansados al final del día. Invitamos a un amigo a que nos divierta para poder mantenernos despiertos.

So I only have about 15 minutes to write this post before we get to take our 2pm nap. I have been feeling really good today except for the first 30 or so minutes after our morning 8am nap. The sun certainly helps pick your energy up. Also I find that if I don’t have something to do I get to feeling a bit strange, light headed, slight naseau etc. But when I am doing something that seems to fade away and I feel almost normal.

Again, I think most of the strangeness of last night was our built in apprehension about the way we would feel. We have stayed up until dawn occasionally during a Friday night and didn’t feel half as strange. When I reminded myself of that it was as if my mind cleared and I felt fine.

09:00

I made my regular cup of java this morning but only drank about 1/3 of it. We are planning to follow the advice of the others and not eat before nap. This afternoon we will walk into the center. I think the hardest part will certainly be tonight when the sun goes down.

We are rapping up the last major items of work we needed to complete. We actually postponed starting the project until after a major job was finished. So we should be able to coast without major deadlines into the first week.

The most exciting thing about last night was that I got to read a bit more about the process and to my surprise we are doing the Buckminster Fuller version! He is one of my heros in life. He was an philosopher and invetor who had one of the most original and refreshing minds of the 20th century.

So there is some presedence behind the 4/30 system…which I was wondering as we had considered the Uberman 6/20. Fuller called his version “Dymaxion Sleep” and apparently practiced it for 2 years. He claimed he stopped because the other businessmen around him would not tolerate the schedule.

“Dymaxion is an abbreviation of “dynamic maximum tension” , however it has also been reported that the name is a combination of the words dynamic, maximum, and ion. Fuller was very excited about the word and used it for many of his inventions in the decades to follow, including the Dymaxion house, the Dymaxion car, and the Dymaxion World Map. He also renamed his elaborate journal, in which he sought to document his life as an experiment with the greatest possible detail, as the Dymaxion Chronofile.”

1:25 am

So this is technically Day 3…but to recap the latter part of Day 2, I will write here. I still felt fine most of the day with my mind’s point of view having a powerful effect on my physical state of being. For example,  if I get to thinking I should be tired, I feel tired. If I think, wait a minute I feel fine, I do feel fine, physically. I suspect this will decrease in the days to come as my mind will take a back seat to my body rather than the other way around. I haven’t noticed loss of cognative functions yet - I can read, do work etc. though I am a slight (9 on a scale of 10) bit physically clumsy and I assume that will increase in Day 3 through Day 5.

We have been following the advice of the others and today ate lunch right after we woke up from our 2pm. I felt drowsy for about 15 minutes after we awoke and wasn’t terribly hungry. In both the 2pm and 8pm naps I did “fall asleep” unlike day 1, where I was just tossing and turning without loosing conciousness. I don’t think I have experienced REM yet, but I am not sure as we have awoken twice with a start in the middle of our 30 min. Once with me waking up 10 minutes early and the last one with Lucas walking up 15 minutes in.

Some of the other people trying Polyphasic sleep have been recommending people to sleep on couches and floors…nothing too comfortable. For now (the first two days) , I have been trying to make myself VERY comfortable as I would when I normally go to bed (change clothes and brush teeth etc) , hoping to get to a relaxed and deep REM sooner than later. I also have thought at least in the first two days it helped to cover my eyes as well during the day and be in a darker room. Though this said, the recommendatiosn for not getting too comfortable were based on the risk over oversleeping which can delay the adaptation period. We are less concerned about tthe danger of oversleeping because we have the advantage of three alarm clock system plus eachother. (Yes, from all vantage points, it is great to be doing this with my boyfriend together).

In terms of the general ambiance…I feel like I am being dragged into some kind of …dimension. A sort of personal unchartered territory that I seem to be wading into gradually step by step. It is a strange feeling, and there are definietly times, like now, mintues before my 2am nap, where you want to turn back and just sleep.

I hope we can find enough things to do durring the 2nd wake cyle of the night. I think I need to do something semi active, to keep my blood flowing. Once again, I atticipate nighttime to be much harder than daytime. Tomorrow is supposed to be “zombie day”.

El dia 2 empezó a las 00:00 del 5 de febrero e increíblemente me siento algo cansado, aún cuando es una hora a la que normalmente estaría despierto, anoche dormí normalmente y dormí dos siestas de 30 minutos durante el día.

La conclusión del día 1 es que es casi normal, pero genera un cansancio/estado psicológico un tanto extraño. Como si ya hubiera pasado de largo. Probablemente solo psicosomatico.

Aparte de eso, el primer día fue bastante llevadero, aunque ahora empieza la parte donde tenemos que pasar la noche despiertos.

02:35 - No dormimos mucho realmente, es dificil acostumbrarse a dormir en periodos tan cortos. En la siesta de las 8 probablemente podamos… Esto se pone interesante.

04:08 - Estoy cansado, con ganas de dormir. todavia faltan 4 horas para la proxima siesta.

06:23 - Muy cansado, considerando seriamente abandonar ante la perspectiva de solo 30 minutos de sueño. Y todavía falta una hora y media! Me empiezo a plantear si voy a tener la fuerza de voluntad necesaria….

07:00 - Falta una hora. Esta amaneciendo y ya quiero que sean las 8!!! Espero no dormir de más…

8:50 - Dormimos, me desperté pensando que habíamos dormido un par de horas. Un poco desorientado y bastante descansado. Costó leventarnos, pero no tanto como yo imaginaba. Despues de una ducha el sueño parece cosa del pasado. Me pregunto si tomar un café me va a molestar para la siesta de las 14 y decido que no y me preparo un café un poco más suave de lo normal.

9:15 - Menos mal que estoy tomando este café porque ya siento los efectos del sueño. No importa cuanto café tome, a las 2 de la tarde voy a dormir como un bebé.

10:30 - Mucho sueño, es un día interesante, muy psicosomático. He pasado mas tiempo despierto con menos consecuencias, pero siempre fue por/para algo en particular. Ahora simplemente para mantener el cronograma. De a ratos me parece que si cierro los ojos voy a dormir hasta mañana… Agregado un termo de mate a la ingesta de cafeína.

13:32 - La solución para vencer al sueño fue ponerme a hacer otra cosa, esto de estar en la compu me duerme (literalmente) pero aproveche para hacer las compras y cocinar y la verdad que estoy de maravilla. Eso más el mate… espero poder dormir la siesta de las 2pm, pero no creo que haya problema.

16:00 - a las 14 dormimos bastante bien, estoy mas fresco que esta mañana, ya no tanto sueño y me siento más descansado. Hay que ver como llego a la siesta de esta noche, pero ya no siento el cansancio pesado de la mañana.

18:45 - El segundo tercer cacho del día (entre las 14 y las 20) parece estar caracterizado por períodos alternantes de euforia y cansancio. No se si es normal por la falta de sueño o es inducido por el mate.

20:40 - Nos fuimos a dormir a las 20:00 y alguien tocó el timbre un minuto después. Un punto en contra de este cronograma tan estricto. Me desperté solo a las 20:15 y me quedé dando vueltas en la cama en un semi sueño hasta las 20:30. Me levanté de maravilla.

23:30 - Termina el día. En general mis facultades mentales se vieron disminuidas y en un momento (despues de levantarme a las 20:30) me sentí bastante “normal” por un tiempo. En general apenas me levanto me siento bien y va desmejorando bastante a medida que avanzan las horas. Me pregunto si Uberman con siestas más próximas no será mejor en este aspecto.

Me pregunto cuales serán los efectos de la cafeína en el sueño polifásico. Yo suelo tomar dos o tres litros de mate por día, espero que no me siente mal.

Por ahora no hay ningun efecto adverso, salvo que me está costando dormir a las horas programadas, pero eso puede que sea porque es el primer/segundo día.

Update: Segun dicen, la cafeina es mala mala para quien esté intentando un cronograma polifásico. Aunque Con una duración media de 6 horas, podría llegar a tomar un cafecito apenas me levanto.

Update: son las 6 y media del 5 de febrero (día 2) y necesito café para llegar a las 8. voy a intentar aguantar sin el, pero me parece que voy a dormir por primera vez mi siesta correspondiente.

Update (7/2): Hay que tener cuidado con la cafeína! tanto café como mate. No es bueno tomarlos cerca de una siesta. Ni si quiera una coca cola.

We went to bed at 2am, hoping to wake up at 8:30am to start our schedule. We woke to Pooma ringing the doorbell… it was 9:25 am. The famed alarm clock failed us. Or as we were later to discover, like most equipment failures — it was categorized: “operator error”.

We tried to sleep for our 2pm to 2:30pm nap, but weren’t very tired…and the same happened at our 8pm pass in which we were awoken by the 70’s Polaris, Lucas’ cell phone and a voice in his computer saying “wake up twice” in machine tone.

Things don’t feel strange…yet. But somehow the whole thing gets under your skin and for moments at a time you feel tired…a psychosomatic reaction to the experiment. I suppose my mind telling my body that I am tired is not the best way to get things off on the right foot.

1:37 AM
Absolutely incredible how strong the mind is. Lucas and I were both having periods of feeling strangely tired, and we still haven’t deviated from our normal sleep schedule. I even went so far as to feel almost light headed. It as if my brain is practicing/panicking. So funny. We are about to take our 2AM nap.

I have been reading a little bit more about this first week of adjustment. Steve Pavlina says he felt ok after 4 days, Wired Magazine says a week and Wikipedia says 2 weeks. Most people can’t make it through the first period of adjustment. We have to stick to it carefully, or we will prolong that adjustment.

I am so glad we chose to modify our original plan. We have decided to do 6 hour/30 minutes routine rather than a 4 hour/20 minute routine. Lucas mentioned that on the 4 hour it would be hard to streech past 5 hours when needed. He also mentioned, based on Steve Pavlina’s blog, it would be hard to change the cycle once our bodies got used to it. I think that the 4 hour version would be so impossible to manage with leaving the house to do things, so hard, that we would end up unable to sustain it. I do however wonder where the 4 hour/20 minute schedule originated and if our version has a presedence. From a social standpoint (which I understand is why people stop doing it) it is to an advantage, from a biological standpoint who knows.

There is still so much I don’t know about this…but I will have plenty of time to find out. The computer just barked at us…”time to sleep, time to sleep”. Man, that voice is creepy.

Yesterday when I was at the art fair killing time, I bought a used, 1970’s alarm clock in honor of our new adventure. When I got on the elevator and off the street I realized it made a lot of noise ticking away…I wondered if the sound would drive us crazy. Each second that ticks off seems louder than a bomb. But these types of alarm clocks were common in the 70’s, so just like the sleeping…I know we will adjust. And besides I am enamored with its ingenuity…no electricity, no batteries. And it even has glow in the dark paint on the tips of its hands.

Emulando a Steve Pavlina, que en 2005 hizo unos 5 meses de Sueño polifásico a la Uberman, hoy (4/2/2008) empezamos con el cronograma de sueño dymaxion (30/6), llenos de expectativas de lo que vamos a poder hacer con tanto tiempo extra.

Deberiamos habernos levantado a las 8:30, pero nos dormimos! asi que nos levantamos a las 9:30. Interesante comienzo para esto.

Hasta ahora parece un día normal, con una siesta a las 2 de la tarde y otra a las 8… asi que basicamente estamos cansados de dormir. Pero calculo que durante la noche se irá poniendo más interesante.

Como el día esta dividido en 4 períodos de 6 horas, voy a referirme a ellos como “cacho”.

Entonces, el cacho 1 fue bastante normal, y luego de la primera siesta, el cacho 2 también, un poco extraño esto de obligarse a dormir. Supongo que es mejor dormir poco el día anterior. De hecho no pudimos dormir la ultima siesta, y ahora que recien me levanto me siento un tanto adormilado, pero consciente. Claro que es normal despues de una siesta en un día estándar.

Update: Son las 23:50 y me estoy muriendo de sueño. Increible, loúnico que hice hoy fue dormir más de la cuenta. Supongo que es la reacción psicosomática de la que habla Steve. Ni quiero imaginarme lo que va a ser esta noche.

Cabe aclarar que normalmente me quedo despierto hasta las 2 am sin problemas. ahora estoy esperando que se hagan las 2 para tomar mi siesta (estamos durmiendo a las 8, 14, 20 y 2)

Y si… me entere de que la gente puede dormir solo 2 horas por dia y me puse a analizar en que gasto mi tiempo.
Definitivamente puedo usar un par de horitas extra, verdad?

La idea básica es dormir de a pedazos, hay distintos cronogramas que uno puede seguir, siendo los mas conocidos (por mi) el de Uberman y el de Buckminister Fuller. El primero es 20 minutos cada 4 horas y el segundo es de 30 minutos cada 6 horas.

Al principio mi idea era usar el cronograma Uberman, porque encontré más gente en la web contando experiencias y mas referencias en general, pero todos, invariablemente, dejan el sueño polifásico por incompatibilidad con el resto de la sociedad. Justamente por eso, estoy siguiendo el cronograma de Buckminister Fuller, que me da un poco más de tiempo despierto de un solo tirón y es mas compatible con cualquier actividad que tome más de 3 horas.

Bueno, la cuestión es que hoy empecé con esto (después de mucho
planear). Cuando tenga un tiempito (los planes son tener mucho tiempo
libre a partir de ahora) ahondo más en el tema. pero por ahora todo
bien.