Hey everyone, this is the first of many blogs dedicated to my descent into an Uberman polyphasic sleep cycle. 5:00 this morning marks the 24 hour mark since I started my adaptation. The Uberman sleep cycle involves 6 twenty minute naps spaced four hours apart. The purpose is to give yourself extra time during the day. Obviously, through simple math anyone can tell that someone on this cycle is only getting two hours of sleep a day. However, it is plausible to be able to function the same if not better on this much sleep. During the adaptation process, I am conditioning my body to surpass many stages of sleep, and instead drop immediately into REM sleep, which is the most restorative and necessary of the sleep phases. People will argue that this is does not work, or what the effects of not getting the other phases are, but if you have these questions I suggest going to StevePavlina.com and reading about his polyphasic sleep experiment. He has already been through this, and can answer many of your questions, by just reading through the blogs.
I awoke on June 11, 2008 at 5:00 AM. I had gone to sleep around 12:30 that night so I already was not getting enough sleep. However, I woke up refreshed and excited about starting my new experiment. I see doing this as a test of persistence, desire, and will, and I refuse to not become adapted.
I took my first scheduled nap at 9 AM, and surprisingly enough I dreamed, a sign that I had dropped into REM sleep. Obviously at this point I was not very tired, and I just spent most of my time lounging and writing. My second nap came at 1 PM, but I accidentally set my alarm to awaken at 1:30 AM. Somehow I woke up at 2 PM rather angry with myself, but I continued to plug along. My day remained the same as any other day, not seemingly affected yet by my newly adopted habit. At 5 PM I took yet another nap, and this time I did not sleep through my alarm. During my awake time of this cycle, I decided to push my naps an hour closer to better fit a change in my schedule tomorrow. To compensate for this I took a nap at 8 PM., and another again at 12 AM, and again at 4 AM.
The only thing that I can find out of the ordinary to my experience at this point (aside from the fact that I plan on sleeping only 2 hours a day!), is that I seem to have some how entered something I akin to REM sleep while still awake. As I lie there meditating ready to fall asleep, I find that on 2 or 3 nap occasions just today, that my eyes are moving irregularly and rapidly beneath my eyelids. I speculate that in meditation, I may have entered a kind of restorative phase on accident as if I stumbled upon it. I know I am still awake at these moments, because I attempt to open my eyelids. It seems however, that once my conscious mind takes over, I stop doing it. An odd phenomenon, and I will look into it more and note recurrences as I blog further into my adaptation.
