[David Hausladen]

Polyphasic Sleep Update: Experiment Concluded

This morning, I went to bed for my 7am nap and woke up at about 10am. Both my alarms had been turned off, so I know that I woke up, turned them off, and went back to sleep without becoming at all conscious.

This is my third sleeping incident in four days; while before I could be optimistic and say that my one or two sleeping incidents were flukes and could be dealt with, I think at this point I've got to admit that with this frequency of sleep incidents I'm not making any progress, and with the current schedule and technique, polyphasic sleep in the Dymaxion variant (a 30-minute nap every six hours) is unworkable for me.

This isn't a huge surprise when I consider the relevant facts. The Uberman schedule works against the body's circadian rhythm, but has at its assistance the body's 4-hour ultradian rhythms. Monophasic and biphasic sleep take advantage of the circadian rhythm, though they often ignore the ultradian component. The Dymaxion schedule has no such synergy with either the circadian or ultradian rhythms.

I'm not sure what to say to Buckminster Fuller's alleged success with the schedule for two years, except that different people often get different results out of the same technique.

Before I go on to any other sleep schedule, I intend to take three days of free-running sleep to "reboot" my body. Among other things, my immune system has taken a beating from its lack of deep sleep in the past week, so I want to get it back to full strength again before I try anything.

Afterward, I don't want to go back to monophasic, knowing from my experiments with free-running sleep (before I started posting here) how much time it can waste. The Uberman schedule is too tightly spaced for my current obligations and social life, and furthermore I don't feel up to another strenuous adaptation at this point. My thought right now is to go to a biphasic schedule, with a 3-hour core sleep and a 1.5-hour nap. This is the schedule that aligns most closely with the body's natural circadian rhythm, so there's little doubt as to whether it can succeed.

There's not as much to learn about biphasic sleep, so I don't think there's a need to post sleep logs here on a regular basis. I'll still post occasional reports on my progress and results, just not on a set schedule.