Long term biphasic sleeping

[Scott Bird]

I've been happily biphasic sleeping for a couple of months now, with a 75-80 minute nap and about 4-4.5 hours of core sleep. This is working well, and the quality of sleep seems to be steadily improving.

My question is : are there any long-term biphasic sleepers out there? I'd love to hear of your experiences over a couple of years or more.

[Ati]

Originally Posted by Scott Bird

I've been happily biphasic sleeping for a couple of months now, with a 75-80 minute nap and about 4-4.5 hours of core sleep. This is working well, and the quality of sleep seems to be steadily improving.

My question is : are there any long-term biphasic sleepers out there? I'd love to hear of your experiences over a couple of years or more.

I've just started this (2 days ago!) with the intention (!) of 4.5 hours at night and 90 minute nap at some other time.

There are two pretty well developed threads on this board--"log your polyphasic sleep" and "has anyone tried to reduce their sleep"--these are approximations of the headers, but you can find them.

With your experience, have you noticed, or have your read or heard anything abt the relative importance of timing the daytime nap regularly? Of couse, it's intuitive that it would make the most sense to do this, but hard to accomplish for a lot of folks in this culture.

I have a regular nighttime sleep block, but that second part I can see will not be easy to put at the same time every day.

Maybe it doesn't matter so much as long as you get it.

I'll be real interested to hear of your experience in this.

For interest, if you don't mind my asking what are your particular hours nighttime and naptime, do they vary and what has been the effect of any variance?

Thanks!

Ati

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Ati

I've just started this (2 days ago!) with the intention (!) of 4.5 hours at night and 90 minute nap at some other time.

Best of luck. Let me know as/when you have questions - I'm more than happy to help. For a summary of my own first month (I used Steve's '30 days' approach - and it was great) see this post. Following a review of the experiment (which I decided to continue indefinitely), you'll find links to sleep logs for each day.

Originally Posted by Ati

There are two pretty well developed threads on this board--"log your polyphasic sleep" and "has anyone tried to reduce their sleep"--these are approximations of the headers, but you can find them.

I've contributed to both of these (and still do, as questions arise); I was simply wondering if there's anyone who's been doing this long term. There aren't many studies on the biphasic approach.

Originally Posted by Ati

With your experience, have you noticed, or have your read or heard anything abt the relative importance of timing the daytime nap regularly? Of couse, it's intuitive that it would make the most sense to do this, but hard to accomplish for a lot of folks in this culture.

The only studies I've seen regarding the timing of the afternoon nap are based on the 20 minute 'powernap' variety, rather than as part of a biphasic schedule. Recently I tried switching from an evening to afternoon nap, but I found it difficult to get 90 minutes in the middle of the day (20 minutes was fine).

My current schedule isn't much different to the one I started out with, and it's a 75-80 minute nap beginning 7:30-8:00pm with core sleep of 4-4.5 hours beginning at 2:00-2:30am. I don't vary these times much unless there is a specific reason on that day. If I'm going out, I try to get in a short nap (15-20 minutes) beforehand; with a slightly longer period of core sleep afterward (around 6 hours).

A thought on the timing : the above situation isn't ideal, and I only use it when I have to. If possible, adjust your schedule to allow the naps to begin at roughly the same time each day. This just makes it easier to adjust to.

Regarding variance, I've tried various combinations of nap/gap/core sleep. The times above work for me personally, and anything else leaves me extremely tired for most of the following day. I'm not quite sure why that is (more experimentation to do), but it works.

[tropicality]

Well I decided to go biphasic and the first day it was real easy. Although I had 10 hours of sleep friday and saturday evening. On Sunday I went to bed at 1 am and was WIDE awake at 5:30. Its very rare for me to wake up so early and not just fall back in bed because its so comfortable and fall back asleep for another 5 hours...

So on monday I went for my nap a little late because of some other things and overslept to 3 hours. I then woke up and stayed awake for 2 hours and then slept for 4.5.

On tuesday I went for my nap late again at like 10:30 and woke up several times but only finally got out of bed for an hour between 1:30-3:00... I finally was awake by around 7.. funny thing is I don't remember having any dreams at all which is not normal

It is now wednesday morning and I went for my nap at 9:00 but don't recall getting out of bed. I have just woken up at 3:00 AM though and am wide awake!

I think that I need to time my nap a bit better but so far I have seemed to reduce my overall sleep from a normal 9-10 hours.

At 3:30 I guess its time to have some breakfast and have a shower and get my day started though!

[Gordon]

Why would you do this? I am being silly know, but what is the point? What about just getting a good nights (7-8 hours sleep)? Is this a new 21 Century "lets not bother wasting too much time sleeping" craze?

That may be simplistic I know, but it's like people who were wooly hats in the summer....what is the point?

Or should I ask, what are the benefits?

G

[tropicality]

hahaha nice one

I was actually looking for this post: Switching to Biphasic Sleeping? Start here. to reply to but I could not find it so i posted to this rather old thread because I did not feel I needed to start a new one.

But anyways you can find out all about it here Switching to Biphasic Sleeping? Start here. Scottbird has compiled alot of resources concerning biphasic sleep.

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by tropicality

hahaha nice one

I was actually looking for this post: Switching to Biphasic Sleeping? Start here. to reply to but I could not find it so i posted to this rather old thread because I did not feel I needed to start a new one.

But anyways you can find out all about it here Switching to Biphasic Sleeping? Start here. Scottbird has compiled alot of resources concerning biphasic sleep.

Thank you Tropicality, I had a wee look at the thread posted by Scottbird. I remain sceptical as to its real benefits. I understand the time saving aspect, bu there is no one around to do business with or talk with.

I am convinced its a trend, nothing more or maybe I love my duvet too much.

I also have a wee 2 year old...so I have been having short bursts of sleep for some time now....and I STILL feel tired!! ha ha.

But still open minded about why people would do it. Why do you do it?

[tropicality]

Well the whole thing is that sleep is something that varies by person, it always has. But biphasic seems to have become more popular because it works for more than just a few. You see, others as well as I find that if we sleep for 6 hours monophasically then after a few days we kind of crash and end up being tired so we oversleep the next few days and it turns into a cycle of 6 hrs 6 hrs 6 hrs 8 hrs 8 hrs 8 hrs 6 hrs 6 hrs 6 hrs etc. But with biphasic sleep, it doesnt happen, it is just 6 hours of total sleep everyday. Now it might not always be optimal for everyone, but when it is it is a good way to reduce time spent in bed.

The reason I decided to do it? I have to make international business calls to the UK. And so therefore when I wake up in the morning I am able to do that. The UK is 7 hours ahead of me so when i normally used to wake up at 7:00 and be ready to go by 8:00 it was already 3pm in the UK and when I have class at 8:00 it becomes very hard to contact people in the UK. This is why getting up around 5am is very helpful and in the evening around midnight my time is not wasted either, I market on the internet and read stevepavlina's site

[tylersch]

Originally Posted by Gordon

Why would you do this? I am being silly know, but what is the point? What about just getting a good nights (7-8 hours sleep)? Is this a new 21 Century "lets not bother wasting too much time sleeping" craze?

That may be simplistic I know, but it's like people who were wooly hats in the summer....what is the point?

Or should I ask, what are the benefits?

G

It really depends on the person, everybody is different. Some people need 7 - 8 hours of sleep.. or at least think they do. I thought I did too until I found out that you can actually TOO much sleep. So I started cutting down. I sleep 5-6 hours a night and I feel SOO much better in the morning.

Its funny because most of my life I can remember waking up naturally almost always right around 5am, and feeling pretty rested and awake. But as soon as I saw the alarm clock I would just go back to sleep with the thought of -if i get a few more hours of sleep i would feel even better. But when id wake up id feel tired and groggy.

So it really depends on the person

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Gordon

Thank you Tropicality, I had a wee look at the thread posted by Scottbird. I remain sceptical as to its real benefits. I understand the time saving aspect, bu there is no one around to do business with or talk with.

I am convinced its a trend, nothing more or maybe I love my duvet too much.

I also have a wee 2 year old...so I have been having short bursts of sleep for some time now....and I STILL feel tired!! ha ha.

But still open minded about why people would do it. Why do you do it?

Gordon, skepticism is good. That's why I did a 30 day trial of biphasic sleeping before making a commitment to change one way or the other. I simply wanted to find out - as you do - why people do it.

There are many benefits, but the biggest one for me is still the increased quality of sleep. If you're already sleeping quite well, this may not sound like much. However, if your sleep is less than perfect, it can be an enormous change.

The bottom line : try it. If it doesn't fit in with your lifestyle, simply stop doing it. After a few weeks you'll see what all the fuss is about.

[Ati]

Originally Posted by tropicality

Well the whole thing is that sleep is something that varies by person, it always has. But biphasic seems to have become more popular because it works for more than just a few. You see, others as well as I find that if we sleep for 6 hours monophasically then after a few days we kind of crash and end up being tired so we oversleep the next few days and it turns into a cycle of 6 hrs 6 hrs 6 hrs 8 hrs 8 hrs 8 hrs 6 hrs 6 hrs 6 hrs etc. But with biphasic sleep, it doesnt happen, it is just 6 hours of total sleep everyday. Now it might not always be optimal for everyone, but when it is it is a good way to reduce time spent in bed.

The reason I decided to do it? I have to make international business calls to the UK. And so therefore when I wake up in the morning I am able to do that. The UK is 7 hours ahead of me so when i normally used to wake up at 7:00 and be ready to go by 8:00 it was already 3pm in the UK and when I have class at 8:00 it becomes very hard to contact people in the UK. This is why getting up around 5am is very helpful and in the evening around midnight my time is not wasted either, I market on the internet and read stevepavlina's site

I totally agree with the 6-6-6-8-8- routine the way you put it. This is very much the same for me. I'm convinced by now (about 29 days) that I feel better with 6 hours biphasic sleep than 8 hours monophasic. Not only that, my "injections" of biphasic sleep (only because of scheduling snafus and either no nap or oversleeping--or both related) seems to have had a relatively long term effect on my feeling of being rested. Wierd but true...

The reason I'm really putting in the time, focus and energy to explore this is to see if I can routinely get up to play/practice music at 3:45am before heading off to work, and at the same time stay up late enough to have a nice evening with family and friends.. So night time has become something like 11:15 to 11:30pm -------> 3:45am as long as I get 1:30 hrs in during the day. I'm tinkering with the details as you can see. I'm also looking at some other potential gains--the effect on potential for jet lag...doesn't seem to matter much as long as I get my 2 blocks in, so far anyway....

Originally Posted by Scott Bird

Gordon, skepticism is good. That's why I did a 30 day trial of biphasic sleeping before making a commitment to change one way or the other. I simply wanted to find out - as you do - why people do it.

There are many benefits, but the biggest one for me is still the increased quality of sleep. If you're already sleeping quite well, this may not sound like much. However, if your sleep is less than perfect, it can be an enormous change.

The bottom line : try it. If it doesn't fit in with your lifestyle, simply stop doing it. After a few weeks you'll see what all the fuss is about.

I so agreee with the improved quality of sleep. I'm amazed at how deeply and fully I sleep during naps as well as night time...

Good luck, give it a try if you like. I think that like a lot of things that are not hazardous to try, it makes sense to experience this before getting too much into the theoretical aspects...then go for the theory when a question comes up, just my 2c....