Switching to Biphasic Sleeping? Start here.

[andrew]

No not really, I'm just going to school twice a week.

Yes, it is taking me longer to get to sleep, and longer to get out of bed.

And so I wake up at 6:30am, go back to bed until like 11, then I can't get to sleep when it comes my 90 minute nap time, then when I go to sleep, I' too tired the next morning and it starts all over again. I can't seem to beat it.

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by andrew

No not really, I'm just going to school twice a week.

Yes, it is taking me longer to get to sleep, and longer to get out of bed.

And so I wake up at 6:30am, go back to bed until like 11, then I can't get to sleep when it comes my 90 minute nap time, then when I go to sleep, I' too tired the next morning and it starts all over again. I can't seem to beat it.

Is there any other time in your day for you to take an additional nap? A 15-20 minute nap (in addition to the usual routine) may be all you need to get back on top of things.

[Gazzali]

Originally Posted by Scott Bird

If you're considering a switch from a monophasic to biphasic sleep routine, there are a few things you should know. This brief guide should answer most of the basic questions you might be asking yourself, as well as pointing you in the direction of several resources which cover this information in greater depth.

What is Biphasic Sleeping?

Firstly, a definition. Biphasic sleep is nothing more complicated than sleeping twice each day. Typically this revolves around the belief that the length of an average sleep cycle is approximately 90 minutes (although this has been seen to reduce to as little as 75 minutes in long-term biphasic sleepers), and involves a 90 minute nap and 3/4.5 hours of core sleep. As an example, my own routine consists of :

75-80 minutes beginning at 19:30
4-4.5 hours beginning at 01:00

Whilst the length of the nap is usually maintained at a single cycle, both the separation (between nap and core sleep) and length of core sleep (always a multiple of the cycle length) should be adjusted to suit the individual.

What are the benefits of Biphasic Sleeping?

The main drawcard to both biphasic and polyphasic sleeping patterns often seems to be the time saving (and yes, a lot of time can be saved using either technique); though there are many other benefits. Biphasic sleeping can :

reduce the total number of hours you spend asleep (as noted above)
increase the quality of sleep during these periods
improve both clarity and frequency of dream recall

in addition to :

having a neutral impact on recovery from weight training

What are the downsides of Biphasic Sleeping?

The main negative aspect with both biphasic and polyphasic routines is simply that they are uncommon. It may become difficult to interract with monophasic sleepers in a timely manner (although a polyphasic routine emphasises this distinction much more than a biphasic one does). In my case, taking a nap in the evening greatly reduces this negative aspect, as my dealing with the monophasic world can be carried out during standard business hours without concern.

Other than that, there is little that can be said against biphasic sleeping. As with any transition in your life, the first week or so will be a little more difficult than the rest - but only slightly. It is no worse than the jetlag you might experience following a long flight.

Making the transition

As stated above, the first week will be the most difficult. You are likely to feel more tired than usual, so clear your plate as much as possible before you start. If you are coming into your exam period, it's coming up to the busiest time at work or there are other major changes in your life taking place; better to wait until things are back to normal.

Once you are ready to make the switch, set aside a time for you to try things out. 21 and 30 days are common, although any period over two weeks or so will do. During this time, make a concerted effort to stick to the routine. Of course, if there's a major change in your life during this period, don't feel bad about stopping. You can start again later.

During this trial period, try not to be too harsh on yourself. You WILL oversleep (I still do occasionally, after holding the routine for a couple of months), alter your starting times when there's something good on TV, have busy days at work during which you drink too much coffee or smoke too many cigarettes etc. The routine gradually gets easier, so don't punish yourself for sliding off the rails occasionally.

Where can I go for help?

Keep in mind that several people have done this (many of whom seem to be on these forums) and that they always seem to be happy to answer questions on their experiences. A few resources are :

Threads on this forum

Biphasic long-term sleepers
Eliminating sleep is closer than you think
X-phasic sleep experiments: where do you sleep?
Sleep learning?
Post your polyphasic sleep logs here
Polyphasic sleep
How to get rid of sleep-o-holism
Anyone successfully reduced sleep hours per night
Remove the clock, sleep less
Hybrid sleeping schedule
Midday nap
Biphasic sleep resources
Getting back into a regular sleep schedule
Anybody have this sleeping problem?
Weird sleeping schedule
Bodybuilding and polyphasic sleep
Speak while sleep
Pzizz
Free running sleep
How to sleep early
Biphasic sleep - need help


Elsewhere

I maintain a list of biphasic sleep resources on my site (at Straight to the Bar: Biphasic sleep resources). Contributions to this list are more than welcome.

If you have anything to add to this list, please let me know. The same applies to any comments or suggestions on the above material.

Hi there

good work, but such behavior can affect time management. But i have found something here for any paths that you have in mind..read Beneficial Learning for Outstanding Generation i called it MP..

regards
gazzali

[Cactus]

Hi! Would it be possible to have a schedule where you take a 90-minute nap at 4:30 pm - 5:00pm and a 4,5 hour sleep at 1:30am - 6:00 am or are the hours between your nap and longer sleep too long?

[MLT]

I am new to the forum, this being my first post and all. It is been just over a week now, doing a 1.5/4.5 hour split and I feel fine so far. I am starting to find that I can concentrate better in the evening after the nap - something I didn't think about until a couple of days ago late at night..

Marc.

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by MLT

I am new to the forum, this being my first post and all. It is been just over a week now, doing a 1.5/4.5 hour split and I feel fine so far. I am starting to find that I can concentrate better in the evening after the nap - something I didn't think about until a couple of days ago late at night..

Marc.

Welcome Marc.

That's great to hear. If you're taking notes as you're going, I - and a lot of people on these forums - would love to read them.

cheers,

Scott

[MLT]

Originally Posted by Scott Bird

Welcome Marc.

That's great to hear. If you're taking notes as you're going, I - and a lot of people on these forums - would love to read them.

cheers,

Scott

I have been taking a few notes - put some of the time I have had available late at night putting them onto a website and updating that on a regular basis.

At this time my log is just on a free web host, and this is good enough for now. The log is here: Biphasic sleep journal

[september]

It's spring break and I want to start sleeping biphasic. I'm going to get 4.5 hrs at 2 am to start off, and we'll see how it progresses from there. My hope is that it will tire me enough to make me want to sleep 1.5 hrs tomorrow evening after work (9-5!).

I'll keep the waiting masses posted throughout the week

[Dani]

Hi guys,

After seeing all the fuss here I decided to give BPS a go. Only been 4 days but I already notice the difference.

I was only getting 5-6 hours sleep before due to work and a few businesses, but I was always exhausted as a result.

After 4 days of doing a 1.5 / 3 split I am finding my energy returning and I am actually sleeping even less than before when I was always tired...

It's kind of freaky actually. I sleep less to get more energy.

It's going to be a little awkward to time it sometimes as I often coach in the evenings, but I just need to get up earlier and finish the day job earlier I think!

I was amazed when i worked this out. If you can trim 3 hours a day off your sleeping, then that's an extra 21 hours a week. at the usual sleeping pattern of 16 hour a day awake, that's almost an extra day and a half in your week!

which is 52*1.5 = 78 extra days a year = 2 months extra time.

If you have a day job, the hours stay the same so you just gained an extra 2 months vacation time each year

Bi-phasic sleep is great. It also means I am actually awake when my friends in Europe are online too!

[september]

It didn't work out last night. I had been driving all day yesterday, so I zonked out at 12:30 or so, slept til 8.

I'm staying up tonight, though - going to try and get up at 6 (going to sleep at 3). Then I'll surely be tired enough tomorrow to push myself into the 1.5 hr nap tomorrow night.

The yawns are already coming. :\ Better go do something productive!

[Kactus]

Hey, this is also my first post on this forum
It's my 6th day as a biphasic sleeper, and I think it's not going so bad. I actually go for a 4.5 core sleep + 1.5 nap, and I'm a little bit tired in the mornings, maybe because I'm still in the adaptation period.
Anyway, I'm 14 years old, and I'm starting to disagree with my mom who thinks 6 hours isn't enough for me, even though I've explained her several time biphasic sleep and it's benefits... I would like to have your opinion on whether I should get some more sleep or not.
Cheers
Cactus

P.S: Here's my blog, where I keep a journal of my biphasic sleep experience C-blog

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Kactus

Hey, this is also my first post on this forum
It's my 6th day as a biphasic sleeper, and I think it's not going so bad. I actually go for a 4.5 core sleep + 1.5 nap, and I'm a little bit tired in the mornings, maybe because I'm still in the adaptation period.
Anyway, I'm 14 years old, and I'm starting to disagree with my mom who thinks 6 hours isn't enough for me, even though I've explained her several time biphasic sleep and it's benefits... I would like to have your opinion on whether I should get some more sleep or not.
Cheers
Cactus

P.S: Here's my blog, where I keep a journal of my biphasic sleep experience C-blog

Hi Kactus,

Glad to hear you're giving it a shot - you won't be disappointed.

Regarding the amount of sleep, everyone's different - how much were you getting when you were monophasic? For me, the ideal biphasic amount seems to be one cycle less than monophasic. Eg : 7.5h monophasic = 6h biphasic.

Just checking out your blog now (blogger was down for maintenance when I tried the first time). I've got a few links on my site you're more than welcome to grab. I'll update them with your site as soon as I get a chance.

cheers,

Scott

[Kactus]

Thanks for your reply
When I did monophasic sleep, I tried to go in bed at 10 PM to sleep 8.5 hours, but because of my homework I often stayed up until midnight, so that makes 6.5 hours of sleep (but I was really tired in the mornings, couldn't get up without 3 different alarms, etc...). Now I have a lot less problems waking up, so I think biphasic sleep is much more better, refreshing, etc.. for me.

[romainb]

Originally Posted by Cactus

Hi! Would it be possible to have a schedule where you take a 90-minute nap at 4:30 pm - 5:00pm and a 4,5 hour sleep at 1:30am - 6:00 am or are the hours between your nap and longer sleep too long?

In my opinion that's fine: I often end up having 9 hours between my nap and core sleep (4:30-6//3-6) because I find it really hard to wake up after dinner. Sometimes I'm tired around 1 but a short 20 minute nap then does the trick. I find I'm most productive around 2 AM now.

Cheers,
Romain

PS: new here, but have been a biphasic sleeper since December '06

[Sarek@Vulcan]

I'm wondering could this one program help you in polyphasic adaptation. It's called brainwave generator and i used it for meditation. Cool program, lots of presets and you can make your own costum presets. Here is the link: BrainWave Generator There is also an explanation of how this works. You can use it to bring your brain frequency on any frequency brain operates on just using earphones. What do you think, would this help?

[Freelancer]

Planning to start sleeping biphasic as well, the idea is to start in a few days (april the 1ste ). At first I wanted to become a polyphasic (as in 30m naps) sleeper but decided against it because its such a rigid structure and doesn't really work in our society. Right now I'm sleeping each day about 8-9 hours feeling groggy each morning (trouble getting up, snooze button is starting to break down because of frequint use) so this should help me out.

Anyway I'll be keeping a written log and if it works out (hehe) I'll post it in its entirety.

[MLT]

Well, this is it, the first day of the new month and I have been trailing biphasic sleep (4.5 core, 1.5 nap) for 30 days now, and just went back over my results.

Despite the occasional setback because of stupid mistakes like keeping the phone on during naps, not having the sound up on the alarm, or the fact we have a dog here whom barks occasionally at nothing, I did manage to get six hours most days.

There are times on six hours that I would be drifting off during lectures, having mini-naps, but these were usually the same classes which could be anything from the content presented to the fact that the room got a little stuffy because of hot weather.. but mostly I am staying awake with no real problems. I think it would be a different story if I was doing these six hours monophasically.

Where do I go from here? I have been thinking of trying out a core sleep of three hours, reducing my total sleep time to four and a half hours a day.. but for now I judge biphasic sleep as a sucess, and doubt I would ever go back to sleeping monophasically, or in anything other than 90 minute increments (unless I decided to give uberman a try, not something I can do at this time because of my current schedule).

[Freelancer]

I started yesterday heres the summary;
Nap time at 18:30 and ended up falling asleep around 19:15 or so, still remember a dream faintly so I think I woke up at the start of a dream and thus REM sleep.

Core sleep ended up starting at 03:00 instead of 01:00 because I wasn't sleepy at all. I woke up at 05:40 pretty much immediatley, thank god delivering news papers for 2 years made me conditioned to wake up immediatley.

I'm typing this out at 06:30 right now well before everyone else is awake, I'm also not really tired...

I'm fairly sure this is the result of sleeping in that morning so I had plenty of sleep (ended up sleeping like 10 or 11 hours ), I'll try again today and keep you updated. Atleast I don't have a problem oversleeping.

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Freelancer

I started yesterday heres the summary;

Cool. Keep us all updated on your progress.

Originally Posted by Freelancer

Nap time at 18:30 and ended up falling asleep around 19:15 or so

After a while you'll find that you become really tired just before nap time; so it won't take you so long to get to sleep.

[Freelancer]

Originally Posted by Scott Bird

Cool. Keep us all updated on your progress.



After a while you'll find that you become really tired just before nap time; so it won't take you so long to get to sleep.

Update on yesterday+today
As you said, I near instantly fell asleep at nap time. I also decided to move the core sleep a bit closer to my nap time (core sleep at 0:30 am) because I wasnt tired right before the nap time but I was tired about an hour before my old core sleep time. I'm still not fully awake in the mornings up to 8 am or so, I hope this will change soon.

So far I'd say this experiment is quite succesfull, I sleep less and I'm still very much awake during the day/evening. The only problem is the mornings.

I'll keep you guys updated here untill I launch my own blog (should be in a few days).

[Dilman]

I was going to read this whole thread, but after reading 1 1/2 pages, I realized how long that would take, so...

Next year I'm starting high school, and I'm thinking about becoming biphasic. Basically the only time my schedule allows for is to have the nap after I get home at 1:15 PM. If I'm planning on having the core sleep from 2AM to 6:30am, would this schedule work? Would I end up feeling tired before my core sleep?

Thanks in advance.

[hk999]

most likly, you will end up feeling tired, because 2-6:30 is not enough sleep for your age, you should sleep at least 6 hours a night!

[Dilman]

I'm talking about with the biphasic schedule.

With monophasic I typically get about 9 hours of sleep.

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Dilman

I'm talking about with the biphasic schedule.

With monophasic I typically get about 9 hours of sleep.

Dilman,

If you're currently getting 9 hours per night, how about a 1.5/6 hour split? That would lop a massive 90 minutes off per day, as well as giving you plenty of leeway. If everything works out OK, switching to a 1.5/4.5 hour split won't be hard at all.

[Freelancer]

Update on my situation;
At the end of last week I ended up 'crashing', more or less I couldn't get a nap and I couldn't get to bed early because of a change in schedule.

Anyway I fell back into polyphasic sleeping, and now I decided to take a different route in this experiment.

First I will become a early riser (started yesterday) waking up at 5 am everyday for a week or 2. This isn't hard to me at all because I'm still somewhat used to waking up at 5 am because of delivering newspapers for 2 years. The idea is to get to sleep when I am tired and being able to clearly notice that I'm tired in those 2 weeks.

When I am finally used to this completely I switch to biphasic sleep by getting in a extra nap in the evening which should eventually shorten my core sleep. This allows me to get into biphasic sleeping without the adaption phase...

[Dilman]

Originally Posted by Scott Bird

Dilman,

If you're currently getting 9 hours per night, how about a 1.5/6 hour split? That would lop a massive 90 minutes off per day, as well as giving you plenty of leeway. If everything works out OK, switching to a 1.5/4.5 hour split won't be hard at all.

Thanks, so you don't think I'll become tired after the nap, leading up to the core sleep?

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Dilman

Thanks, so you don't think I'll become tired after the nap, leading up to the core sleep?

I don't think so, as you'd be having a longer core sleep (6 hours instead of 4.5). Try it and see; you can always add a second short (15-20 mins) nap if needed.

In my case, I have a core sleep of 4.5 hours and it lasts about 12 hours OK until the nap. An 80 minute nap then keeps me going until the next core sleep.

Occasionally, though, I have a night of monophasic sleep (if I'm out somewhere, for example). I don't really miss the nap, and I just have 7.5 hours straight. No problem at all.

[Calculusaurus]

I am almost a week into biphasic sleep.

So far so good -- I am functioning off of 6 hours of sleep. But I'm hoping that my concentration and energy pick up. I've been maintaining the schedule fine (doing 1.5/4.5), but I noticed last night before my core sleep my brain just completely turned off. The adjustment stage seemed to have lasted only 3 or so nights. But perhaps by "adjustment" I simply mean "being able to wake up comfortably at the scheduled times." I don't think I've fully adjusted physiologically. It's not a huge deal, but my mental clarity feels slightly under par and I'd like to see that change within a week.

Another difficulty is that I seem to be conditioning myself to be a much lighter sleeper. I used to triumph over the fact that I could probably fall asleep in the middle of a busy intersection at noon. But just now I was just woken up from my 1.5 hour nap by soft chatter in an adjacent room. Since I didn't hit REM sleep, I'll have to re-attempt that nap soon (I'm guessing).

Of course, it's not a huge complaint, but I thought I'd contribute something more to the thread than just "hooray, biphasic sleep works!"

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Calculusaurus

I am almost a week into biphasic sleep.

So far so good -- I am functioning off of 6 hours of sleep. But I'm hoping that my concentration and energy pick up. I've been maintaining the schedule fine (doing 1.5/4.5), but I noticed last night before my core sleep my brain just completely turned off. The adjustment stage seemed to have lasted only 3 or so nights. But perhaps by "adjustment" I simply mean "being able to wake up comfortably at the scheduled times." I don't think I've fully adjusted physiologically. It's not a huge deal, but my mental clarity feels slightly under par and I'd like to see that change within a week.

Another difficulty is that I seem to be conditioning myself to be a much lighter sleeper. I used to triumph over the fact that I could probably fall asleep in the middle of a busy intersection at noon. But just now I was just woken up from my 1.5 hour nap by soft chatter in an adjacent room. Since I didn't hit REM sleep, I'll have to re-attempt that nap soon (I'm guessing).

Of course, it's not a huge complaint, but I thought I'd contribute something more to the thread than just "hooray, biphasic sleep works!"

Hi Calc (I'll save 'Calculusaurus' for formal occasions - it brings back painful memories of university maths ),

Is your mental clarity fine until just before your core sleep? I always find I rapidly get tired just before a nap (and prior to core sleep, to some extent). In fact, I was fine until about 10 minutes ago, and now I'm fighting to stay awake (nap time in a few minutes).

I suspect you're still adapting to the new schedule; there's a great improvement in both the quality of sleep and the alertness you'll feel whilst awake. Keep going with it - it could well be in the next couple of days.

One quick thought on the light sleeping thing: it may just be that your body hasn't fully adjusted to the routine, but it could also be the fact that you're not quite sleeping long enough. Are you allowing a bit of time to get to sleep (eg: setting the alarm for 100 minutes, not 90 minutes)?

[SKVE]

I decided to try to switch to biphasic sleep, and I'm now on day 2 in the adaption period. I'm doing the 1.5/4.5 (core sleep from 1:30 to 6:00am, naps 7:00 to 8:30pm) split.

Just one problem - I can't fall asleep at all during my naps. Is this something that I eventually will be able to after some time? I'm pretty tired during the day, but still can't fall asleep during the nap.