My switch to biphasic sleep

[JoeKinley]

Hello Readers,

actually I wanted to write about my experience with the transistion to biphasic sleep in an own blog, but I yet had no time to finish my application, and I do not want to use an external software. But as I want to share my experiences with the transition I decided to write it in here.

About me
For now about 7 years I have had much problems with sleeping. I have chronical insomnia, chronical problems to sleep through well, light sleep, and felt most of the time very miserable upon waking up. So sleeping was most of the time one hell of a time. To this comes the fact that there is an annoying little "gimmick" within my family. I do not know how it is called, or if it is usual or not, but there are some times in the night that I wake up, can not move nor breath. I am not really awake, just in between dream and reality, and I see something appearing towards me. Thats where I want to scream or breath or run away, or whatever, but I can not move, breath or scream. This situation lasts for some seconds and finally I awake watching this something disappearing and breathing like crazy. Well that sucks but never have been any problematic though.
Also it started some months ago I have some weird nightmares. But these are not real nightmares. It is more of someone or something happening when I awake that reaches into reality. Maybe some person ore creature appearing or hiding in my room, some spider falling on me, or seeing the computer on my desk crashing. I do not sleep very deep before it, it happens in about 10 minutes total. I fall asleep in some light nap and wake up about 10 minutes later with this nightmary stuff. It sucks but also is not very problematic.

So last thursday, now 4 days ago, I started to switch to biphasic sleep, because I read Steves experiences and about some others in this forum. I liked the idea that the amount of quality sleep enhanced with the people.

So I wanted to sleep from 2am to 6:30am, 4:30h for the core sleep phase. The second nap should be around 4pm to 7pm, somewhere in between.

Thus I started going to bed Thursday morning from 2am to 6:30am. I thought that awaking after this short time it would be hard to go to work, but it was not. Actually it was really easy because when I finally went to bed I was really tired and fell asleep very easily. So my experiment started well.
The first nap in the afternoon was okay, though it was hard to fall asleep in the beginning. I think I had a dream, but it was not very clear.

After this the experience changed. Falling asleep in the night became quite hard up to this night on monday. Waking up is sometimes easy, but sometimes a pain.
The nap in the afternoon starts to become more easy, fun and helping. I dream something and wake up refreshed.

I am not very tired anymore throughout the day, but the quality sleeping could get better. I hope it will. But as it is still within the first two weeks I keep trying to stick with it and await the results.

So far for my first experience. I hope it interessts you.
Maybe some of you have tips for me, or questions for their own transitions or whatever.

[JoeKinley]

Man yesterday was pure hell.
Monday 2am I went to bed. But I just had all my quirks at once. I had a lot of problems falling asleep. Then in the beginning I had two nightmare things, seeing someone appearing towards me with a Jack Nicholson Shining face. Then after this, a second nightmare thing, now with no ability to move, breath nor scream. The rest of the night was quite tough.

But in the morning I woke up just little dizzy.
The afternoon nap became also a pain in the butt. I thought after being so tired throughout the day it would be easier, but I was wrong. Could not sleep at all.

Then I thought that at least the tuesday morning sleep, 2am to 6:30am would be okay, but this was also tough. Falling asleep took some long time, and waking up in the morning was very hard.

Now I am not that tired that I could not work on my usual peaks, I am used to being very tired throughout the day, because of my sleep problems. But I hoped that quality sleep would be much better, having no problems to fall asleep and sleep through.

Well, but it is still the first week. and I will stick to it. Maybe it becomes better after the two week period.

[bylto]

good luck with this Joe.

If it doesn't work out for you, you could always try sleeping less in a monophasic style. I personally sleep 6 hours a night, 12 - 6 am. You'll be tired when you go to bed and refreshed when you wake up, you said on the first day, sleeping from 2 - 6.30 that you woke up fine.

It seems that the attempt to sleep at 4pm is what is messing things up. You're trying to to get 7.5 hrs to 8 hrs a day, is this because this is the majority opinion on how much sleep the body needs? I rejected this a long time ago. It may be true for some people but it's not a rule for everyone. Why not try 6 hrs a night? You'll find the right sleeping pattern for you buddy, keep trying

[JoeKinley]

Actually I want to try biphasic sleep. And I wrote, at least think that I did, that my total sleep time throughout the day will be 6 hours total. That being 4.5 hours in the morning and 1.5 hours in the afternoon.

Well, yesterdays afternoon nap took quite a while to fall asleep, but then it was quite okay. I woke up being kinda confused, but was not very tired in the end. But I guess that I am just used to being tired.
The night sleep was also very awkward. Once more I had some nightmares in the beginning, with problems falling asleep. But once I got over the initial part I had some lucid dreams. Actually the problem is to hold these dreams. I guess I get so excited about being in a lucid dream that I wake up. One dream was very intense and felt very real at first. But at one point I realized being asleep. Still holding this dream was hard.

That was my first lucid dream for some years now, and three in a row (I guess) sounds pretty nice. I wonder if this happens because of my biphasic experiment, or if it is just a coincidence.

The transition is still quite tough but I do not want to stop. Maybe I get used to the new pattern and learn to fall asleep quicker in the past. The first two days were quite okay, but I hope that the final result will still be better than that.

[JoeKinley]

Well yesterday was tough. Wednesdays are always tough for me. In the morning i awoke, feelig kinda okay, but a bit tired. Then I was at work for the whole afternoon. After this I went to make sports (I do gynmastics on wednesdays). So my afternoon nap had to be skipped. And I felt it really tough.
I decided to append this 90 minutes to the long nap in the night, so I went to bed at 0:30 and slept for 6 hours.
I hope it did not throw me back because tomorrow it will be the first week total.

I slept deeply, because of the tiredness and exhaustion from the sports. Now I feel okay. I hope I can sleep later.

Still not feeling fully transitioned, but I really do want to keep this through.

[JoeKinley]

So far I am now in my third week of biphasic sleep, and I found out some usefull hints.
First of all, it is a bad thing to try to stick to a fix schedule of sleep time. At first I wanted to try to sleep from 2am to 6:30am, but that meant quite often that I tried to stay awake from 12am to 2am. It happend that in that time I became sleepy most of the time. And when I managed to stay awake till 2am I had a hard time to fall asleep.
So now I just have my time frames in which I could sleep. So the first one of core sleep being between 11pm and 2am (sleeping for 4:30h) and the second one between 4pm and 8pm (sleeping for 1:30h).
If sometime I did not manage to lay down for the nap in the afternoon I just appended 1:30h to the core sleep.

I still have my problems with the afternoon nap, because sleeping then is different from core sleep. I know that I am sleeping, but it just feels like laying awake and trying to fall asleep. Also it seems that I often just sleep for 60-70 minutes rather than the full 90 minutes.

Right now I do have a much better sleeping habit than I had before. I had insomnia and a tough time falling asleep or sleeping through. Therefore standing up in the morning was quite a pain. This totally changed.
Now I manage to wake up immediately (still depending on the alarm though) and also to fall asleep quite quickly. My sleep quality increased, and I dream a lot more. Still got some nightmares sometimes, that keep kicking me out of the 90minutes cycle, leading to being tired when I wake up, but it is okay. A cup of coffee kills the tiredness.

Also, coffee, as opposed to my first week thinking, does not interfere with sleeping. As long as I just drink one or two cups maximum at day, it fits in normally. Same for alcohol. Not too much is okay.

In the end I think that I still am in the adaption phase, because of the small problems falling asleep in the afternoon, but the tough time is over I guess. It is funny being awake when my girlfriend hits the mattress, and being awake when she finally wakes up in the morning, and having so much more time for my chores.

I keep you informed of my further progress.