Polyphasic nap duration question.

[SnitchyCat]

I guess, supposedly our normal sleep cycle is about 1.5 hours right?

What would happen if you tried 4-6 sleep cycles of 1.5 hours distributed evenly throughout the day? Would they naturally become shorter like what is typical in polyphasic sleep schedules like uberman? Or is the only reason you sleep shorter cycles in multiphasic sleep due to the REM deprivation period that forces your cycles to shorten for proper REM? i.e. do you need to deliberately switch to shorter times?

[silicon toad2000]

I think if you tried to have 4-6 evenly spaced sleep cycles, you would spend 2-3 of them laying awake wondering why you are not falling asleep.
The reason the nap times in polyphasic sleep are shortened is because the body is forced to adapt. polyphasic sleep isn't terribly effective until the body does adapt.
studies of polyphasic sleep have indicated that even though the naps are short, each stage of sleep is still present in the polyphasic naps.

[Ilya]

I'm not sure. It would probably be ok, but this is hugely impractical. You are combining the main disadvantages of monophasic and polyphasic here.
You spend a lot of time on sleep, but have to fit it in the schedule in an inconvenient way. It would leave you with about 1,5 hour waking time in each cycle.
May be it would lead to natural adaptation of polyphasic sleep pattern, but adaptation period would be weird.
On a side note, I don't think the REM explanation is a correct one. When I've tried polyphasic I've had dreams from the nap one, so I was not forcing anything.

[Kaspian]

Though I haven't read it in Stampi's book myself, I've heard that one way he took his volunteer polynappers through the adjustment phase was to start them with 6 evenly-spaced 90-minute naps. Then every few days, they'd switch one long nap for a short one (20-30 minute), until they arrived at 6 short naps.

Also interesting is this article: A sleep doctor prescribes 6 evenly-spaced 90-minute naps to his narcoleptic patients.

I agree, though, that with 4-6 90-minute naps you get the disadvantages of both monophasic and polyphasic.

[Calculusaurus]

Originally Posted by Kaspian

Though I haven't read it in Stampi's book myself, I've heard that one way he took his volunteer polynappers through the adjustment phase was to start them with 6 evenly-spaced 90-minute naps. Then every few days, they'd switch one long nap for a short one (20-30 minute), until they arrived at 6 short naps.

Almost. Stampi had his subject first transition into taking naps throughout the day. For a few days the subject would remove ~90m from his monophasic sleep and add it somewhere else in the day. On day six the subject was taking six 80m naps evenly spaced throughout the day.

From day 7 to 10 the subject reduced the nap length 12.5m each day. So by day 10 he was taking 30m naps each day, which he followed for ~40 days. Stampi said the adaptation worked well. The subject had no difficulty staying awake, but he had incredible difficulty waking up to the alarms.