Biphasic Sleep (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Biphasic Sleep

[Andreas]

From reading the article, I'm almost surprised you didn't try this sooner.
Because it's an Excellent idea.


Somewhat concerned about your sleep only adding up to 6 hours though. How much sleep were you getting, on average, when you were monophasic?


Much luck to you, Savage!

[Summerbreeze]

Good luck,

It is nearly the same cycle that my body adapts to naturally if I let it decide, especially the second is very similar.

When you do the second cycle make sure you got enough water, what also depends on what you ate. It will avoid that you feel fuzzy after the second cycle - especially if you let your mouth open while sleeping

~sb

[supertom]

My mum works in a old peoples home, Biphasic sleep is popular there. I'll probably try this when im 40.

Actually this is the variation i wanted to do, so I'll do the trial also. Except i'll go 6-7, As I d0 30mins meditation through out the day also.

[Lakshyayidhi Lakshmihi]

Hey, me too! I switched a while back. I have no set schedule, though, so I can sleep and wake when I feel tired and my nap tends to be in the mid afternoon for whatever reason, but I also skip the nap if I have a lot to do. I just feel sleep deprived a lot.

[Elfwing]

I'll do this with ya, Steve. I used to be a biphasic sleeper and I felt great, much better than monophasic. I think I'll have my nap from 3PM-4.30PM, and sleep from 2.30AM to 7AM. I go monophasic right now and I'm struggling to maintain my sleep cycle (it always drifts) AND I've been so tired lately.

Andreas - when I was a biphasic sleeper a few years ago my sleep added up less than that (five hoursish) and I felt far better than if I had 8+ hours a day all in one go. (And besides, when Steve was on polyphasic he had FAR less than that, too.) Actually, when I'm monophasic, I have 9-10 hours, and I hate it.

[Lakshyayidhi Lakshmihi]

Originally Posted by Andreas

From reading the article, I'm almost surprised you didn't try this sooner.
Because it's an Excellent idea.


Somewhat concerned about your sleep only adding up to 6 hours though. How much sleep were you getting, on average, when you were monophasic?


Much luck to you, Savage!

I think it's a viral meme that you have to sleep a certain number of hours per 24 hours to feel rested. The best thing about biphasic or multiphasic sleep, even for a 30 day trial, is that it can release the limiting belief that you need 8 hours of sleep a night.

[Brutha]

Somewhat concerned about your sleep only adding up to 6 hours though.

That's the point of the whole exercise.

Still how many hours did you sleep before you started this trial?

[Savage]

Monophasically I would normally sleep 6.5-7 hours per night.

[Andrew Brunelle]

I think this is a more optimal way of sleeping from some experience in the past, although the only problem I've ever had with this was not being able to sleep when I laid down to take a nap, although I wasn't waking up at 5 AM, but rather a little later (7:30) and stay up a little later (1-2 AM). I can understand your motivations here. And it will probably work well for you.

What happened with me is I often stayed up way too late, caught up in a sea of inspiration, and I kind of skewed my sleep schedule to the point where I had to stop and become monophasic again. Now my sleep schedule is even more irregular (due to working on the night shift). I sleep from 10 AM until around 6 or 7 PM, except on days (or nights) I have off. I've always been a night owl, though, so no problems there.

Biphaisc sleep seems way more practical than polyphasic sleep, and the only problem I can see happening is that you'll have to take a nap at some point during the night, and it could be challenging if you are somewhere where that is not practical, although you could always skip it. But it's certainly not life or death here, so best of luck to you.

[Mounds]

I had a month and a half period of my life where I did biphasic sleep for a job. It was 2:00AM-9:00AM and 2:00PM-7:00PM. The job was fine but the sleeping... man, it was horrible. After that month and a half, I gave up the morning shift and never looked back. For that period of time, I was perpetually tired.
I had another bout of biphasic sleep when I was into EMT. In that case, it became a matter of getting sleep when you could and pushing yourself when you were tired. Still not ideal and definitely not for me.
My monophonic sleep schedule runs from 10:00PM - 5:00AM.

[invisiblehouses]

And the synchronicities keep stacking up; know what I had about five conversations about last week?

Biphasic sleep.

It's neat when all your figments start writing about the stuff you've been thinking about.

[Broderick]

I liked the Self-Discipline vs. Spontaneity section.

I've been wondering about the same thing...how having fun fits in with being self disciplined and being productive. I guess I have to play with that balance a while to see what works the best.

I've been meeting a lot of new people and it seems the more people I meet, the more I'm asked to come and do something social with them. A lot of the things they want to do are outside of my comfort zone and I do enjoy them, so I say yes to them, but when I do that there's always a nagging feeling like I should be working. On the flip side, I feel bogged down with work when I say no to those opportunities and just work through them.

[Savage]

Day 2 is going okay. I had some major afternoon drowsiness, but I felt better about 30 minutes after the nap. I'm feeling wide awake now.

It feels like I have more time than usual today. Normally I'd be winding down for bed around now, but I still have almost 3 hours to go before core sleep.

[Chris_1977]

This sounds like a good idea actually. I might try it out sometime too. Combining early rising with the ability to stay up late sounds attractive.

[Andrew Gubb]

Funny, I thought some time ago it would be a good fit for you. I actually wondered why you hadn't done it yet.

I tried it out and was liking it a lot, but I didn't get far. I couldn't do it without interrupting my girlfriend's incredibly light sleep - and I like sleeping with my girlfriend too much. (Well, even if I wanted to sleep alone there's not enough space in this apartment. Only a sofa. So that sucks even more).

I'm certain I'll give this a go sometime when things are more aligned. It looks like a really good way of doing things. Good luck Steve and enjoy

Personally, in terms of getting extra juice out of my time I'd like to get to breatharianism sometime. You only have to sleep 4 hours a day and the extra energy means even more awesome out of your time - I think that's the best solution all round if you can pull it off.

[Savage]

It was a lot more difficult getting up this morning. I'm glad I'm already conditioned to get up at 5am, so I still got out of bed and went to the gym, but it was like being a zombie on autopilot. I didn't really feel awake till halfway through my workout. Still a bit tired now but managing okay.

[ssandra]

I'm doing the same thing I didn't even consider that it was biphasic sleep, or anything like that. I'm just sleeping late, getting up early and taking naps.

For me the main challenge is to wake up early. For now I'm aiming on around 6.30. (Bed time is around 12, 1 am).

I will wake up a zombie, but by the time I have my coffee and water and turned on my computer, I am starting to wake up

My nap time is for 1,5 hours, between 4 and 7, depending a lot on my schedule.

To wake up well after my nap, it takes about 15 minutes. What helps me a lot is to drink a glass (large glass) of ice cold water right after waking up after my nap. When I do that, the time to waking up completely is however long it takes me to get my glass of water and drink it

I love how I don't have the afternoon laziness / tiredness anymore.

My only challenge right now is when being around other people to remember to take my nap, or if I cannot take a nap to take at least 15 minutes alone for meditation.

[Asten]

I'm really interested to see how this goes for you. This schedule is the one I have always wanted, but I assumed that I'd be sleep deprived all the time, even though I naturally tend toward it.

If I want to feel rested all day, I have to sleep 10-12 hours, and that's a huge waste of time. If I sleep less, I require a nap in the evening to keep going, and I don't know why I assumed that was "bad." Goes against the norm, I suppose.

I think starting out an early riser might be huge advantage--helps keep the habit of getting up at that time.

Good luck.

[Harald]

This is VERY similiar to the way I was sleeping for years. Physiologically it worked really well, but it did become a bit challenging socially at times. Having that early evening nap just wasn't appropriate or practical a lot of the time.

[Sivar]

I've also done this before many times, but every time just for a week max, and then returned to monophasic sleep. It came pretty naturally when I had a fixed working schedule but still wanted to stay up late.

So when the alarm rang in the morning I had maybe 3h of sleep, and in the afternoon (usually around 3) I'd get so tired that I'd sleep for 3h again (even with an alarm set earlier ).

When I did this 50/50 biphasic sleeping, I wasn't sleepy during wake hours... on the contrary, especially in the evenings I was very much awake and full of motivation. BUT... my mood wasn't as good. It was like nothing went fast enough for me. Slow traffic, slow people, me being slow in adapting to something new... all that made me angry, which it normally wouldn't, at least by far not as much.

In essence, not being where I wanted to be or at least getting there at the fastest pace possible - physically and personally - bugged me a lot more than usual.

[Savage]

Day 4: So far, so good. I seem to have the most drowsiness in the late morning, but I feel pretty good at other times.

Listening to Paraliminals helps take the edge of the drowsiness when I need a quick refresher.

Taking a 90-minute nap each day feels like a big time commitment, but then I notice how much extra time there is at the end of the day. I'm beginning to like that.

This is definitely way easier than adapting to polyphasic sleep. It really does feel like having jetlag. Hopefully that feeling will clear up soon.

My gym workouts don't seem any more difficult than usual, although I'm a bit groggy when I first start. I'm just doing interval training though, no weights.

The tricky part is deciding when to take the nap each day. Yesterday I napped at 5:15pm and woke up very groggy. Today I'll try napping at 6:30pm.

[Sonnenblume]

Why don't you take a nap between 3pm and 5pm? That's the time where a lot of people naturally get a bit tired, because the energy of the bladder meridian is the strongest there, and if you rest during this period, this energy is available to rejuvenate your nervous system (because the bladder meridian is linked to the nervous system).

Maybe your rhythm is a bit shifted because you get up earlier, but look for signs when you naturally get a bit tired, and you might find that it's not at 6pm but some hours earlier.