Polyphasic Sleeping Experiment:  Termination  (please read)

I thought that I should post and mention that, obviously, I have stopped the polyphasic sleeping experiment. This is not due to the experiment itself being too hard, or much less impossible, and if you were considering trying it out yourself, I would still say it is definitely worth it. However, I ran into some unrelated health problems. I had to get some teeth pulled, and then soon after developed a blood clot in my arm – again these both seem completely unrelated to the experiment…just bad timing. But, I was scared to continue the experiment.

I was scared because inherit with the basic idea of polyphasic sleeping is the fact that it reduces your sleep cycle to ONLY REM, and completely removes all of the other stages (theoretically). I have heard that these other stages, although unnecessary, can help the body with the healing process. Since I am having some health issues right now, I think it is important I get these other stages of sleep so that I heal fully and quickly, at least for now.

I would like to mention that, near the end of the experiment, I thought I would try out a watered down version of polyphasic sleeping instead of giving up completely right away. I attempted a schedule that gave me 4 hours of core sleep (which, already, is at least an hour more than the amount of sleep a truly polyphasic sleeper would sleep in the entire day :)) and then several half hour naps (usually 2-3) throughout the rest of the day whenever I felt that I needed them. I found that this method worked very well. The four hours of sleep were a life saver, since I would always use them from about 2am to 6am, as these were the hours that made it really tough to stay awake for the last experiment. I also found that napping not on a set schedule, but instead whenever I was both tired and had time to nap, worked out really well. This way I could easily be much more flexible than I was with the uberman schedule. This schedule really was working very well, especially since after the uberman schedule, sleeping 4 hours at night was like heaven. Going from being used to 8 hours a night to 4 would be more difficult, but not as bad as going straight into ubermans. If you’re thinking of trying it out, maybe start out with some core sleep, and then if you want to sleep even less, slowly whittle away that core sleep.

Even though it had to be terminated, I have learned a lot from the experiment. I’ve learned, first and foremost, that the human body simply does not seem to need as much sleep as we, day after day, give it. I did not experience any issues other than being tired and a sore back during the entire experiment, and the blood clot came up a week or maybe even more after I had stopped the uberman schedule, so that was almost surely unrelated. The only reason we sleep as much as most people do now, in my opinion, is because we think we need to sleep that much. The mind is a very powerful thing.

I'll leave you with that, for now.  I have another interesting post to make today.