When Does Adaptation End?
I've returned from the various amounts of galavanting I've done over the holidays. I hope everyone's holidays treated them well. For me, it was a lot of very engaging social activity (from which I could not pull myself away), rich food, a little alcohol, etc. All in all, not encouraging to a polyphasic lifestyle.
I slept a lot more over the holidays than I expected. I found myself many times without a desire to work on projects. It was vacation, after all, which has personally always meant "catch up on sleep time". Thus, without drive to keep going and stay awake, I allowed more sleep. I'm still gaining time, though, as these long sleeps would normally all have been 10-14 hours straight through.
Now, I've adopted core sleep in my schedule, as I've mentioned before. Recently, though, I've been throwing it in early in my evening schedule, instead of right around 4 am. This is usually somewhere between 9 pm and 12 am. For that nap, I don't set an alarm at all. Every time, I've woken up after 1.5 - 3 hours. I've never gone longer, even when I gave in and hit the snooze. It's weird... I would have expected to crash for long stretches from this, but I didn't. Perhaps it's my "siesta" time in my subjective day, so a short, semi-normal nap works best?
Anyway, I slept a lot the past few days (by my standards, anway). Friday and Saturday (NYE) nights, I slept 6 hours. The day after NYE I slept an amazing 10 hours (though, intentionally - I decided to let myself sleep as long as my body wanted). For those keeping score, that's the most I have slept in a single sitting since I started. So, this was three days of large blocks of sleep. I was worried that it would have interrupted my polynapping, that I would need to start all over again, and today would be a problem.
It wasn't.
I breezed through my naps as though nearly nothing had happened. With the exception of my 7 am, pre-work nap (which took place with a bit too much noise), every nap has been fruitful. I've slept quickly, well, and with dreams.
So, this set me "a-ponderin'"... is it possible that the trial becomes just the practice of a learned "skill"? We all must realize that, at some point, one is no longer experimenting or testing, but they are simply a polynapper (unless of course it stays a struggle indefinitely, which I do not believe to be true).
I've been in contact with Andrew "Xeeban" Nishigaya, one of the more cited polynappers because of his earlier success with it. He said in private emails that he switches back and forth from mono to polyphasic sleeping (repeating what he says in a follow-up post circa April, 2004). Other veteran polynappers on the uberman mailing list have said similar things - that they switch between them as their needs change. I'm guessing here, but their casual mention of just transitioning when needed indicates to me that later transitions are much easier than the initial "training". I wonder how much time was between each of the polyphasic sections.
Is it possible to "forget" polynapping (ie, reach a point where re-transitioning would be as nearly as hard or harder than the initial attempt)? I really don't know. I've considered testing how long it would take for me to revert to monosleeping only, purely out of curiousity... however, I really don't want to give up the hours, and I hate the idea of having to re-transition. :)
-sean
I slept a lot more over the holidays than I expected. I found myself many times without a desire to work on projects. It was vacation, after all, which has personally always meant "catch up on sleep time". Thus, without drive to keep going and stay awake, I allowed more sleep. I'm still gaining time, though, as these long sleeps would normally all have been 10-14 hours straight through.
Now, I've adopted core sleep in my schedule, as I've mentioned before. Recently, though, I've been throwing it in early in my evening schedule, instead of right around 4 am. This is usually somewhere between 9 pm and 12 am. For that nap, I don't set an alarm at all. Every time, I've woken up after 1.5 - 3 hours. I've never gone longer, even when I gave in and hit the snooze. It's weird... I would have expected to crash for long stretches from this, but I didn't. Perhaps it's my "siesta" time in my subjective day, so a short, semi-normal nap works best?
Anyway, I slept a lot the past few days (by my standards, anway). Friday and Saturday (NYE) nights, I slept 6 hours. The day after NYE I slept an amazing 10 hours (though, intentionally - I decided to let myself sleep as long as my body wanted). For those keeping score, that's the most I have slept in a single sitting since I started. So, this was three days of large blocks of sleep. I was worried that it would have interrupted my polynapping, that I would need to start all over again, and today would be a problem.
It wasn't.
I breezed through my naps as though nearly nothing had happened. With the exception of my 7 am, pre-work nap (which took place with a bit too much noise), every nap has been fruitful. I've slept quickly, well, and with dreams.
So, this set me "a-ponderin'"... is it possible that the trial becomes just the practice of a learned "skill"? We all must realize that, at some point, one is no longer experimenting or testing, but they are simply a polynapper (unless of course it stays a struggle indefinitely, which I do not believe to be true).
I've been in contact with Andrew "Xeeban" Nishigaya, one of the more cited polynappers because of his earlier success with it. He said in private emails that he switches back and forth from mono to polyphasic sleeping (repeating what he says in a follow-up post circa April, 2004). Other veteran polynappers on the uberman mailing list have said similar things - that they switch between them as their needs change. I'm guessing here, but their casual mention of just transitioning when needed indicates to me that later transitions are much easier than the initial "training". I wonder how much time was between each of the polyphasic sections.
Is it possible to "forget" polynapping (ie, reach a point where re-transitioning would be as nearly as hard or harder than the initial attempt)? I really don't know. I've considered testing how long it would take for me to revert to monosleeping only, purely out of curiousity... however, I really don't want to give up the hours, and I hate the idea of having to re-transition. :)
-sean
posted by Sean @ 1/04/2006 01:36:00 AM
2 Comments:
I've been switching back and forth since I started, both intentionally and unintentionally. To me taking a "normal" 8h sleep every once in a while has helped me restore my body. The first one resulted in a much better mental state afterwards. Since the second one I've been able to shorten my naps a bit.
-Dan
http://www.thedanexperiment.com
Even though I'm a 49 year old female and only started the polyphasic sleep routine a month ago, it was easier to transition into it than it was to function on two days during that time when I had to go core/biphasic. Clarity, mental energy and emotional balance were way reduced on those two days. I suddenly realized: that's how I used to feel all the time !! It was a great relief to get back to my ... "natural" state after a few naps! hang in, I'm starting to believe it's the way we're meant to live.
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