Biphaic Sleep - Day 11, 12, 13, 14 - End of journal

Ok, I think I can stop posting about my biphasic sleep experience, unless something special happens. It's my 14th day as a biphasic sleeper, and I think I'm done with the adaptation phase so I'll just relate how it changed my life.

Today, as opposed to my monophasic sleep period, I feel much more refreshed, and have no problems waking up in the mornings. I used to have 3 different alarms to wake me up, and felt tired all day long. Now, I may be groggy for 10 minutes if I gave myself too much or not enough time to fall asleep (and the alarm wakes me up during a sleep cycle), but I'm in an excellent shape the rest of the day; the only times when I'm tired means it's time for me to go to bed.

I now clearly remember dreaming, usually after my core sleep (even though I sometime have weird dreams :). And I'm often hungry when I wake up (?).

My biphasic sleep's schedule is relatively flexible, and I don't have to fall asleep and wake up at the same time everyday (even though I try to be regular for practical reasons). One of the rare penalzing aspects of biphasic sleep is that I'll be really tired if I miss a nap (maybe it'll be different in a few weeks, I'll let you know), but it's just like if you don't get enough sleep when you're monophasic.

I have a lot of extra-free time I can use, since I'm alert all night long: I can work until 2:00 AM without being tired; biphasic sleep also increases your productivity, and I'm often inspired when I write an essay, or during a math test, etc... (better grades).

The only real negative aspect I can think of is that it may mess up your social life. But if it doesn't, give it a shot; it's worth trying, trust me :). Try to keep a regular sleep schedule, at least the first 2 weeks so that your body adapts fully and easily. Here's a great site if you want to try biphasic sleep.
Good luck!

Cactus

Biphasic Sleep - Day 10

I had a core sleep of 4.5 hours, from 1:00 to 5:30 AM, and remembered having dreams, which rarely happened before. I didn't have any problems waking up, but it was too early to do anything interesting, and I spent the next hour in my bed, reading and listening to music. I don't really want to work in the mornings, so I'll try and fall asleep later, so that I wake up early enough to prepare myself without rushing, but not too early.

I gave myself too much time to fall asleep, and the alarm woke me up when I was entering another sleep cycle, so I felt slightly groggy for the next 15 minutes, but was alert for the rest of the evening (until 2AM).
Cactus

Biphasic Sleep - Day 9

Sleeping twice a day is the key of success. Even though I had a 7.5 hour core sleep (midnight -> 7:30 AM), I was really tired all day long because of intense physical activites friday and saturday, combined with the lack of sleep yesterday afternoon, and today's family trip. Devin Reams said that having an extra cycle during the core sleep if you skip a nap will make you recover, but apparently it's not my case (or maybe it's because I still didn't fully adapt). It's 5:00 PM now, and I think I'll go and take and nap right away (instead of 6:30) because I'm really tired, and it will give me extra free time tonight (plenty of homework).

The nap was wonderful. I'm not tired anymore, and because it was successfull I'm going back to a 4.5 + 1.5 schedule. I stayed alert the rest of the evening, and was very inspired when I started writing an essay due next week; biphasic sleep makes you more productive :)
Cactus

Biphasic Sleep - Day 8

I went to bed at 1h30, and set the alarm so that it rings at 9 (after a 7.5 hour core sleep). Anyway, I woke at 6h30 by myself, after completing 4 sleep cycles), and wasn't tired at all. And for the first time, I remembered a dream (plenty of biphasic sleepers say they experience an increase in dream remembering), so I guess it's a pretty good sign.

It's 10 PM, and I'm starting to get really tired. I couldn't take a nap, because I did paintball all afternoon, and now I can't stop myself from yawning every 10 minutes... I'll try and get a 7.5 hour core sleep tonight to try and compensate; I hope it'll work out.
Cactus

Biphasic Sleep - Day 7

My core sleeps show me I'm still in the adaptation phase: even though I sleep for 4.5 hours and have a lot less problems waking up (compared to my monophasic schedule), I spend 10 minutes in bed, just laying around. And I keep yawning for the next 20 minutes, and feel good after I take a shower. I have no problems of concentration during the day, it's not working so bad after all. But I hope I'll really be efficient and never tired when I wake up, like other biphasic sleeper say they do.

I think I'm addicted now: I woke up 30 minutes before the end of the cycle because of my sister, and couldn't stop myself from yawning for the next hour. Anyway, today is friday night, and I'll try to have a 7.5 hour core sleep (maximum).

Biphasic Sleep - Day 6

I went for another 4.5 core sleep, and it's working kind of weird: I spent 15 minutes lying in bed awake before getting up, and was tired for the next 2 hours. But when I come back and take my nap, I stay alert for the rest of the night until 20 minutes before the core sleep, which was impossible with my monophasic schedule. And having extra free time is great :)

The nap was great; and when I wake up after a 1.5 hour nap, I feel less tired than when I wake up from the core sleep, but I guess it's normal since it's early in the evening, and I still have some energy left.
Cactus

Biphasic Sleep - Day 5

I went to bed at 1:50ish AM, and was starting to feel tired 20 minutes before going to bed. I set my alarm clock as a backup in case I didn't awake by myself, and it was really useful because I was going for another 90 minutes of sleep. I'll try and not set it too late next time so that I don't start another cycle. I now wake up by myself after my naps, but not yet after my 4.5 hour core sleep, my body still isn't completely used to it. I'm starting to disagree with my mom, who thinks that sleeping 6hours per day isn't enough for a 14 year old, even though I explained her many times how biphasic sleep works. I'll try and do some research to see if it's ''dangerous'' for teenager, but I seriously doubt.

The naps are really refreshing, even if the alarm woke me up at 7:50PM. I didn't have any problems getting out of bed whatsoever.
Cactus

P.S: Happy Birthday William :)

Biphasic Sleep - Day 4

Sleeping 4.5 hours wasn't a bad idea, even though I was a bit tired when the alarm clock woke me up at 6:30. I kept yawning for about one hour, so my body didn't adapt yet :) but I was fine the rest of the day, feeling slightly sleepy during the first class hours. Tonight I'll try and have another 4.5 hour core sleep to see how tired I'll be when I woke up. I have a feeling that the nap is going to be wonderful...

Sometimes you feel like killing someone. My sister woke me up 20 minutes before the end of my sleep cycle, and I was tired for the next 2 hours, I think I'm starting to be addicted.. Anyway, I'll have to explain for the 10th time the importance of letting me wake up by myself. Tonight I'm still going for a 4.5 hour core sleep.
Cactus

Biphasic Sleep - Day 3

I gave myself 10 minutes to fall asleep, and went to bed at 0:20 AM. But I couldn't sleep for half an hour because of my nap; my body didn't adapt completely yet. Nevertheless, I woke up at 5:10 AM by myself, but I slept for another cycle because I felt that I was going to be too tired all day long. I woke up at 6:40, and was tired physically (again, because of the bikeriding and the lack of monophasic sleep), but I wasn't groggy at all, and even if the alarm clock woke me up, I was ready for highschool.

The nap felt great :). It took me 5 minutes to all asleep, and I woke up by myself, after on complete sleep cycle. Maybe my body is adapting faster than expected, that would be really great. Since I had a very good nap, I'll try and fall asleep around 2 AM, and do a 4.5 hour core sleep. Let's see how it works out.
Cactus

Biphasic Sleep - Day 2

I was planning on going to bed at 0:30 AM, and to wake up at 6:30. Knowing that I spend a lot of time thinking in my bed, I gave myself 10 minutes to fall asleep. Apparently that wasn't enough, so I added an extra 15 minutes to the alarm clock, so that it rings at 6:45. Well, the alarm clock woke me up this morning, but I feel like I was getting at an end of a sleep cycle. I had no problem waking up, and didn't feel groggy or anything, but I was a little bit physically tired, as if I had spent last day playing basketball games. Now it's 10:20 AM, and I don't feel any difference with a normal monophasic day. Anyway, I'll see if I manage to fall asleep during my nap.

Its 8:00PM, and I'm feeling good. I went to bed for my nap at 6:15 PM and I was hoping to fall asleep around 6:20. I did some bikeriding all day long, so I was pretty tired and had no problem falling asleep, although I woke up in the middle of the nap, and fell asleep again, so I reckon I didn't do any complete sleep cycles. That must be why I felt a little bit groggy when the alarm woke me up at 7:50 PM, but I was OK after 5 minutes. I'm now planning to go to bed around 0:30 AM, and sleep 6 hours straight.
Cactus

Biphasic Sleep - Day 1 + Schedule

Ok, so here it goes.
After researching all day long, I decided to become a biphasic sleeper. Some people such as Joseph Young will say that I'm about to radically change my life, and maybe I was a little bit to impulsive when I see people who wait for months before actually starting. But I really think I've got nothing to lose, and if it turns bad in a way or another I'll just go back to monophasic sleep.
Like most of other biphasic sleepers, I'm going to organize my sleep schedule in one nap, and one core sleep. I'll try and have a 90 minutes nap (one full sleep cycle) at around 6:20 PM, usually when I get back from school, and start with a 6 hours core sleep, from 0:30 to 6:30 AM. That makes a total oh 7.5 hours of sleep per day, which is about the amount of sleep I used to do during my monophasic teenagehood, but it seems a lot compared to what other biphasic sleepers do. The reason why I'm starting like this is that I discovered that most people have a hard time adapting during the first 10 days, so when my body adapts, I'll start and decrease gradually my amount of sleep to 6, and maybe 4.5 hours per day, but always with my nap. When you think of it, it's going to give me a lot of free time: I come home, have my nap, eat, and do whatever I want from 8:30 PM to 1:30 or 3:00 AM, depending on my amount of core sleep. Of course, the ''better for my studies'' is a good argument, even though I doubt very much I'm going to spend all that time studying, unlike Romain, the friend who first made me discover biphasic sleeping.
So this is my first day as a biphasic sleeper. Actually, it's only half a day, because last night was the last time I slept monophasic way. Anyway, when I first went to bed at 6:20PM, I just couldn't fall asleep. I tried everything I could think of: comfy warm bed, earplugs, dark room, but I was too excited with this biphasic stuff and the 9 hours of sleep I had last night, added to the Sprite surely didn't help. But from what I read, there's a 2 week adaptation where you are mostly to have a rough time, so I guess it's normal to not be able to fall asleep the first days. Anyway, I'm going to try and fall asleep at aroune 0:30 AM and wake up at 6:30 AM (I think I never woke up that early on a Sunday in my entire life) and I'll tell you how I did.
Cheers.
Cactus

Biphasic Sleeping - Theory

The theory of biphasic sleeping is quite simple. By sleeping 2 times in a day, totalling 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5, or 9 hours of sleep (or, if you prefer, by completing a certain amount of entire sleep cycles), you should sleep better and be less tired when you wake up that if you slept for any amount of time in between, that is not a multiple of 90 minutes. As Glen Rhodes brilliantly exposes, ''The secret is NOT the amount of sleep, but rather the number itself; a multiple of 90 minutes will change your life.''. For instance, you will feel a lot more better if you slept 7.5 hours and had 5 complete sleep cycles than if you slept 8.5 hours, and that the alarm clock brutally interrupted the cycle. Have you ever been so groggy after the alarm clock rang that you could barely move? Well, there's 90% chance that it's because you didn't finish your last sleep cycle.
That's the key to become a biphasic sleeper. Instead of sleeping in one big chunk during the night, you divide your daily sleeping time into 2 (bi-phasic), and you end up with being a lot less tired and a lot more productive than the people who don't complete sleep cycles. I've been researching a lot about this, and I didn't find any medical side-effects. In fact, cavemen were polyphasic sleepers (sleeping a very small amount of time several times in the day) because they couldn't afford to rest with all the predators. We later became biphasic (look at all the babies who take a nap during the afternoon and sleep during the night), and finally monophasic because lightning wasn't working very well, and we had to maximise working hours during daytime, and rest when the sun went down. When artificial lighning was invented, we could have go back to biphasic, which is a healthier way of life, but the new way of life was already instaured. All this to say that we are naturally biphasic when we are born, and that society (at least in the northern hemisphere) forces us to become monophasic.
The benefits of biphasic sleep, from what I saw, seems really awesome: you sleep less, but you become more productive and it's even healthier! The only negative side is that it can somehow affect your social life, and you sometimes find people who quit biphasic sleep because they it just wasn't compatible with their way of life (ex: Tim). Nevertheless, nearly all the bloggers that have experimented it say it's a great experience that really works, so why not give it a shot? For a teenager who has no other choice than work very late every day, waking up in the morning without being tired seems almost too good to be true. This is why I decided to become a biphasic sleeper. And even if it doesn't work, it looks like a great experiment to try, and I have to admit that I love it when people think I'm crazy, while I could actually sleep better than them ...
Cactus

Sleeping: Scientific facts

Sleeping time is divided into cycles of about 90 minutes each. Here is an explanation of the sleep cycles:

They are divided into 2 major parts:
First, non-REM (rapid eye mouvement) session, divided in 4 stages, and accounts 80% of the sleeping cycle:
- Stage 1: Sort of a gateway state between wake and sleep aka ''somnolence'' or ''drowsy sleep''. It's also a transition state into stage 2,
- Stage 2: Cconscious awareness of the external environment disappears. This occupies 45–55% of the cycle.
- Stage 3: Transition stage into stage for, occupies 3 to 8% of the sleep cycle.
- Stage 4: This is the stage in which night terrors, bed wetting, sleepwalking, and sleep talking occur. The non-REM session is also characterized by parasympathetic system conserves energy as it slows the heart rate, increases intestinal and gland activity.

Second, REM session (about 20% of the cycle):
REM sleep is characterized by loss of skeletal muscle tone, and sympathetic nervous system activity (it prepares the body to awakeness).

Source: wikipedia (search for sleep)

In order to rest fully, you should have several complete sleep cycles, instead of sleeping little by little. For instance, sleeping 5 hours will make you wake up in a middle of a cycle, and you will feel even more tired than if you slep 4.5hours straight (3 sleep cycles). And sleeping 20 minutes every hour will be completely useless, even if you total hours of sleep at the end (except if you're a polyphasic sleeper of course).

Here are 2 studies I found on Glen Rhodes' site:

"A group of Harvard scientists trained volunteers to perform a visual task that required them to learn how to recognize certain patterns as they flashed quickly on the computer screen. When the subjects were tested 10 hours later, those who had taken a 90-minute nap did much better than those who didn't nap. In fact, they did as well as people who got a full night's sleep in a previous study" - http://www.sleepfoundation.org/Alert/030730.cfm

Here's something from the Center for Applied Cognitive Studies (http://centacs.com)
"Studies show that the length of sleep is not what causes us to be refreshed upon waking. The key factor is the number of complete sleep cycles we enjoy. Each sleep cycle contains five distinct phases, which exhibit different brain- wave patterns. For our purposes, it suffices to say that one sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes: 65 minutes of normal, or non-REM (rapid eye movement), sleep; 20 minutes of REM sleep (in which we dream); and a final 5 minutes of non-REM sleep. The REM sleep phases are shorter during earlier cycles (less than 20 minutes) and longer during later ones (more than 20 minutes). If we were to sleep completely naturally, with no alarm clocks or other sleep disturbances, we would wake up, on the average, after a multiple of 90 minutes--for example, after 4 1/2 hours, 6 hours, 7 1/2 hours, or 9 hours, but not after 7 or 8 hours, which are not multiples of 90 minutes. In the period between cycles we are not actually sleeping: it is a sort of twilight zone from which, if we are not disturbed (by light, cold, a full bladder, noise), we move into another 90-minute cycle. A person who sleeps only four cycles (6 hours) will feel more rested than someone who has slept for 8 to 10 hours but who has not been allowed to complete any one cycle because of being awakened before it was completed.... "

Cactus

Biphasic Sleeping - Intro

- I'm gonna start biphasic sleeping.
- What is it?
- Well, basically, you divide your sleeping time into 2 periods during the day: one nap, usually 90 minutes long, and a ''core sleep'' that's 3, 4.5, 6 or 7.5 hours long. I'm gonna start with a total of 7.5 hours of sleep per day, and gradually decrease until I reach 4.5.
- Rrrright. Are they planning to send you to a psychiatric hospital, or are they just gonna kill you to stop the suffering?

Usually, I got this when I exposed my project. People were looking at me like as if I just became masochist (except for my mom, who surprisingly enough approved it). But who can blame them? Biphasic sleep sounds really great, (even though very few people have heard of it) I'll explain why later.
The first time I heard about it was just yesterday, in highschool. Someone told me that Romain, a guy in my class, slept 4.5 hours per day. Curious, and sceptical too (the dude always has good grades, and doesn't look like some kind of no-life ^^), I went and ask him about his sleep, and he told me about biphasic sleep. Supposedly, you sleep less, you're not tired, gain a lot of time, and even become more productive. ''wtf'' was my first thought. I typed ''biphasic sleep'' on Google, and here I am, going to take a nap in about 5 minutes, and start my ''6-hours-sleeping-per-day''. It's the first time I'm doing anything like this, and I'll try and explain what it is before I continue.
Cactus