Unlock more potential with effective sleeping.

Sleep Hacking for effective lifestyle with polyphasic sleep

So let’s talk about how we can reduce our sleep from 8 hours to 4 hours and get more done with our life, like learning a new skill, start a new project or put more time into our relaxing hobbies that we all kept complaining we didn’t have time for after the child, getting a job or any kind of time-consuming investment made in our lives. And yes it's a very approachable path without risking yourself into sleep apnea or sleep deprivation. Here’s a deep dive into what’s a good, sound, scientific approach towards a polyphasic sleep cycle. First the basics! (A note this blog is not for solutions to cure your sleep deprivation… check here for that)The most common sleep cycle we are all used to is 6-9 hours of sleep every day which is called a monophasic sleep. Biphasic sleep is when you take an additional 30mins- 1hr  nap at some later point in the day to cope with exhaustion of energy. On the other hand, polyphasic sleep (you guessed it!) involves sleeping in small steps around different times of the day and this is where the magic of sleep hacking happens. The way to get started with the habit of sleeping less but feeling more energetic and awake is by switching to a polyphasic sleeping cycle. It involves taking 20-30 mins naps throughout the day (more details of the breakup of sleep cycles later in the blog) and you can effectively reduce your total sleep from 8 hrs to as low as 2hrs (But for starters stay at 4-5hrs). And yes! Polyphasic sleeping patterns help you achieve this without feeling sleep deprived or exhausted once you have adapted to it. Monophasic sleep is like sleeping all of your sleep at once, think of it as a sleep starvation. Imagine eating all your food at once and never again for the rest of the day or longer. Just like if you went without food for a while surely you are to eat more in your next meal. Thus, sleeping only one time in the whole day causes a long hiatus in your sleep, which leaves you tired and craving for more. Breaking your sleeping patterns from one long chunk into smaller chunks throughout the day helps you to achieve a more effective, relaxing sleep and feel energetic even after investing less time in sleeping.

If we keep sleeping for 7-9 hours every day then for sure we will be missing out one-third of our life like a coma patient. We could use this time to do a lot more interesting and productive things. While some people have feline tendencies with sleep being their favorite activity-  we are leaving them aside and dedicating this article to those who are struggling with the time crunch and have a lot of ambitious projects and creative ideas in the back of their mind but not enough time or energy to bring them to life. 
So taking up on a polyphasic sleeping pattern as your daily habit is the best reward you can give yourself. And the initial challenges and hurdles are worth the cost as once you get habituated it’s with you for the rest of your life. The major challenge is going to be when you start a polyphasic sleeping pattern. Adapting to it will be a huge challenge in the beginning 3-5 days as it will start to make you feel like a zombie inside your head. Breaking out of your habitual 7-9 hrs sleep cycle is sure to hit you as a sleep deprivation that you have to muster in your beginning adaptation days. But fret not my friend there are many helpful strategies to make your adapting days feel easier on you. 
Let’s begin with the strategies. First is to pick up a known polyphasic sleep routine that has been tried and tested by people around the world and stick to the exact routine as closely as possible when you are adapting. Here are the three most basic polyphasic sleep patterns tried and tested successfully by many: Everyman’s sleep- A 3-hour sleep at night and two 30 minute nap spread around the day which reduces your total phase from 7-9 hrs down to almost 4 hours. That’s cutting your regular sleep cycle by half! Uberman’s sleep- A total of 3 hours of sleep with only 30 mins deep sleep spread throughout the day (This is challenging to achieve but gives you a greater sense of awareness where it starts to feel like euphoria)  Dymaxion: A total of 2 hours of sleep is taken throughout the day broken in phases of 20 mins nap around the day. Buckminister Fuller is known to have successfully used this throughout his life!

Now you know the simple strategies to choose from. However,  there are many important things you should know and not skip over before trying this on yourself. The first most important aspect is picking a schedule that you can preferably stick with throughout the cycle. For example, if you’re starting out with an Everyman’s sleep schedule, and you decide to go to bed at 12am and sleep for 3 hours and then take a 30 mins nap every six hours gap after waking up at 3am, then you must stick to it. Shifting around your sleep pattern can prove costly and will take you longer to get adjusted to the polyphasic sleeping cycle. As your body starts adapting to newer sleep patterns it’s important that a stricter schedule is maintained for a smoother transition to the new sleep cycle. The next important thing to take note of is very heavy tiredness will start kicking off from day 3 or even as early as day 2 and might last two or three more days. After this your body adjusts to the sleep changes and everything goes back to normal.An appropriate diet is very necessary for this quest to succeed. You shouldn’t be stressing out your body these days. Minimize the intake of sugary diets in general and never make the last meal. Shut off all the bright screens like TV/computer/ cell phones 30 mins before your naps. Also a five-minute meditation can be quite effective before a nap. While napping in the middle of the day you might need manta sleep eye covers with night rainfall beats to help you doze off to deep sleep faster.And that’s it! You are ready to structure your sleep cycle to gain more out of your life. If you are curious to learn more about polyphasic sleep cycle check out Ubersleep which is explored in-depth in this book from PureDoxyk. Another great source is Reddit where a user annotates his journey about polyphasic sleep and did well. Also if you are a visual person Siim Land talks about his journey for polyphasic sleep. Before closing off I would like to warn you from the naysayers that there’s no scientific evidence about polyphasic sleep. In truth, there is plenty of research done in the polyphasic sleep cycle showing it boosts performance, helps in weight loss, betterment of emotional control and many more. Evidence of polyphasic sleep has been reported in great scientists and leaders like Nikola Tesla, Leonardo DaVinci, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi who are all well known for their works and immense contributions to the society. The truth is research in polyphasic sleep attracted less attention and has been majorly stepped aside in modern research so we are not aware of how to best utilize polyphasic sleep in our day to day life. Another important aspect to make a note of is the amount of physical activity your job requires. If your job requires plenty of physical activity, your body might take a little bit longer to restore from physical fatigue. But there are many great strategies to restore your energy fast through several chi exercises. Tried and proven techniques that work include Zhangzhuang, Swimming Dragon Taiji and Meditation on twin hearts. More on how different chi and qigong practices can make you a super energetic person and strengthen your health on our upcoming blogs. Be sure to check out later for our upcoming blogs on Qigong and Taiji.

Recap:

1. Start out with this very simple strategy like (Everyman’s sleep schedule).
   

2. For the first few days try to sleep exactly on the time, don’t shift your schedules. Pace yourself with a timer
   

3. Be mentally prepared to deal with lack of sleeplessness in the first couple of days of your adjustment. Also start this only when you are relatively free in your life and you are not working on close deadlines or intense projects.
   

4. If you are still struggling to adapt and sleep deprivation is a feeling you don’t handle well, they try dual core sleep. Such as this ….
   
   
   

   

   Where you can change a nap from 20 mins into a core 30mins sleep  and try to slowly decrease this core sleep into a nap of 20mins.
   
   

Best of luck in your quest!