I’m around and about…still kicking!!

Haha, Ohhh, man! It’s been so long since the last time I actually posted anything. So….why? Well if there is a reason, I can’t think of one…the thing is that I haven’t really cared enough about this project to prioritise it…..which may seem strange. But the thing is that I’ve been thinking a lot, which is a good thing…especially seeing that I am doing Philosophy…

I’d like to list all the stuff that has been streaming through, but I’m not going to do that just now…What I am going to do is show some of the stuff I’ve been reading and thinking about that are actually shareable!

First off: I’ve been saving my hair now since X-mas….I’ve been shaving and trimming as well…but now I’ve decided to let my hair continue to grow and I am letting my beard grow as well….this will be fun.

I’ve been doing essays and reading, probably not enough though….Which means I’m gonna have to catch up on it sometime soon….hmmm

I’ve started skateboarding…not really much to tell, except that I’m happy to say that I haven’t broken anything yet. *KNOCK ON WOOD* (I had never  stood on a skateboard before last weekend)

I have gotten into habits of thinking a bit more critically and viewing the world a bit less blue eyed—starting to lose my innocence, not my humor though….I think that’s one of the most important things that one should hold on to…

I’ve been socially active, more so than I have been earlier  (last term), which is good….that it is!

Hmmm, what else….again, this is just a post to show that I’m still breathing, some better content post might show up in the near future….

Oh yes, I bought a book on Concentration and Meditation, I’m hoping that it will help me get more into my poorly disciplined meditation….since I have the feeling that I don’t really understand the basic idea of it this might show very useful!

Planing for Second Go

I’ve decided to do some proper planing for this next attempt. I will have a stricter schedule, make a cycle to cycle activity list and I will go further into details when writing the blog.

When I say details I am meaning that I will:

Make short diary entries for every nap.

time how long I sleep: Relevant to see how duration affects results, something I am interested in since my last try resulted in short naps with no restorative affects.

how I feel before and after my naps: Are the naps giving me the desired result/rest?

Eating and exercise: Energy input + output, how it can affect naps

I might find some more points to make notes about as well. The important part is to make observations and document them. Since I’ve been calling it an experiment, I should treat it as one.

It will allow me to see how I progress and give some pointers to myself what to do or not to do on a hypothetical third attempt, or for anyone reading this before having a go at it themselves.

Polyphasic Day 6

As the previous posts show, I was quite scared there for a while. I was afraid that I had wrecked the whole schedule, making all the effort I put in for nothing.

Things have turned out differently, it doesn’t seem to have affected my adaption…I am falling asleep and getting up before the alarms and I’ve had REM on most of them. The last one I had at 2 am was strange, I keep falling asleep and waking up without having any sense of how long I’ve been out for. The first naps I had on day 5 were in such a way that it felt like ages. I am guessing that it is happening at random at this point…might have something to do with how tired I am feeling and such, but considering the way I am sleeping I would be led to believe that there’s nothing that should be considered a permanent setback to my REM sleep.

I am not so naive that I think I’ll just walk away with a failure like the one I had yesterday. The next week will show how the schedule will work when pressured, and any unfortunate side effects of my mishap will probably make itself known within the first couple of days. I have been feeling a bit sleep deprived the last 12 hours, but nothing as bad as day 3-4…If I must go through another set of hard days like these I will make sure to be better prepared.

I will have my first regular day back to Uni tomorrow….it’ll be interesting to see how I am going to function in a lecture…will I be able to take notes and follow the lecturers train of thought? Even if not, it’ll still be a good opportunity to have a go at some more social interaction…I’m feeling the need for some more human contact, it’s not really bad or anything…but I wouldn’t mind it. Uberman might make my days open for social happenings while my nights could be study-oriented. I am going to contemplate some more on how I am going to use my extra time….

Naptime dilation

The first nap I had after this mornings accident was very short. I didn’t think much about it, figuring that it might be that I was anxious about not being able to sleep or not dreaming.

However, the nap I had at 14.00 was also out of the ordinary (compared to what I’ve experienced during the last week, most of this stuff is pretty far out to some). I laid down and fell asleep within 1-2 minutes,  then I woke up ten minutes later…it felt as if I had been sleeping and dreaming for several hours, actually at first when I woke up I thought that I’d overslept. When I saw that only ten minutes had passed I decided to lay back down and try to relax for a couple of minutes. I fell back to sleep, had another session of vivid and long lasting dreams, and managed to wake up before my alarm went off.

This never happened before today, could it have been triggered in any way by my mishap earlier this morning? Is it the brains reaction to the previous days of sleep deprivation? I am only left with questions at this stage. These dreams were fantastic! I lived through a whole life in a single dream! Details have become blurry since I didn’t write any of it down when I woke up, but as an experience this has been the best one I’ve had in several years, it’s as if it has loosened a valve inside my body and all these fantastic things keep happening inside my head, broadening my understanding and thought.

Safe or not, I’ll still walk the walk..

I did manage to take my morning nap in a regular fashion, not oversleeping and actually waking up before my alarm went off. I am still feeling a little sleep deprived and things are as they’ve been the last two days. I am hoping the incident hasn’t caused me too much trouble. I have decided that if this happens again within 24 hours I will have to restart the project in a couple of weeks time, considering that I’d have to get back into a monophasic schedule before moving on to have another go.

I will learn from my mistake though, from now on I will have a active preemptive policy instead of a passive one…I think that the passive approach is what got me in this situation…reading during the night is obviously not a good thing, not yet anyway. I will make sure to get all of my naps right during the day, make a big fat list of things to keep me busy during the night and then just throw myself back into the race.

If I can save my adaption is something which will be clearer in a couple of days time. If I am able to fall asleep and hit REM on several consecutive naps, I am going to call it a save.

Good Stuff!

Polyphasic day 4, the end….of day 4 that is

Haha, almost scared myself there! No, but seriously…I have had a great day, experienced several different ways of going into a nap and different ways of coming out of them as well.

As I believe I posted earlier today I had my worst run-in with sleep deprivation yet. I had a hard time concentrating and spent my time from the 2 am nap until 11 am being in the narcolepsy dangerzone. I had to really put in an effort not to close my eyes in the shower, thinking I might fall asleep standing. Me head was throbbing and my muscles were soar and stiff. I was starting to think that I’d have to go out for a walk, then I suddenly saw me as myself in this situation, not the confused person-personae I was in. I have since been thinking about all the experiences I’ve had the last 4 days….it’s unbelievable! The range of emotions I have felt has acted as some kind of opening into a world I haven’t been entering as much as I’ve been wanting the last couple of years.

I have had amazing dreams during these 4 days, I have actually been able to remember almost every single one of them…which compared to the amount I’ve remembered during my lucid dreaming project is so big of a step forward that it goes against all reasons not to continue doing it.

I have felt sleep deprivation for the first time, and because of it the naps I have been having today were “ohh so much sweeter” than previous ones. The thing is that I’ve fallen asleep fairly quickly, had dreams and woken up ( 3 times I have woken up before the alarm) without any hassle. I have been progressing on this schedule in ways I had only thought were possible for certain lucky individuals. Since the progress towards adaption has gone at such a quick pace, I can only imagine which insights and experiences continuing the schedule might bring.

I will not claim to have adapted fully yet, but I do believe I’ve had progress…having kept some records of my naps I have seen how the success rate has grown during the last few days. On the first day I had 3/6 naps where I had problems falling asleep…not being able to tell if I’d slept at all. On my second day this was reduced to 2/6 , while also having my first poly-scheduled dream. On my third day the uncertain sleeps were down to 1/6….finally having had all my naps for day 4 I am proud to say that I’ve had none of these today, having had dreams in almost every one of my naps. What lacks is a stabilised result of rest, still having naps from which I wake up and feel unrested. I suspect it might have something to do with the length of my naps, but this is something I won’t try to change until I am on my way into week 2 or 3.

I am insanely motivated to continue this fantastic journey, not because of it being a certain means to some end, but because it is the schedule in itself that is the ends I am trying to reach. The journey is so rewarding that the extra time I get to use on my other projects (ones which have helped greatly in preparing me for this one) and my studies comes only as a bonus.

Having read Puredoxyk’s Ubersleep and several accounts of other people’s lives on the polyphasic wagon, I will try to make further progress in this rewarding project in hopes of seeing and experiencing some of the great things myself.

A little breather

I am currently much better than I was before when I wrote the previous post. This is something I would like to point out, that post was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do for this blog…I spent 15 minutes just trying to rabble the things down…then as I was trying to read the stuff I had “written”, I realised that most of it came out as jibberish. At this point the brainfog was so thick that I couldn’t keep reading more than one sentence per minute….I’ve never had such an experience, and I must say that I am quite impressed by the brains ability to fight back, mostly because this is  something we often aren’t aware of the brain being capable of. I used to think that we have control over these things, I managed not falling asleep though, but it has made me think about how we as a consciousness coexist with the brain and the rest of the human body.

If one makes a little sketch of this relationship we are obviously the servant…the consciousness is the thing that must be active and working in order for the brain to give orders concerning its and the body’s needs. In return we are allowed to hang out and grow within a consciousness-society which treats the human body as a machine.

Not that this has been a post that has contributed on any level with any kind of new idea or anything like that. But if it at least was a bit amusing I think I’ve achieved something.

I am having a wonderful experience adapting to the Uberman schedule. I really must say that every new challenge that comes up always ends up having a slightly surprising result where I feel like a little kid again, exciting and at the same time self-confronting in ways where one has to be honest with oneself…sounds weird, but it has been one of the motivations for going through with it.

I am planning to take the Uberman schedule as far as I can and hopefully make it part of my life, atleast throughout this semester.

Day 4 and I think I’m sleep deprived..

It was this that I was expecting on day three….I am feeling like I’m fighting myself at every point in whatever I am doing, as soon as I stop to think to find something to say or if there’s a conclusion I should draw on my own in any way, my brain breaks in and tells me that this won’t be tolerated…”if you don’t get yourself in here right now I will drop you to your knees.”

Finally the physical pain has started as well; nausea, headache, feeling your eyes being forced down against your will….It is actually fascinating seeing how the brain goes frantic and starts throwing everything it’s got at you. If this lasts many days I’m going to be in a very foul mood come monday/tuesday. I’m hoping that it will ease down a little during the day…hopefully I’ll be realativly done with the BS I’m fighting today.

So in short: dry eyes, narcolepsia, moodswing and other things imagenable…just throw it in aswell…

Taking the sleepmonster by the horns

As the title says, I am ready to wrestle the shadow fiend that wants to bring me into its own personal lala-land. I am mentally prepared for a long night of keeping my head in the game. Since this morning I’ve had some trouble falling asleep during my naps…I’ve zoned out and been woken up by the alarm…but I doubt there has been much of any REM activity.I am currently on the third day, the one that is said to be the first of the days when sleep deprivation really kicks in.

I’ve been feeling a lot more tired today compared to how I was feeling yesterday. I haven’t been able to hit REM on more than 2/4 of the total number of naps. I often wake up thinking I am having trouble going to sleep…that after just having slept 20 minutes…but then again there are times when it feels like I’ve been sleeping for way longer…at least for a couple of hours…only to find that I’ve slept 20 minutes. It’s far from stable, but that is what I’m guessing will come in the next few days…

How am I doing sleep deprivation vise? Well, I am experiencing moments of fatigue, but nothing too serious yet. I have tried to do stretching and bending exercises at least two times a day…and whenever I do this I feel way better afterwards…I think it helps the circulation which again helps keep a constant temperature. I have suddenly become very sensitive to temperature change, especially the cold tile floor in our shower. There’s nothing like a piping hot shower at the start of the second cycle though…

There are other things I’ll be wanting to write about as well, but I’ll do that in another post since a severe case of brainfog just crept over me.

It turns out to be true..

…that my brain is trying to outsmart me. Just to confirm the fact that it did actually get harder after last night….two cycles ago I had to go out for a walk…I just didn’t trust my brain around chairs, tables or the bed. I tried many different things to hold me back from failure, but I think what got me through to my nap was willpower. I’ve been having difficulties remembering my dreams, but this time I had a long and clear one that took place at the uni…people didn’t understand english, they kept saying “In Norwegian, please” It was weird. Even weirder was that I woke up after 14 minutes….looking back I should probably have gotten up right about then…but nooo, I decided to sleep the 6 minutes i had left…and now I am feeling drowsy and all that…meaning I passed on into deep sleep…..not a part of the plan, but considering that it all was within 20 minutes…not too shabby!!

Aaaah yes, the big question, or problem if you will, is that every “hobby” or activity I have written down on my list is way to relaxing….not to mention that most of them have to take place in a chair…..so now I’m going to go get some breakfast, and then I’m going for a wee shopping trip…I’m going to embrace the artist within…by drawing with crayons and such…