Jermil's Sleep Blog

I’m loving this polyphasic sleep experiment.  I can’t imagine going back but I know I’ll have to soon.  I’m living it up while I can though.

I came up with an idea that would allow the church that I attend to be able to spread their message across the world!  I came up with that during church but I feel like the level of creativity that I’m at these days is directly tied to polyphasic sleep.

I completely missed a nap yesterday because I was helping Narendra move.  I started feeling weird an hour after my scheduled nap time.  Weird like I started getting confused and life started feeling like it was a dream.  Not extremely dreamy but almost an intoxicated feeling.  It wasn’t bad but it was definitely noticable.

Obviously , I ended up oversleeping when I got to my next nap.  Your body needs so much REM sleep daily or you’ll eventually DIE or pass out in your mashed potatoes and gravy.  I slept for 2 hours instead of 20-30 minutes.  I felt great when I woke up though.  I think that’s better for me since I oversleep almost every other night.  I figure sleeping about 4 or so hours daily gets me more free time than sleeping for 8-12 hours daily like I used to.

The main benefit is this extremely creative mindstate.  I surprise myself with a lot of the things I come up with.  This is something that I hope sticks with me when this is over.  I’ll type something out and be amazed at what I just produced.  Or I’ll come up with an idea for a picture to take and when I do it, it’s stunning.  Maybe I’m just my biggest fan and the sleep deprivation tricks me into thinking that everything I do is awesome.  Maybe this is inflating my ego to monumental proportions and I believe I’m the best thing out there.

After my 6am sleep, I felt so refreshed that I thought I overslept.  It may have been due to the extra nap I took while watching a movie the morning before or maybe it was because my sleep schedule had been thrown off.  Whatever the reason, I haven’t that good since starting this experiment.

Today at my 10am sleep, I had an extremely vivid dream.  I remembered it when I woke up and while I typed this, it was still fresh in my mind.  It was about someone that meant a lot to me and I can still feel the emotions that were running through me during the dream.  It was very interesting and I hope I get more every 20 minute sleep I take.

After that vivid dream, I read about vivid and lucid dreaming on wikipedia.  During my next nap, I had a lucid dream where I realized I was dreaming and was able to stay dreaming and interacting with the dream world.  

During a discussion yesterday, a friend and I came to the realization that the times when I wake up and I’m tired are times when I didn’t eat before I went to sleep.  The times where I feel great after sleeping for 20 minutes, I had something to eat before I slept.  I’m going to keep track and see if the two have anything to do with each other.

I also noticed a few days ago that I’m paying more attention to how my mouth is positioned when I lay down to sleep.  I realized that I tend to keep my jaw clenched slightly.  I’ve been making an effort to keep it more relaxed while I doze off.  I never noticed that before I started this experiment.

Another thing… I can actually feel myself while I’m in the process of falling asleep.  When I would sleep only during the night like everyone else, I couldn’t tell if or when I was falling asleep.  Now, I can feel my entire body relaxing and my breath slowing.  My dreams start before I fall asleep.  It’s like watching a movie in my mind WHILE I’M STILL AWAKE.  It’s very comforting to get to the point where you know you’ll be asleep in less than a minute from the time you start to feel it.  

This experiment is really interesting and I think this is closer to how the natural human sleeping experience is supposed to be.  It sucks when sleep is just a time away from the world.  It should  be a time to live out your dreams that you haven’t quite reached in the waking world.  You should be able to interact with your dreams every night.  You should be able to actually feel emotions that you wouldn’t otherwise let yourself feel when you have full control of yourself.  It should DEFINITELY NOT be a time where you lay like a corpse until a buzzing sound wakes you up way earlier than you need.

What do you think about the common sleep pattern of the world?  It doesn’t seem to be working for most people since “they” say most people don’t get enough sleep.  Why don’t we try another approach???