next »

[fencer1013]

I've been doing quite a bit of research on polyphasic sleeping such as the everyman, dymaxion, and uberman schedules. According to many of the blogs, the idea is to fall into REM within 5 minutes. The side effect of this is incredibly vivid and (hopefully) lucid dreams.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

[yamitenshi]

As I understand, the main function of polyphasic sleep is to get by well with less than the recommended 8 hours of sleep. The idea is that you sleep multiple times a day, maybe 20 minutes at a time, with or without a longer period of sleep. The drawback is that the shorter your amount of consecutive sleep, the less you can deviate from your schedule. If you take a schedule with a bunch of 20 minute naps, for instance, deviating even 15 minutes from your schedule will result in you being tired for days, whereas with a "normal" sleep schedule most people can skip an entire night without any very significant trouble.

As I understand it, polyphasic sleep is most useful for people who are either too busy to get enough sleep, or for people who have a biological clock that is not tuned for 24 hour days (it's rare, but some people are naturally tuned to, say, 25 or 28 hour days).

Edit for completeness: a good way to practice lucid dreaming is to incorporate a new habit into your daily life, ideally something you have to consciously do, and to associate this habit with something not otherwise related, which you do very regularly. I've done this myself and can confirm that it works, even though I've grown out of the habit quite a while ago. What I did was just look at my hands every time I opened a door or sat down. After this becomes a habit, it will happen in your dreams as well, and somehow this makes you aware that you're dreaming. I'm not sure how this works, but it works.