I write this now still in the luxury of my air conditioned car. I’m crying off and on. I drove away because I couldn’t let myself stick around.

I encountered a man while bumming on wifi outside of a coffee joint. It was late in the night. The man was clearly a wreck. At first he had a story about his girlfriend locking him out of the house although that was not what was happening. The man is homeless.

I think back now and only 30 minutes after asking him I can’t even remember his name. I do remember his story though. Six months back something went wrong in his life. Overnight his company closed up leaving him short a couple of pay checks, with bills, and jobless. He was already behind in rent and without being able to earn any money was quickly evicted. He had a least one lady friend in which he tried to go to for a place to live for a while. She was somewhat rich and had a jealous boyfriend that she believed was spying on her. As a result he was not allowed to stay even a night. The man’s life was chaotically spiraling.

At some point the man took to drinking as a means to deal with his problems. Early in his homelessness he still had a car although the drinking and the car were not compatible. One night he discovered this when he ran into a parked tow truck. The police showed up and through some clever lies he convinced them he was not the driver.

As the story continues the man is puking the food and water out in front of me that I gave him earlier in the night. It’s not entirely clear to me as to what his ailment is such that he is unable to hold in basic life sustenance. He has been drinking. He admits to drinking in the afternoon although I’m not convinced this is necessarily it.

Apparently the last day has been hard for him. You see, somehow he got into a fight with some black guy last night. The police came and noticed that he was not looking so good. Through some means he was taken to a hospital. At the hospital he sat for 4 or 5 hours and then after being looked at was simply given some water because they determined he was dehydrated. This experience did not meet the standards he had compared to an LA hospital where he was hooked up to an IV and also given drugs for his pain. Oh and clearly the man was in pain. Ha, of course the drinking doesn’t help. But besides the drinking he showed me his various wounds that were hurting him. When the man walked he limped too in pain.

I talked to the man a bit to determine what he was considering for options. Most oddly, him holding a sign asking for money was NOT an option. I was perplexed. He explained that he couldn’t bare to be seen like this by someone he knew. The other thing in his mind was a deal he could make with a local organization. Apparently through this organization you must commit yourself for 6 months to them. You do work through them and they take care of you. They do not pay you and he did not like this.

It’s clear to me he has a drinking problem. He somewhat recognizes this. In an odd fascination at one point he even mentions about how drinking helps him. I don’t remember the precise words but the view was essential that the alcohol was a medicine.

The man apparently has a history. He became a felon many years back. This follows him around and makes getting a job and dealing with the police difficult. The man in fact complains of the police. They come by give him verbal trouble and sometimes use physical force too.

The man spoke of being a man. He should be able to take care of himself. Demeaning himself to ask for money on the street would take away the one thing he still is. He has other limits too. Another man offered him $15 in exchange for sexual favors. The homeless man quite clearly told me he couldn’t do it because he was not a homosexual.

Before long the homeless man is looking to pass out although he is severally dehydrated. He considers water from a decoration fountain nearby but I advise we check out some other options first. It’s late and everything in the immediate area is closed. Still, after a bit of a hunt I find a vending machine that is out of water but still has sprite. With a bit of change I retrieve the sprite and give it to him.

I walk the homeless man back to his stash of stuff, leave him with some money, and say good bye and good night.

It’s not clear to me at all what I’m dealing with nor if it matters. I know not really this man. At times I did worry some. I still feel like a straight middle class american with regards to my need for security. Although now all my physical processions are now contained in my car and this unknown and possibly desperate man sat near me in the middle of the night. Thoughts did enter my mind about the potential danger. A different place and time may yield a desperate man with a knife and some attitude. My preconceptions are warped by my own desires for safety and comfort.

I considered the health of the man when I left him. I mean, quite honestly, does finding him in this place leave me responsible if he is indeed going through serious health conditions? …

One thing was terribly clear to me in all of this. The circumstance for this guy are dire and his own psyche gets in the way. At one point he very briefly joked about killing himself as a way out. Only I knew he wasn’t really joking. The man is in deep physical and mental angst and death would be only too appealing. Still, the man holds on for reasons I’m unsure of. I can only guess somewhere in there he still has some hope. What lies between that vision of hope and his current place are things most would likely keep far away.

Now, of course I fully expect most people that read this will respond with clear defenses as a means to distance themselves. Let’s see
-The homeless people cause their own problems
-The homeless man could be lying
-The homeless man could be sensationalizing his story
-This homeless man is a felon and drunk
-The homeless man has clear mental conditions
-There is nothing I can do to help
-I already do help by doing …
-There are programs out there to help the homeless
etc.

Believe me when i say I’ve used those defenses too and still will likely do so in the future. Still, for the moment I sit with just the experience and the story. And by this I mean I don’t consider what my role should be or how I should respond and instead just accept what I experienced. Heh, perhaps I’ll cry more too because that seems to be what I want to do.

In many ways I wish I could be typing here right now about the last 3 weeks and how I successfully switched to a polyphasic sleep cycle where I consistently sleep no more then 3 hours total in a day and have incredible amounts of energy. This is clearly not the case.

The first 2 weeks of the transition I was incredible strict. With the exception of two times, I went those two weeks with the only sleep being a nap every 4 hours for 25 minutes. My previous entries reflect a fair amount on this time.

After 2 weeks of strict discipline, I began to want a more organic experience with polyphasic sleep. By this I mean it feels unnaturally to always and only take a nap every 4 hours when in fact my body is going through cycles. There are sometimes when a nap is needed sooner and sometimes when the nap is not needed for a while. Just as there are also times when an extra nap is needed. Essentially I should be taking a nap when I feel tired.

So, over the last week I began to relax the rules a bit. There were two things going through my head about sleep. The first is that getting full cycles of sleep is essential. So, in my naps I need to make sure I’m waking up at or near the end of the REM cycle. The second thing I was thinking about was how I’m use to getting more hours of sleep then most people. In the past I felt most refreshed when I was getting 8-10 hours of sleep. This second thought lead me to believe I might need to be getting 7-8 naps in most days.

The overall outcome of making these minor changes caught me by surprise. With the strict discipline removed I found myself no longer just automatically get up from naps and go about being awake. I began to consider if I wanted more sleep frequently. As a result, often I ended up going to be and staying in bed more often.

Over a few days I settled into the rhythm I currently have going. Oddly, I’m still napping every 4 hours throughout the day. However I also typically sleep for a 3-4 hour period sometime at night.

Overall I’m uncertain of the necessity of all that sleep. I’m beginning to correlate sleep to my eating habits. In my eating habits I actually only need a certain amount of food to be just fine. I can usually even tell when my stomach is full. Of course a typical restaurant serves me twice of what I need and I often find myself eating beyond the point of full. I eat sometimes out of pure habit. I’m not hungry, but that food is just right there. That or else I have a habit of seeking food out of boredom sometimes. Sleeping holds similar qualities in that I have a set of habits around sleep. Clearly I don’t always need sleep but through habit it has become a programmed response.

I spoke in a previous post about how I’ve used sleep in the past as a relaxing activity. Sleep had become an essential place I could go to drop my stress. During this experience if I wanted to avoid sleep then I have to fight this habit. Now, I’ve started to find a replacement habit. I’ve picked up yoga and have been finding relaxation in that time. I fully intend yoga to become my main relaxing activity.

In all of this I’m trying to grab lessons. I’ve done many experiments in the past, however this is the first time I’ve tried to be the slightest bit organized about what I was doing. Over the coming years I intend to be doing more things similar to polyphasic sleeping. I want to turn my world upside down out of pure curiosity of what it’s like to have that different life experience.

It’s clear to me that in order to properly continue this work then I have to step up my level of maturity in how I conduct and record my experiences. At the beginning of my polyphasic sleep transition I was not writing much information down as it happened. Some of the details were getting fuzzy really quick. As I relaxed into a less strict schedule then I began to notice I had no clue when I was all taking naps. It was really quite disturbing. Mentally tracking the times for 6-8 naps in a day is a lot of work. This is especially the case when each of those naps does a cleaning of the mind during the day. Beyond tracking I need clear rules and goals regarding my experiments. I’m pretty sure if I’d made this a 30 day trial that I would be presenting different results today.

I still consider myself a polyphasic sleeper as I’m still sleeping many times throughout the day. In fact I’m incredibly surprised to find myself automatically napping every 4 hours. I’ve got a clear habit for napping.  Overall too I’m sleeping less and also finding unique opportunities available to me in the late night hours that I might not otherwise have. This is awesome.

At the moment I’m not looking to make big changes to my polyphasic sleeping. Instead, I’m going to spend time stabilizing what I currently have and I’m also interested in exploring the dream world more. The best way I can think to do both of these things is purely to track what it is I’m doing. I want to know when I sleep, how long I sleep for, and what I remember dreaming. So, right before each nap I will track the time. When I wake up from each nap I will also track the time and immediately write down any dream information.

I’ve got many interesting things coming up this month and most of them will be challenging for maintaining any kind of polyphasic sleeping. What will happen when I road trip to Vegas to attend a 3 day workshop? How will I continue to get naps in there? Can I maximize my awake time during this experience to get the most out of my workshop? I’ve also got a regional burn event I’ll be attending at the end of the month. These events are intensely stimulating. Those of you that attend burn events understand how they can be physically and emotionally challenging. So, how will that play into my naps? And there are yet other things happening too! I’m moving out of my house and will begin adventuring around in my car and couch surfing at friend’s houses. Oh my, there is much change ahead.

Given the events of the last day (I wrote most of this Saturday morning) and the overall time spent on this experiment, today is an appropriate day to reanalyze this experience and where to go from here.

I first want to talk about yesterday. Yesterday was perhaps the most functional day of my polyphasic sleeping to date. I spent the early AM hours chatting with a friend online while getting caught up on some tasks. Around 7:30 I drove to my destination for the day and napped. Then I spent the whole day at this event doing things with people. During this time I attended some talks, helped prepare lunch, went into deep conversations, gave a massage, and quite a bit more. Still, I managed to get all of my naps (quite easily in my car) throughout the day when I needed them and also be present and focused at the event. This is quite a success!

And so I drove home around midnight and took my nap at 1am – and awoke at 7am. Yikes!

Since I’ve awoken a flood of information has been going through my head about this experiment so far.

Authority: Preconceptions vs direct experience:
I had many preconceptions about sleep and in particular polyphasic sleeping going into the experiment. And of course those around me have their preconception too. What is most thrilling and exciting to me though is that despite the information available, there is a great deal of doubt that we actually do understand sleep and sleep patterns. As a result there is also an incredible amount of curiosity about sleep patterns and with respect to this experiment, what the actual result are when we make dramatic changes to our sleeping habits.

As I’ve gone deeper into the experiment I’m finding it easier for me to set aside what I thought I knew and instead experience first hand the results. And because of this direct experience I’m finding it easier to talk about my particular experience and what I understand about polyphasic sleeping versus speculation and otherwise frequently contradictory information. It’s liberating and empowering because I’m relying now on direct feedback. As a result I can begin to take a closer look at what I’ve been doing, what clearly works, and areas I can improve.

Habits and discipline:
Habits and discipline are perhaps the most critical elements in successfully transitioning. The most critical part about switching to a polyphasic sleeping cycle is making sure that you’ve trained yourself to do the right thing at the right time. The two most important habits are that you must occupy yourself until your next nap and you must only nap 25 minutes.

There are existing habits in place though that can sometimes get in the way. An example of this for me is that previous to polyphasic sleeping I enjoyed relaxing in the comfort of my bed immediately after I awoke. This was an acceptable habit then for a variety of reasons but now proves to be troublesome. During the transition I’m tired in different ways. And also my bed has taken on a different meaning during polyphasic sleeping. In polyphasic sleeping my bed is the places I go every 4 hour to take a nap. It’s more then that though, I’ve only got 25 minutes for my nap, so I have to relax and fall asleep quickly in my bed. This is great for getting in solid naps and absolutely deadly for just a general place to relax now. At the moment if I go there to relax, I feel quite compelled to fall asleep.

I’m paying closer attention to those conflicting habits now. It’s clear to me that at least for the moment I can’t stay in bed for anything except my nap because otherwise I risk falling asleep. I’m pretty sure this is what happened the first time I overslept and certain recently oversleeping is a result of not getting immediately out of bed.

I’m still finding a bit of struggle in performing this because it’s not just as simple as taking on the new habit of only using the bed for sleep. I had grown accustomed to also using my bed and sleep in general as a tool for relaxing. And since using these two things as tool for relaxing is risky with polyphasic sleeping then I must find a new habit to substitute when I get what is still currently the urge to rest in bed. At the moment I’m considering a seated or walking meditation.

Energetic states and capability
When it comes to determining the effectiveness of polyphasic sleeping from and productivity standpoint, my energy states are the most important part of this experiment. I was tempted to use the term energy level to describe this, but this can be a mistake. While sometimes it feels like there is a spectrum from having no energy to having lots of energy, there is also just different kinds of ways I can feel when I have no energy or different kinds of ways I can feel when I have lots of energy. And with each of these states I feel capable of completing different tasks.

I may in a future post go into more details regarding this, however for the moment I want to focus on the two states which happen to be a spectrum in which I’m experiences the most. There is a nearly dead like state of a zombie in which I can barely focus on anything and find myself slipping in and out of consciousness. Then there is also this state when I’m feeling full of energy. When I’m transitioning to the full energy state it feels as if the clouds just parted and the sun is shinning brightly on me and everything around me. Honestly, things start to glow. To say the least, I’m most capable of performing tasks when I’m in the shinny state.

At the moment, I’ve found the changes between the two states to be somewhat erratic. I can have hours of blissful energetic and shiny state and then feel myself for no apparent reason slip into drowsiness zombie in maybe 15 to 30 minutes.

At the moment I’m guessing that my body is still adjusting its chemistry to polyphasic sleeping. In particular I speculate that there is some sort of hormone that is getting released at one time and not at another time. In a typical monophasic cycle it would be unnecessary for the body to use as much energy while sleeping so it has a mechanism to conserve energy. I’m guessing my body is still a bit confused as a polyphasic sleeper. It still has an existing habit of shutting down at night that it wants to follow. Regardless, for my polyphasic sleeping transition to be successful, the dramatic drops in energy need to be stabilized.

Long term sleeping logistics
It should be clear that requiring a nap every 4 hours is at the very least limiting and quite often crippling in handling many activities – that is in how I’m use to handling them. I’ve seen polyphasic sleepers talk about how this as a problem, although, this is only likely an issue because they have frequently tried to do things in the ways they were use to doing them as a monophasic sleeper. To successfully be a polyphasic sleeper then you are going to need to be creative in developing new ways to do things. A quick example is that a long road trip becomes a game of skipping across the country in 4 hour increments.

There is more then that though. Much like we’ve learned to flex our regular sleep schedule, polyphasic sleepers must also learn to flex their sleep cycle. And of course much like monophasic sleeping, there are consequences to staying up late and also to missing sleep. The better a polyphasic sleeper understand these consequences the more flexible they can be with their sleep and thus afford them more opportunities.

These long term sleeping logistics are of particular interest to me because in June I will be leaving the stability of home and be much more mobile. At that time I will be traveling long distances every 6 weeks and I also would like to be out going to events regularly. This could be an absolutely disaster. I have no clue. I’m taking it as yet another challenge. The more ways I find to get my naps in and feel energized, the easier it’ll be for me to do activities in general.

Over sleeping
Reflecting now on the first time I overslept, the following days were a minor setback in the overall transition.

In some ways there is a lot of similarities to starting from the beginning and oversleeping. The first day is incredibly easy because I just got a lot of sleep, the next or two things gradually got a little worse as I occurred some sleep debt and sleep deprivation, with around the 4th day feeling like a peak.

In other ways there are drastic differences. I can say with certainty that oversleeping has minor side effects compared to the initial transition. Then there is also just the difference that experience bring : I have developed well established patterns. I can make my nap every 4 hours and I can get though a full sleep cycle in 25 minutes.

Fun
I’m amazed with how much fun I’m having doing this. Yes, you are probably like me in that you don’t like feeling groggy, of low-energy, and otherwise depressed. Emotionally that has been a difficult part of transitioning to polyphasic sleeping. I just feel like crap sometimes. But, that is only part of it! There is also that nice warm glowing feeling I get. Oh, and I am just having a blast with staying up all night and being perfectly capable of staying up the following day… and then the following night… I’ve long thought there was a consequence to staying up all night : eventually I’d pay for it with having to sleep a bunch of hours. And so I’d frequently just skip the activity so I’d get enough sleep. And now I can do that activity and then I oddly find myself still awake with a whole night in front of me! Woah! I feel like a kid in a candy store. Mmmm… So many tasty treats!

There is also an adventure to all of this. As much as I try to, I’m finding it difficult to predict what is going to happen next. I had grown accustomed to a tight schedule with specific activities. Now, not only do I not have my previous schedule, but I also happen to have a whole lot more night hours. And of course my energetic state is shifting a lot. Sometimes I’m a walking zombie blipping in and out of consciousness while other times myself and all the things around me are glowing in the middle of the night.

To combat night time loneliness and otherwise boredom I’ve also been having fun chatting online. Believe it or not, there are a lot of equally lonely and bored people on the internet during the middle of the night. The key is finding them! I’m searching for you all out there, and I’m getting better.

Moving forward
I’ve now overslept twice. In some ways this actually feels like a big set back to me, but as you may be able to tell by the rest of this post — I’m not done yet. While I fully intend to transition to polyphasic sleeping, that is just a fun and challenging goal to shoot toward. You know how sometimes they speak of that the journey is more important then the destination? This is one of those times! I feel alive! I’m not sure how evident it is in my posts, but I have pushed myself a lot since I’ve started and I’ve had tremendous experiences. 

I did consider, quite briefly, this as a moment to quit. But Nope! I’ve learned a lot since I’ve started about my sleep cycles, energy levels, habits, and so much more. I’ve had a lot of success along the way already too. I honestly never considered I could with consistency fall asleep and be through a cycle of sleep in 25 minutes. Now, THAT is a power nap.

Now, there are some minor changes I need to make in the days ahead, but mostly I’m just going to continue doing what I have been doing : Be awake for 3 ½ hours and sleep for 25 minutes.

Over a week has passed since I started my polyphasic sleeping schedule and I’m feeling confident about successfully stabilizing this transition. To be clear, I’m not fully transitioned yet, however I do suspect I’ve gone over the hardest part and equally I feel confident I could do that again.

I had a major deviation from my sleeping schedule at the end of day 6. I laid down at 9 pm and didn’t awake until around 3 am. I felt very confused when I awoke. I’m really not sure what happened, however, for some reason the alarm didn’t wake me up. It’s possible I forgot to set the alarm. It may also be that I awoke, turned the alarm off, laid in bed for a few seconds, and accidentally fell back asleep. Both of those possibilities seem odd to me because my discipline has been sharp the rest of the week.

After I awoke to this issue I hopped online to do a bit more reading. Something similar happened to Pavlina on day 12 of his transition. He just continued on and everything worked out fine. So, I decided to do the same by continuing my polyphasic sleep schedule.

The good thing about this issue is that using a second alarm clock is an easy fix. Honestly, I should have been using two alarms clocks to begin with. Still, I was having excellent luck with my phone alarm so I didn’t bother to set something else up. No problem though, within a few minutes I pulled out my old alarm clock from storage and had it set up.

I’ve gone a day and a half since the incident and it feels like it might have set me back just a slight bit in the transition I’m still able to enter REM sleep during my naps and I’ve yet to reenter zombie mode during my awake hours. Everything seems fine.

One odd thing that has happened a few times since my last post is that I’ve been waking myself up during sleep prematurely. For each of these experiences I become lucid during dreaming and make the observation that the dream has felt like it has lasted a long time. Naturally, I wonder if I’m oversleeping and so I jolt awake And looking at the alarm clock when I awake reveals I’ve only been in bed for 10 to 15 minutes. To say the least I’ve been growing some appreciation for time dilation that occurs in dreams.

One area of excitement that I hadn’t anticipated is that I’m connecting more deeply with my dream world. Previous I went a whole day between entering the dream world and often I didn’t remember much when I woke up. Now, however, I’m revisiting that dream state every four hours and frequently remember my dream just as I awake. This seems really interesting to me. Consider this: how many thing in your life do you connect with every 4 hours?

I’m also enjoying my 4 hour cycles. 16 hours of wake and all the activities that occurs during that time seems exhausting. At the moment I’m mostly taking things one sleep cycle at a time. So, I often awake thinking about what I can do with 3 ½ hours, do those things, and go take a nap.

I’m also really enjoying the extra time I’m getting with polyphasic sleeping. In particular I’m feeling like I can be much more indulgent with my time since I have more to go around. My current favorite activity is to find new people to meet on the internet. I’m enjoying the challenge of both finding people that interest me and also discovering quick ways to feel connected with them. I’ve chatted up quite a few spectacular people from across the country and hope to find many more.