Thread: Starting the Dymaxion Sleep Schedule

Originally Posted by Arutad

Wow you came back. I thought you've given up on the whole idea.

Yeah, the thread came back to life, lol. I definitely haven't given up on the idea of a polyphasic sleep schedule, although like I said, I might do Everyman instead of Dymaxion next time (I'm thinking of a 3 hour core sleep plus three 20 minute naps). My next attempt won't be for another three months, though.

I just started experimenting with polyphasic sleep and I enjoyed reading your posts. I am not sticking so much to strict schedules like Uberman or Dymaxion at this point, just trying to get my body used to shorter core sleep and regular naps.

I have found though that like you I am eating healthier in the short periods (4-6 hours) between naps and also finding it easier to hit my daily water quota. Mentally, I usually feel pretty refreshed after each nap and have no problem staying awake until the next one. I have always had a hard time falling asleep and lately (before I started the napping and shorter core sleep), it has been really bad.

I find that I am falling asleep quicker now, in the naps and core, and that I am getting better at retaining waking consciousness while I transition from being awake to sleeping. Also seeing a lot more hypnagogic imagery (especially during the first part of the naps) and have had really vivid and long dreams during core sleep.

During naps I can always tell when I am about to fall asleep because my inner dialogue is interrupted by "sounds" that aren't really there or dream conversations that seem to be going on just behind the veil of sleep. Or I will think something really weird, illogical and totally unrelated to whatever I had just been thinking about and I know I am in the beginning stages of my sleep.

hey, thanks for all the posts about your progress, they have been very insightful.. i have been trying to find someone who has done this with out fail.. i have heard of people doing it for like 2 years, but with no actual info.. so i decided to go for it myself.. i am on day 4 and have been doing pretty good.. but i keep getting discouraged.. people tell me that its bad for me and i get so tired sometimes that i just want to stop doing it all together.. its hard to stay on it.. right now i am doing a vlog every night at 4:30ish Am.. if you or anyone wants to follow and help support me, i would really appreciate it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfo6GBUQwGs

James

Originally Posted by Javbe

hey, thanks for all the posts about your progress, they have been very insightful.. i have been trying to find someone who has done this with out fail.. i have heard of people doing it for like 2 years, but with no actual info.. so i decided to go for it myself.. i am on day 4 and have been doing pretty good.. but i keep getting discouraged.. people tell me that its bad for me and i get so tired sometimes that i just want to stop doing it all together.. its hard to stay on it.. right now i am doing a vlog every night at 4:30ish Am.. if you or anyone wants to follow and help support me, i would really appreciate it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfo6GBUQwGs

James

Hi, thanks for your post. Yeah, I haven't heard of anyone doing it for more than 2 years...yet. It's definitely hard to stay motivated when you don't have the support of people around you. Just keep in mind that most people have never even heard of polyphasic sleep and it's been drilled into our heads that we need at least 8 hours of sleep every night (granted, this is true for monophasic sleep). The risk of the adjustment period is sleep deprivation, which you can watch for, but after that polyphasic seems to be very safe and even beneficial. Long term effects (more than 2 years) are unknown, though, since not many people have tried this.

I'll be sure to take a look at your log I'm going to be up at that time anyway, since I'm starting the Everyman sleep schedule in a couple days! (Here's the link to that thread: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=88616 ). You can post comments there or send me a PM if you have any questions or insights.

Heya.
Thanks for the interesting information on the Dymaxion sleep cycle. You've given me a few useful ideas, mostly the stick to a solid schedule and use off the timer. I've been using my good old wake up alarm. It's a pain to keep setting it though. Upside is I already use the trick of putting it at the other end of the room so I have to get up to turn it off.
I've just started the Dymaxion routine with my boyfriend today. Just had my 3rd nap 3 hours ago. Ok I didn't actually sleep for any of those 3 naps but I'll have a proper nap soon, I hope. The boyfriend faded on me though. After nap 3 he just rolled over and carried on sleeping. I woke him up a few times and he said "I'm just going to lie here for a bit." and passed out again. Oh well. Guess I'm doing it alone.
Lucky for me I've got 6 weeks off to get used to this new routine.
Good luck for when you try the other systems out again!

I've been thinking about starting the Dymaxion sleep cycle myself, so your posts are very interesting. I have one major concern though. How can you get the right amounts of melatonin? To the best of my knowledge it's a pretty important hormone, and it's production peaks at night. Any light, even small amounts of it, can really slow it's production. If you were up and about all night, wouldn't the body's melatonin production come to a halt?

Hm good point about the melatonin! I read on wikipedia that wearing glasses that block blue light should reduce melatonin loss. And then there's this, could melatonin be related to the increase in vivid dreaming in polyphasic sleep?

Anyway, I'm doing the Everyman 3-nap schedule. It's been around 10 days (not quite sure exactly, I don't make any logs), and so far it's going pretty fine I think (I've overslept only one core sleep, and one-two naps). Usually it's hardest to wake up after the core sleep, e.g. today I needed maybe 2 hours to completely wake up. I mean I got up, walking around, watching tv, and so on, but it took me quite some time until I was able to fully open my eyes :-) But then during the day usually it's all fine.

Lately I've got quite interested in the Dymaxion (the Uberman just sounds like pain in the ass with its 6 naps). So I've realized, this Everyman 3-nap is very similar to Dymaxion, where instead of the core sleep you have another nap. After adapting to the Everyman first, it should be fairly easy to switch to Dymaxion, for example by gradually reducing core sleep from 3, to 2, 1 and then 0.5 hours (and adjusting the other naps accordingly, add one more hour between them and make them 10 minutes longer).

As it seems to me, replacing the core sleep with a nap would probably not make a huge difference (in fact it might be better, given how easy it is to oversleep the core sleep). OTOH, adding one more hour between the naps, now that might be tricky. I usually get very sleepy during the last hour before the nap (unless I'm doing something interesting). Adding one more hour to that would make it a lot lot harder to survive until the nap. Though I probably can't judge correctly right now, as I'm still in the adapting period, it will for sure get better once you get fully adapted to it. And then Dymaxion might not sound so impossible :-)

Damn, it's been a while since I've written this much text on a forum :D

There's just the thing with Dymaxion that there isn't any reliable accounts (from which I know at least) that it's even possible. I tried it last winter, but failed pretty miserably. Of course none of those polyphasic dream schedules are easy, but dymaxion ought to be near-impossible. I tried it for a month (though the last attempts were on uberman). I'm going to try uberman again this July.

@ switchbadger:
Yeah, I remember it took me a while before I started falling asleep for my naps, but after a few days that problem mostly went away. Good luck with your Dymaxion attempt!

@ KingCarnie:
Thanks for mentioning melatonin levels, that sounds like something I'd like to research (which is a fancy way of saying I don't know). In my more recent polyphasic attempt, I did the Everyman sleep schedule, and my 3-hour core sleep was at night when melatonin is supposed to peak (maybe that helps...?). A quick Google search shows self test kit's for measuring your melatonin levels...but that's about $80. If I could find a cheaper way of doing it, I'd love to have that kind of data for my next polyphasic attempt. I'd have to have at least two data points; one taken while still on monophasic, and one after adjusting to the new sleep schedule.

@ dimitar:
Thanks for the link, I'll have to look into those blue light blocking goggles. During my Everyman approach, I definitely had the most problems with the core sleep also, although for me it was more that I'd oversleep the core but generally be fine during my waking periods.

Sounds like a good approach to adjusting to Dymaxion. I would probably pick a core sleep more like 1.5 hours, though, for transitioning because it's closer to the length of a regular sleep cycle. Otherwise you might wind up waking up out of a weird phase of sleep and be groggy. Generally speaking, I try to keep my periods of sleep either to multiples of 1.5 hours for core sleep or a 20-30 minute nap. Anything in between doesn't work as well. (At least theoretically. There is a little bit of wiggle room with the core sleep, because the sleep cycles can be anywhere from 90-110 minutes.)

@ Jakro:
The only successful attempt at Dymaxion I've heard of was Buckminster Fuller, who invented it and was on it for about 2 years. And I later heard that he came up with it by sleeping when he was tired and recording when those times were and they just happened to 30 minute increments every six hours. Kind of different from the approach most of us take trying to adjust to it In any case, it's definitely a challenge, to say the least.

Good luck with Uberman

Hey I started the dymexion as well,
I honestly just need more time in the day to get stuff done,

I am doing good, my biggest problem, like I noticed with you as well, is the falling back asleep after the alarm goes off, I am going to go on a 5 minute walk the second my alarm goes off as a fix to this, your post regarding this helped, thanks

It seems like it can/would tottally work, I have more energy, and more hours in the day, it's all about getting up when the alarm goes off, but very doeable if you can.

Exercise seems to help ALOT as well

dymaxion*

is there a technique for school days like it would be strange for someone to sleep at school ,duh!

you can expiriment with the times of naps i.e. move them an hour forward or back, go to wikipedia and type in polyphasic sleeping, if you're in school maybe trying a version of the uberman would be best with only two naps a day, or the evryman

I really want to do the dymaxion sleep cycle! I saw it and pretty much wanted it for the same reasons you did.

The only 2 that where possible for me where everyman and dymaxion because of the longer amounts of time awake. I have a few questions about the Dymaxion cycle though. First does the awake times have to be 5.5 hours or could you shift one to 6.5 and another to 4.5? Just so u can prolong it to fit your schedule? Im just wondering on the flexability of that. Also i was told that for the Dymaxion naps you only had the lee way of +/- 15 mins, is this true? Or is it only true for the first 21 days?

I am currently on the everyman cycle, I am 4 days in. I feel that I am adjusting ridiculously fast compared to others from what i have read. I am doing the everyman 3 cycle. So i get 4 hours of sleep a day. I would love to cut that down by 2 and be on the dymaxion but I am cautious about the fact if i miss 1 on dymaxion im fucked.

I will probably start the Dymaxion at the end of first semester of uni. To your knowledge what would u say the best times to sleep are to have the least interuptions from sleep in a day. I liked the Idea of yours but think this could be better 0100 - 0130 then 0700 - 0730 then 1300 - 1330 then 1900 - 1930 can u see any imediate problems with this pattern?.

Hey everyone, I came across this thread and feel like bumping it. I'm starting the Dymaxion cycle today after 20 days of the Everyman cycle as of today.

how are you spacing your naps? evey 5.5 hours? My revised Dymaxion sleep pattern is going to be for semester 2: First 30 min nap at 0220-0250 then part 1 of day is 0250-0730 (4hours 40mins) then 30 nap from 0730-0800, day part 2 is 0800-1310 (5hours 10mins) then 30 min nap 1310-1340, day part 3 is 1340-1930 (5hours 50mins awake) then 30 min nap 1930-2000, day part 4 is 2000-0220 (6hours 20mins awake. I found that this way I can still go to social events in the evening that start around 7 and just be a little late, as well as being able to go to town an stay up with friends. My everyman gets me sleeping at 12:50 which is just to early to stay out all night with friends. Another reason i suggest times like this is that only 1 nap will be inside of normal working hours of 9-5, this leaves you with only the 1310-1340 nap to find a good place to nap.

I will be starting this in juneish. At the moment I am on a everyman cycle with core sleep 0050-0350 and 3 naps 0740-0800, 1310-1330, 1930-1950

Due to school times, I have to space my naps a little oddly. Something like this.
0000-0030, 0500-0530, 1420-1450, 1800-1830.