Day 18 - Short review - I give up ='(

Just kidding about the giving up, although I must say I was very close to doing it today.

One would think that after the first 3 weeks of adapting to uberman, the hardest part would be over, but I don't experience it that way. Just a short history of my adaptation period so far:

- I've been following a very strict schedule, as recommended by the book Ubersleep. Napping 20 minutes at 4, 8, and

12. I always go to sleep exactly at 5 minutes before the hour, and wake up exactly at 20 past the hour. (I need 2 to 5 minutes to fall asleep)

- First week went completely flawless, no oversleeping and the tiredness was only at night and pretty easy to bear.

- From day 7 on, I started dreaming and feeling very refreshed after the nap.

- On day 8 I overslept one cycle of 4 hours, waking up to the alarm of my next nap.

- I didn't dream anymore between day

8 and 10

- On day 11 I started dreaming again.

- From day 13 or 14 on, effects from sleep deprivation have become worse, and I find myself feeling really tired and micronapping more often when I'm sitting down. (this happens only between 3 and 9 am)

- I slept an hour through a pretty loud and annoying alarm, after which my parents woke me up because it was annoying the hell out of them during the night.

- Between day 13 and day 16 were completely according to plan.

- On day 16 I fell asleep during the day for an hour while lying on the grass. Normally I didn't have trouble feeling tired or falling asleep during daytime, but this time it did happen.

- Yesterday morning, I slept through a complete cycle again, sleeping for 4 hours.

- This morning I suffered from the biggest

blow, almost making me decide to give up. What happened was this: After waking up from my midnight nap, I had been outside a bit, and around quarter before 1AM, I went inside and sat down in the sofa to meditate and listen to

an audiobook with earphones at same time. When I meditate I sit very straight, in a position tha

t's not really that comfortable that I would fall asleep in it. I normally have no trouble staying awake at all, and also I didn't feel tired at all at this particular time, but still, next thing I notice, I'm waking up from my 8AM alarm screaming in my ears, laying down in the sofa. (note: I have all my alarms scheduled on my iphone, so I don't have to set them up every time.) It's a complete riddle to me how the hell I ended up laying down. I'm very strict to myself about laying down during night hours, so nothing in my sane mind would allow me to do that. Also I'm wondering if my 4am alarms weren't enabled for some reason, or if I slept through them or just unconsciously put them off. If the alarm really went off, there would be no way that I woulnd't have woken up from it, because I had my earphones in when asleep, and the alarm was coming from the earphones at maximum volume. (not something I normally do, it scared the hell out of me when I did wake up at 8AM)

Now I realize that it just can't continue the way it is. I wanted to give up this morning, because I felt like it just didn't seem like it was working out for me. That was pretty painful for me, because I'm someone who never gives up on goals that are within my reach. I have a ton of willpower, and have achieved a lot of things for my age, but I just didn't seem to have control over this one.

Then I sat down and started looking up some information about people who actually succeeded at adapting to uberman. I could only find two people two that had kept blogs or reports that are readily available. (apart from Puredoxyk, the author of Ubersleep, but I had read about

that in detail already) On one hand there was Steve Pavlina, the famous blogger, and on the other hand Aya Hu, member of the Polyphasic sleeping google group. I noticed that both of them have a schedule that's different from the one that Puredoxyk emphasizes so much on in her book. Pavlina had an extra nap in the period where he felt most tired in the early hours, having 7 instead of 6 naps, in the first 10 days or so, and after that he completely threw away the schedule and just took a nap whenever he felt that it was appropriate. (ending up in 6 to 7 naps a day) In Aya Hu's case, I understand that she even combined her adaptation with her job, so she had no choice but to put more naps in nighttime and less naps during daytime. This looks like a logical thing to do, when I think about it, because during daytime I have no trouble at all usually to stay awake, while nighttime is when all the oversleeping etc happens. Aya Hu actually became sick after day 10 or so, went to an everyman schedule succesfully, and then went back to uberman after a week without any trouble. Reading about this made me feel rediculous for giving up on it, because she had a far less strict schedule, even fell sick, and succeeded at it anyway. There's no way that I can just give up like this.

I also noticed one common factor between most of the ubermen, and that is vegetarianism. I eat meat myself, although I'm willing to try being a vegatarian until I'm fully adapted.

So now I'm kind of wondering what's the best thing to do. I'm wavering between the method how Pavlina did it, and the method that Aya Hu did it. So I could switch to an everyman

schedule, which will probably be the easiest thing to do, and

once I feel comfortable to that in a sustainable way, go back to

uberman. I'm not 100% sure

about it, if this is a smart thing to do though. I think creating

the habit of having a core sleep of 3 hours at night, will maybe

make my adaptation period stretch out even longer again, and will get me further from

uberman instead of closer maybe. On the other hand I

could put in an extra nap between my midnight and my

4am nap, or/and my 4am nap and my 8am nap, because that are the times that I'm having

trouble. I'm pretty sure that it will be manageable with 7 or even

8 naps a day, and I would be able to adapt to that pretty

easily, and seems less like a detour. In the end I could also

maybe try switching to a system where I nap when I feel that I

need the nap, like Pavlina ended up doing.

Day 16 - Adapting, but not flawlessly

Copy/paste from a post I made on the Polyphasic sleep google group.

Hi,

Today I'm 16 days into an uberman schedule. I can see that I'm
adapting, not feeling like a zombie anymore but very sometimes.
I have a little issue with micronapping though. Especially when I'm
doing things like watching movies, or sitting on the train, etc... I
often find myself waking up from a sleep that could have been at least
one second and at most 10 minutes. Now this morning I had something
that never happened before. I woke up from my 4am nap, walked around a
bit, not feeling very tired at all. I took somethign to eat and
started watching an episode of a drama I'm watching. Next thing I know
is that I wake up from my 8am nap. When I check my memory, I was not
very tired at all when watching this drama, and tracing back in it, I
remembered the first 20 minutes very clearly, and everythign after
that I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen before. So somehow I became
unconscious quite suddenly, and I sleepwalked to my bed, because when
I woke up at 8.20, I was in my bed. (wearing all my clothes though)
I don't remember myself standing up after 20 minutes in the drama, nor
any reason to do it. Also there should have been no reason at all to
lie on my bed, I'm very strict about not laying down in my bed except
for nap time...

I'm wondering 1) if this is common, and it's also just something that
I have to get over, and 2) will I be able to adjust even though I
might oversleep for a few hours every 5 days of so.

Getting there, but not quite yet

Good morning. Today is the 18th of august, and it's 7.20AM now, about 13 days exactly into my little experiment. I guess not updating the blog for three days made quite some people think that I gave up on it, but I can prove that hypothesis wrong. In the period between Saturday evening and Monday morning, I almost died of feeling tired but not allowing myself to fall asleep. Oversleeping for 4 hours on day 8 effectively rewinded my progress a few days, the days after that, REM sleep was gone again, I wasn't getting any of my well-deserved dreams anymore, and even though waking up from naps was easy, the sleep I was getting was very light, and did not give me a lot of mileage.

The weekend was a big test for me. Saturday was the day that my performance was scheduled with my amateur rockband. I had hoped that when I started the sleeping-experiment, that I would be mostly adjusted by this day, but that hypothesis wasn't either the case. On top of this, I still had to write a few pages for my bachelor's thesis, the last puzzle piece to get my bachelor's degree. The deadline for it was monday, so tired or not tired, the weekend was going to be pretty active either way. The rockperformance was a challenge, but I had been looking forward to it for quite a while, so it didn't really give me a lot of additional stress. The bachelor paper that had to get finished on the other hand, certainly did O_o. I was already feeling kind of tired before the performance on saturday. We had a last repetition at 2pm, so I wasn't sure if I would be able to get my 4pm nap. I ended up sleeping for a few minutes, lying in the sun outside while we were chilling. I was lucky that the performance was already at 5 o clock. That's around the most active time of the day for me on this rhythm, so I didn't feel sleepy. I was actually feeling somewhat overly active during the performance, and even though I was highly sleepdeprived, I was able to give the best that I have. Looking back at it now, I have no idea where I got all the energy from. I have a good afterfeeling about it anywayz. After the performance I got really tired, had to take my 8pm nap a little bit inconveniently again inside a driving car. Sunday was a bigger challenge. Even though I felt dead tired all day long, I still had to finish that paper. I finished it at monday morning. Together with handing in my paper at my university, a big weight fell from my shoulders.

I started dreaming again in my naps too yesterday, and the sleep I'm getting from it feels very energizing. If my naps stay like this, I can imagine that I can really start regaining all that spent energy from them. The only thing that I gotta watch out for, are all the hidden ninja's hiding in the shadow of sleep. Somehow, together with dreams, comes also a type of sleep sometimes that's very hard to wake up from, and this morning I slept a straight hour while my alarm was buzzing. It were my parents that woke up from it that saved me. The next coming week will be very key. Firstly I hope that oversleeping for an hour hasn't set me back again. If not, I have the feeling that if I can somehow make it though this week, I will probably have the tough moments behind my back, and making this sleeping rhythm really work systematically will only be a matter of days. Apart from making plans that tackle my oversleeping-issue, I'm not really planning a lot of stuff. I just want a few relaxing days, where I don't have anything or anyone that needs my attention, so I can focus all my willpower on bringing this to a good end.

Crosspost: Revolutionary stuff going on here

My last naps since my oversleeping have gone all according to schedule, and I don't feel any more or less tired, so I think oversleeping once hasn't done a lot of harm. I'm pretty relieved about that.

Now, for the main part of this post, something pretty awesome happened, and I made a post about it earlier on the google group of polyphasic sleep, and since I don't really feel like typing it all over in a blog format, I'm just going to copy/paste. It's pretty dang amazing either way.

I was so extremely pleasantly surprised when I noticed this. I am now
about to enter day 9 of Uberman. Just a few minutes ago, I became
conscious of something that's pretty against what you would think
would happen to a sleep-deprived person.
To my great astonishment, I noticed that a few chronic skin conditions
that I have are gone without a trace in some locations, and in the
process of disappearing in other locations.
For example I had a light chronic form of hives for 2 years now, and I
suffered from it about once a day usually when just waking up, or
undergoing sudden temperature changes. In the past week, I haven't
experienced it even once!
I also have a pretty rough skin overall and also a light form acne on
my arms, back, face and neck. I was standing under the shower this
morning, and I very randomly noticed that my skin felt really
different to the touch than usual. I noticed that my nose for example,
where I've had very light acne in a chronic way since I was 13 years
old or so, was COMPLETELY smooth, without a trace of the acne that
I'de been having for the past 9 years. I started feeling my arms and
back, and they felt like I was touching a girl's skin, so perfectly
smooth, and most places had no sign of roughness or acne AT ALL
anymore.
Has anyone else on Uberman experienced this?
I consider this kind of weird, because one would think that your
health would suffer from being sleep-deprivation. My intuition tells
me though, that it is because of the increased consciousness that I
have now I am doing Uberman. I feel like my meditations for example
are on a completely other level when I'm on uberman than before, that
I'm having an energy vibration incomparable to what I usually have. I
have done energy work before, and I have a basic certificate of energy
healing from doing a weekend course on it. From that background, a
metaphysical background, it's easily explained why my healing rate has
gone to extreme levels now I'm on uberman. More consciousness equals a
higher vibration of energy particles. The principle of energy healing
is that when you create a high energy vibration near a body part that
you want to cure of a client or yourself, it will start healing faster
than normally. I do feel like my whole body is vibrating on a higher
level since I started doing Uberman, and I think that might explain
this phenomenon. Since I'm only in the adjustment period of Uberman,
I'm waiting eagerly to what other stuff will happen to me further on
the road.

War against unconsciousness

I had my first big slip today. Yesterday I ended my post, asking myself if it was coincidence that at the previous day I had very vivid dreams at the 4AM nap, and at current day, I had them again at the 4AM nap. I think it's no coincidence. Yesterday I overslept 30 minutes in my 8AM nap. Today I overslept for 4 hours, being lucky that I had set up my first alarm not only to go off for my 8AM nap, but also for my 12AM one. The 12AM one saved me this time. Strangely enough, I was still semi-sleepwalking when I woke up from the 12AM one, taking a shower without thinking about anything really and only became conscious when I was gettign out of the shower and that's when I realized that I had overslept.

There is still hope though. I'm not going to give up from just one slip-up. I believe what my mind's throwing at me is it's last line of defense, and even though it will be tough getting past it, with a good method of keeping myself from doing this again, it is possible I believe. Firstly, I can set up my first alarm to go off at 4 differnt times, and I will set up all of those alarms between waking up time and every 5 minutes after. I will also wrap a few bags around my second alarm. It's a very annoying sound, so I hope getting the bags from it reminds me that it's time to get conscious now. Also, my parents will get home from holiday today. I am pretty sure that 'my mommy (^_^)' will help me by waking me up / asking me what 5158+849 is, to make sure that I'm really conscious.

When things continue as they do, my naps every day should be happening in a parallel way. I should get a nap with REM sleep at 4AM, I should be getting another type of sleep in the 8AM one, which has to be a phase where I'm most unconscious. I've never had any trouble at all with my noon, 4PM and 8PM naps, and I don't really expect trouble there, even though I'll take the necessary precautions anyway.
I believe that if I can get this phase, I will succeed. I think if I can get past week 2 without slipping it up again, I'll be pretty safe, but first things first, getting through week 2 will maybe have more challenges.

Confusion attack + Altered consciousness

Today without doubt the weirdest day of the week, holding some of the weirdest mind-trip I ever had.(and I've had my fair share already tbh) My educated guess is that my mind wanted to surprise me with something entertaining to celebrate my one week into uberman. This is what happened:

4AM (wednesday 12 aug, aka yesterday): Had my first real dream-nap (as described in last post) My mind surprised me for first time, by making 15 minutes seem like hours.

8AM: I went to nap like any other time, and maybe I was getting a little bit too confident about uberman, because he made it quite clear that uberman's not someone to take lightly after all. I'm afraid I can't go into accurate description, because my memory completely fails me on this one. I don't know what woke me up, but for reason it was 30 minutes later than it was supposed to be. I had slept for 50 minutes, so I overslept 30 minutes. The most logical way that it could have happened is like this: My alarm went off at 8:20, I sleepwalked out of my bed to put it off, and I went in my bed again. It's a total riddle to me though, because I'm very sure that I put that alarm on. It's a pretty damn loud alarm, so I think it's improbable that I slept through it. (it keeps on going for 10 minutes)
Lucky I have my second alarm, although for some reason I can't remember that it was that waking me up, since it's kinda illogical that I woke up 50 minutes in the sleep, when I put my second alarm on 25 minutes. (5 minutes after my first alarm)
Anyway, I don't know how it happened, but when I was conscious of it, it was 8:50. This is pretty weird for me, because I've never experienced unconscious actions and memory loss like this before. I don't really care so much that I overslept for half an hour. It's the first time that I oversleep in my schedule, and it's not a rediculous amount of time. Although I did feel tired after this 50min nap, I don't feel like it will have much of an influence on the overall progress to adjustment. The thing that surprises me the most when I read blogs and reports of people trying uberman, is that they all have big problems with oversleeping for several hours, and they all say that they had no control over it. I think I've had an episode of this, although I already came up with a tactic to tackle it if it would happen again in the future. I'll put a small container of eyedrops on my first alarm, so I have no choice to encounter that in my waking-up process. I hope that even when I'm unconscious, it might bring me to consciousness just taking the eyedrops off the alarm before putting it off. Hopefully it will trigger me to put some eyedrops in, which is a sure awakencall, because they sting on the eyes very strongly. Because I haven't said anythign fancy for quite a while, I'll do that now. This brand of eyedrops is actually kind of unique. In Japan, people put in eyedrops as part of culture when they feel like their eyes are getting tired. I got the ones I use from a Japanese female friend, while I was there. She thought the way how I put eyedrops in my eye, and how I reacted to them, pretty hilarious for some reason, so she bought me the strongest type of eyedrops that's available on the market. They're kind of notorious, because people from Japan put them on ebay and sell them abroad. It's a very good ally anyhow.

My next three naps were pretty normal, and I woke up like every time exactly when my first

alarm went off, without any trouble waking up. Weird thing is that I wasn't dreaming again during these, and in contrast to my dreaming nap at 4am where I woke up fresh, I woke up feeling tired from these naps. On the next nap after those three, the one at midnight, was when the really WEIRD stuff started happening again. I 'wake up' standing up straight in my room, 10

minutes after my first alarm should have gone off, with my second alarm (radio) going off (should have been going off for 5 minutes already while I was standing there). The state of mind that I was in at that time is very hard to describe, but let me just call it a confusion attack. Everyone has had a time in his life where he's confused about something. It's something trivial, not something that you really give any attention to when it happens. This type of confusion was a very differnt kind of animal though. Firstly: I was thinking in terms of the computergame that I had been playing during the past day for quite some hours. I was thinking in terms of enemy base, friendly base, skills, hero kills etc, and even though I knew I was standing in my room, those thoughts seemed natural. I was also in the assumption that it was just time

for my nap. I stood there staring at my clock that said 00:33 or something for several minutes, trying to make sense of the time, because I was pretty certain that it was nap-time now. That

the time was not in

accordance to nap time, was something that I was unable to get. For some reason I also tried putting out the earphones of my mp3player out of my ears SEVERAL times, but I wasn't even wearing any! Then very slowly things started making sense, I realized that my second alarm was going off (was radio, so I didn't identify it as alarm when I was in confusion mode). Things started falling into place, and I felt pretty weird about it...

(Disclaimer: In the next paragraph, I don't guarantee that any of the New-Age bullcrap I say is the truth. It's how I perceive things, and you shouldn't take my word for it until you experience the structure of mind and body for yourself) It is known that when you adjust to a polyphasic sleeping pattern, your mind is your single worst enemy. Most people in this world are slaves of their mind. People who are identified with their own minds, think their thoughts are coming fro

m themselves, so they can't be lying. Many people exploring the planes of consciousness have found out on the other hand, that the information of the thoughts you're getting from your mind, is often very misleading. Mind and ego go hand in hand. Ego is a creation of the mind, and the thoughts you're getting from your mind, have a very agenda of their own, protecting that ego. Your ego is that part of you that's creating your desires. Your desire to be safe, your desire to control, your desire to get approval etc... The desires of the ego most often come from a standpoint of scarcity. For example, a person who identifies with his ego wants the biggest piece of the pizza/pie, as if it's the last meal he'll ever have. It wants to get approval from it's surroundings, because it thinks that without it, he will be seen as burden and will be ruthlessly killed by even friends. The ego knows no love, it wants to survive and reproduce. It's goal is self-preservation. The reason why I'm saying all this weird stuff, is because I think it's the reason for my mind acting so weird on me here. I've never before ignored the wants of my ego and mind so ruthlessly as during this week. I am ignoring and ignoring and ignoring my minds demand to go to sleep, because the ego is fundamentally uncreative, and can't see any other possibilities than the things as they have always been. During this week, I am slowly but surely turning my mind and ego from a master into a servant. The ego does not like this and is fighting for his life. I think weird states of mind like the ones I had today were the result of this unstableness.

There's another indication why this might be true. In a post of a few days ago, I described thoughts and feelings from mind and body as the fog that's in the way to get to real consciousness, freedom and happiness. I think you can make a nice metaphor of attempting a polyphasic sleeping rhythm like uberman. It's probably doing to this fog what a flamethrower does to a cloud of gas. In the last 5 days or so, I am experiencing very hightened awareness and consciousness. I'm pretty sure the fog is clearing up a very little bit.

My last nap I had at 4am an hour ago, was without doubt the best nap I've had so far. I had a very vivid, nice dream that seemed to last hours. I woke up easily from my alarm and I felt very fresh and energetic, like these naps are supposed to be. I wonder if it's coincidence that my first real dream was also in the 4am nap.

Hacking my own brainz: Great Succes!

It's been a long long while since my last point. (at least in the way I perceive it ;) I had a very interesting day yesterday, but somehow I didn't feel so much like posting. During the last 2 days, I haven't had any of those moments that I was REALLY tired. On the other hand, I hadn't had a lot of moments either that I felt really wide awake. I still hadn't had a real dream in nearly 6 days, which indicates the lack of a very important sleeping phase: REM. Even though I myself have always been driven, awake and motivated, I felt that my body on the other hand was starting to have a hard time because of the sleep deprivation. I figured that my body could use some care. Personally, the one thing that I consider the nicest treat to my body, apart from really good sex, is getting a massage from a pro who really knows what she's doing. I thought that I deserved one. I couldn't go to a kind of massage that would result in me falling asleep on the table though. That left somewhat every

kind of massage out, except one: Thai massage. I'de had 2 real Thai massages before in my life, and really loved them, so I went on the interwebz to look for a good reputable place. (you should try typing thai massage in google, you'll figure out very quickly that its NOT easy to find a good reputable Thai massage place in Belgium)

Because of epic google skillz, I finally did find one that looked good (which means has gotten certificates of traditional Thai massage in Thailand). I could get an appointment in on the same day, although there was one problem. It didn't really fit with my napping schedule. It was from

6.30PM to 8.30PM, and 8.00-->8.20 is napping time for me. I thought that it wouldn't be such a disaster to miss one nap... I'de be relaxing either way. Anywayz, I ended up getting the number 1 (or maybe 2) best massage I ever had in my life. It was a nice lady that was fluent in English, and she stretched me in ways that I never knew was within my skilltree. Even though the massage was quite active, I ended up getting REALLY sleepy during the time of my nap. I didn't have a clock, but intuitively I knew exactly from when to when it was, because I coulnd't keep my eyes open, and had something like 50 very short microsleeps within those 20 minutes, being on the verge between being awake and asleep, while an Asian woman was doing some really weird things with my

body. It was an 'interesting' experience ^_^.

I haven't experienced any special tiredness because of 'missing' my nap there, so I guess I haven't done anything too bad. Also yesterday, I got into the beta of the new stand-alone version of Defend of the Ancients, also known as DOTA. Most of my childhood, I've been a game addict, and even though last years I don't play games so much anym

ore, it's still something that I can put a lot of time in, if I get into it again. Since it's a highly improved version of one of my favorite games ever, I was pretty excited

about it, and that gives me the most effective tool for if extremely sleepy times occur.

Then the most important point of this post is the following. I reached the most essential checkpoint in the adjustment period of the Uberman schedule.

(Picture unrelated)

I had my first real dream, for the first time in the 6 days that I've started this whole thing! It was a pretty weird experience. I got into my bed at 4am, and fell asleep pretty quickly. Then, when I wake up, I wake up out of a very vivid dream (that was for some reason about my brother, finding an LSD trip-report on the back of a Lara Croft poster on my wall O_o. I've never written an lsd trip-report on the back of a poster, let alone Lara Croft, so I have no clue

where that stuff comes from :P) Anyhow, the dream was vivid and it seemed like it lasted a long time, like a dream that you remember when you've slept quite long. When I woke up, I KNEW that I had overslept SEVERAL HOURS. I jumped out the bed, ran to my desk to check my phone for the time... It showed.... 04:15. That was a really weird feeling. If I were checking for dream-signs to get lucid, I probably would have genuinely thought that I was still dreaming. I

went back in my bed for those last 5 minutes, just laying there... I felt extremely refreshed, unlike any of the other naps I had had this week. I'm feeling for the first time that I got a really high quality nap in, and it's the first signpost to getting my fatigue-level back to normal again! It's also the sign that I now know for sure that I'm adjusting in a good direction, since I've got into REM-sleep in only a 15 minute nap. (and normally REM sleep doesnt occur before the first

90 minutes of your sleep-cycle)

I'm excited about being able to dream again, because there's lots that I want to try out concerning lucid dreaming. These powernaps give you great opportunity to practice and try new things out. Normally you only get one shot a day, but when I'll have dreams in any of my naps, I'll get 6 shots a day O_o. I hope to be giving some lucid dreaming reports soon too ;).

# of hours into Uberman schedule: 143

Hours of sleep, of those 143: 11 hours and 40 min