Well Sunday morning led to an interesting 'episode'... I managed to oversleep the Saturday evening, (I think it was the or 9pm nap), and then the Sunday morning, when I took my 6am nap - I didn't wake up!
Instead, my alarm kept going off, and my Dad eventually woke up at 7am, turned it off, and apart from getting annoyed, just went back to sleep..
When I finally woke up (at around 10-30am) - it was as if I'd slept right through that 'awake' period from 7am to 10am. I guess I had been 'tired' - I think also the food I'd eaten might have had something to do with it.
I had eaten quite a bit of overcooked chicken the night before, and I'm guessing probably not enough salad to help with digesting it. Also, for my 2am nap, I had left the side light in my room on, and the window open, hoping that those two factors would help me to 'wake up' in time, for the next awake period.
Well anyways, once I woke up, and my dad told me he'd been disturbed in a really nice pleasant dream by my alarm, I felt real bad! Especially since Sunday was the only day my dad had off.
Well, I decided that I'll have to be a little more considerate with my 'am' alarms, and so I've had to stick them on vibrate, or real low. I'm not sure if that'll be enough to wake me up, so I'm exploring some other options for helping me to manage my new 'sleep' patterns better.
During the day, I drank a whole 6 apples, 5 carrots, 2 sticks of celery, handful of spinach and some beetroot (juiced!), and the 'nap' I had after that - even though I'd eaten a whole bunch of fried vegi spring rolls (eggrolls for americans!) and fried popadoms was just great!!
Then for dinner in the evening, we had 'meat' (I think it was lamb). Well, anyways, I decided that I would try as best I can to not be too 'picky' with being vegetarian, just because I didn't want to cause too much fuss. So I quickly chopped up a whole bunch of salad, and made sure that the meat I had was much less than the salad, rice and pitta I had with it. The 'nap' I had straight after this meal seemed to also be ok... as well as through Sunday night.
However, this morning, I overslept twice. Once upon waking from the 3am nap, which I took a little late, I found myself waking up at 4-3oam, and then after my 6am 'nap', I didn't wake up until 10-30am.
Clearly I'm 'sleeping' less - but the question I have is what's responsible for the 'oversleeping'. A friend of mine, Jason Vale, talks about 'carbohydrate hangovers' and attributes the need for the body to digest food, one of the prime reasons why we sleep so much... I'm thinking there might be some possible sense in that.
After my walk at 5am, I had a banana, since my dad was having breakfast, and then went straight to sleep - could that banana have been responsible for helping my body go into a deep sleep that I couldn't wake out of? Perhaps.
I'm also toying with the idea that perhaps the strict '4 hours' schedule needs to adhered to too. One of the challenges I'm having is not so much in the waking up, but also in going to sleep 'on time'. I'll often go to bed mybe ten or fifteen minutes later than planned, and sometimes push the 15 minutes each nap, and other times take the nap on the spot.
Perhaps the view of seeing each '4 hours' as a training cycle might help... The theory I'm going on, is that if the body gets into the habit of 'switching off' every 4 hours, then perhaps, it'll 'wake up' on time too. Clearly the food I'm eating is going to have to make a difference too, since I'm pretty sure that digesting meat takes much longer than digesting veg, and fruits.
It's an interesting challenge - but I'm pretty sure I'm up for it. I just wonder if I'm actually going to manage to get any 'time savings' by sleeping less, and being awake more.. Right now, it feels like I always have so many things I want to do that I just don't have enough time, even with a full 22 hours at my disposal. But perhaps I shouldn't pay too much attention to productivity whilst I'm trying to focus on my sleeping patterns.
One thing I am starting to do, is to focus on each 'segment' of time - and just aiming to get through the next one, and the next one. With the sleep deprivation, I'm starting to notice my concentration and ability to think straight is starting to go a little funny. I think I need to ensure that I feed my body oxygen as well as food, and move a little in every 4 hours, to get the blood pumping, and the oxygen flowing.
I want to get so many things done - and sometimes it can seem a little overwhelming - but I'm sure I'll get there in the end... For now, I've given myself the project of re-doing the website, so that I can start to generate more income out of it, and also as something that I can use to keep my attention focussed.
I'm going to stick with juicing once a day, and I'm going to try to prepare some 'veggie' snack food - so that I avoid try to maintain fairly healthy options, as I go through this experiment.
Also, it'll be interesting to notice the difference in how easily I get to sleep depending on what I've eaten, and when in the 4 hours I eat it.
One final point I thought I'd share - is that the first day, I decided I'd try working with 3 hour waking periods... Mainly because that's part of what I thought the uberman sleeping cycles were meant to be. Saturday evening, as I started to read all the different websites I could find, I started to realise that I was foolishly mistaken, and that I needed to keep myself awake for at least 4 hours at a time. That put me into a bit of a panic - since I thought - oh no!! I'm sleeping too much! But it also came as a bit of relief... Since I was equally beginning to think I'm spending way too much time always going to bed, and these 3 hours seem so short.
Perhaps I had been a little too tired when I started... (since I stayed up all Friday night to kick in some tiredness, and learn more about all this.) Again it would be interesting to see if it made a huge difference if the experiment had been started after a full nights sleep?? I know that if I want to 'wake up early' - I can usually tire myself out the night before, by going to sleep late, and then the following day, after totally exhausting myself, I'd be able to sleep peacefully much more quickly for the whole night... But that was monophasic sleeping... With polyphasic I wonder if the fatigue is part of what keeps you going, until your body adjusts?
Got to finish washing up, and then I think I'll be ready for the next nap... Got a 'tool' that I might start using to help me with napping... but more about that in the next post...
