Polyphasic Sleep 

The Uberman Sleep Schedule 

Polyphasic sleep is the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period, as opposed to sleeping for 8 hours through the night. The phrase was introduced by psychologist J.S Szymanski, and in the last 5 years become popular among the uberman sleeping community. There are in fact many people who experience polyphasic sleep unintentionally, waking multiple times during the night. For some this is a nightmare, leaving them feeling unrested and tired throughout the day. It should be noted that polyphasic sleep is common in the animal kingdom, but not natural to humans.

Polyphasic sleep has become somewhat of a trend due to the popularity of the uberman schedule. This schedule increases one's ability to get more done in a day, eliminating the counterproductive long period of daily sleep. 

The idea is to hack your sleep by sleeping six times a day for 2o-3o minutes, training the brain to quickly enter deep stages of restorative sleep. So you might sleep at2am, 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, and 10pm.  In theory this can work, and challenges the conventional need to lie in bed for 8 hours a day. You see, much of the time we spend in bed is not spent in REM sleep, the deep sleep stage required for recovery. So the concept of ubersleeping is to cut out unnecessary bedtime and get straight to REM sleep.

So, what is my opinion on this uber sleep schedule as someone that has written a book on how to achieve better sleep by aligning the body with nature.

Well, so many people claim to be living productive lives and feeling healthier with polyphasic sleep, yet I have never met one in person, only read as much in forums and blogs. I do not believe the claim that polyphasic sleep is the way our ancestors lived, either. I do, however believe that our ancestors were far better at achieving fast states of deep sleep (REM), I.e. Sleeping on demand, which is effectively what the uber schedule is.  Therefore I believe some people could survive using this technique, depending on their ability to fall into REM sleep.

If you are someone that has no problem nodding off, then this will work for you for a period of time. Let's not forget, the body is highly adaptable and is designed to endure far more physical strain than most people ever expose it to. A healthy person can easily survive on a few hours sleep per night for a couple of weeks until the body just says, "that's enough", and fails. Polyphasic sleep could really benefit travelers or multiple day endurance racers. But let's not forget that it is a proven fact that the body works with nature - lightness and darkness - to trigger sleep, which therefore renders sleeping intermittently during the day unnatural. If you want to spend less time in bed, then why not use the six steps program to train your body to sleep for 5 or 6 solid hours of deep, restorative sleep, rather than completely working against your circadian rhythms. 

For those that have a history of poor sleep and trouble getting to sleep, I do not recommend polyphasic sleep. It could seriously harm your natural sleeping routine, after which you will definitely need my book to correct it back. 

If you are a good sleeper and you want to experiment with polyphasic sleep by all means do so, but be very careful how long for, and make sure you are in good health. If you are struggling with good sleep already then I think it's best you address that first.

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