Polyphasic Sleep

Polyphasic Life serves as a resource for various forms of polyphasic sleep, primarily detailing the Uberman sleep schedule, also including Everyman and biphasic sleep. See below for an introduction to polyphasic sleep. This area of the site also has information on how to adapt to these forms of polyphasic sleep, as well as the history and practicality of such sleep.

Introduction to Polyphasic Sleep

The term polyphasic sleep refers to sleeping multiple times in 24 hours - one phase of sleep per day is referred to as monophasic sleep, and two phases is called biphasic.

The term polyphasic sleep was first used by J.S. Szymanski in the early 1900s, so it is certainly nothing new. However, the high levels of interest in polyphasic sleep is only relatively recent, driven by the Internet and the media.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Polyphasic Sleep

The simple advantage of polyphasic sleep is the increased time the sleeper has. There are varying forms of polyphasic sleep, limiting sleep to a minimum of two hours with the Uberman schedule. A sleeper previously sleeping eight hours per night would then recieve an additional six waking hours - that is enough time to do a lot of things.

Disadvantages can include tiredness, if the sleep schedule is not adhired to properly. This leads on to the main downfall, inflexibility. Varying in degree from person to person, some can find themselves in a state of extreme tiredness simply by delaying one nap by half an hour or so. It is said however that when fully adjusted to the schedule it is possible to skip naps, and make up for them later in the day. This would make the Uberman schedule much more preferable to those working nine to five jobs.

Polyphasic blogging

Polyphasic sleep blogs are all over the place, but we've got one in the making too. We'll be starting in earnest in the Summer '09, but are set up on Twitter (polyphasicsleep) and will be video blogging via LiveFaceSpace.