Alternate Sleep Cycles Most people only think that there is one way to sleep: Go to sleep at night for 6-8 hours, wake up in the morning, stay awake for 16-18 hours and then repeat. Actually, that is called a monophasic sleep cycle, which is only 1 of 5 major sleep cycles that have been used successfully throughout history. The other 4 are considered polyphasic sleep cycles due to the multiple number of naps they require each day. How is this possible? Well the most important of every sleep cycle is the Stage 4 REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which has been shown to provide the benefits of sleep to the brain above all other stages of sleep. This way, you still get the benefits of 8 hours of sleep without wasting all of the time it takes to get to REM cycles, resulting in a much more efficient sleep cycle. Uberman Cycle: 20 to 30 minute naps every 4 hours, resulting in 6 naps each day. Everyman Cycle: One longer “core” nap that is supplemented with several 20-30 minute naps. Dymaxion Cycle: Biphasic/Siesta Cycle:
Brain Chemicals That Cause Sleep Paralysis Discovered | REM Sleep Disorder During the most dream-filled phase of sleep, our muscles become paralyzed, preventing the body from acting out what's going on in the brain. Now, researchers have discovered the brain chemicals that keep the body still in sleep. The findings could be helpful for treating sleep disorders, the scientists report Wednesday (July 18) in The Journal of Neuroscience. The brain chemicals kick into action during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a phase that usually begins about 90 minutes into a night's rest. This paralysis keeps people still even as their brains are acting out fantastical scenarios; it's also the reason people sometimes experience sleep paralysis, or the experience of waking up while the muscles are still frozen. The chemistry of sleep Exactly how the muscles are paralyzed has been a mystery, however. So University of Toronto researchers Patricia Brooks and John Peever cast a wider net. Treating sleep disorders
About | Dymaxion Duo From reading others' experiences, it takes 1-2 weeks for your body to adjust to the new schedule. The first few days, you basically deprive yourself of sleep; you still lay down for your naps, but more than likely won't sleep very well. After a while, your body starts forcing itself to get REM sleep when you take naps. The tough part here is to lay down when you are supposed to, and get up when you are supposed to. After the body transition phase, the next couple weeks are a mental transition. Stages of Sleep Usually sleepers pass through five stages: 1, 2, 3, 4 and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. These stages progress cyclically from 1 through REM then begin again with stage 1. A complete sleep cycle takes an average of 90 to 110 minutes. Stage 1 is light sleep where you drift in and out of sleep and can be awakened easily. In stage 2, eye movement stops and brain waves become slower with only an occasional burst of rapid brain waves. Slow wave sleep comes mostly in the first half of the night, REM in the second half. In the REM period, breathing becomes more rapid, irregular and shallow, eyes jerk rapidly and limb muscles are temporarily paralyzed. Infants spend almost 50% of their time in REM sleep. As sleep research is still a relatively young field, scientists did not discover REM sleep until 1953 when new machines were developed to monitor brain activity. The brain waveform during REM has low amplitudes and high frequencies, just like the waking state. Circadian Cycles and Sleep
The Official Uberman Sleep Blog Why do we dream The human brain is a mysterious little ball of gray matter. After all these years, researchers are still baffled by many aspects of how and why it operates like it does. Scientists have been performing sleep and dream studies for decades now, and we still aren't 100 percent sure about the function of sleep, or exactly how and why we dream. We do know that our dream cycle is typically most abundant and best remembered during the REM stage of sleep. It's also pretty commonly accepted among the scientific community that we all dream, though the frequency in which dreams are remembered varies from person to person. The question of whether dreams actually have a physiological, biological or psychological function has yet to be answered. It's not just a stab in the dark though -- there is some research to back up the ideas that dreams are tied to how we form memories. Another theory is that dreams typically reflect our emotions. Some have proposed that at night everything slows down.
Dymaxion Sleep Cycle | Ben's Blog By bgjooon on July 1st, 2010 For those of you who have no idea what I’m referring to, here is an excerpt from DymaxionDuo explaining the argument: “Most people sleep on a monophasic cycle; that is, one core sleep that usually lasts around 8 hours long. In those 8 hours, a person will generally get about 2 hours of REM sleep. The full article can be found here . From that (and a few other things that I had heard about polyphasic cycles), I decided to try it myself. Long story short, I stopped. Let me know if you’ve done this and what your experience was!
15 Interesting Facts about Dreams Dreaming is one of the most mysterious and interesting experiences in our lives. During the Roman Era some dreams were even submitted to the Roman Senate for analysis and dream interpretation. They were thought to be messages from the gods. Dream interpreters even accompanied military leaders into battles and campaigns! In addition to this, it is also known that many artists have received their creative ideas from their dreams. But what do we actually know about dreams? Here are 15 interesting facts about dreams – enjoy and what’s most important, don’t forget to share your dream stories in the comment section! 1. Within 5 minutes of waking half of your dream is forgotten. 2. People who became blind after birth can see images in their dreams. 3. Every human being dreams (except in cases of extreme psychological disorder). 4. Our mind is not inventing faces – in our dreams we see real faces of real people that we have seen during our life but may not know or remember. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
How Dreams Work" Our dreams combine verbal, visual and emotional stimuli into a sometimes broken, nonsensical but often entertaining story line. We can sometimes even solve problems in our sleep. Or can we? In this article, we'll talk about the major dream theories, from Freud's view to the hypotheses that claim we can control our dreams. For centuries, we've tried to figure out just why our brains play these nightly shows for us. The idea that dreams are only physiological stimulationsThe idea that dreams are psychologically necessary Let's take a closer look at these theories.
Lucid Dreaming Tips - How to Lucid Dream - Tips for Lucid Dreaming / Lucid Dreams The Six Basic Steps There are many techniques and methods that you can use for inducing lucid dreams, but there is an underlying process behind most, if not all of them. I have broken this underlying process down into six basic steps to serve as a foundation for your lucid dream training. In case you are wondering how long it will take for you to have your first one, just follow through with the steps and have faith that you will have one. 1) Doing the Mental Prep-Work 2) Increasing dream recall 3) Keeping a dream journal 4) Becoming familiar with your Dreams 5) Adding Awareness to your Waking Consciousness 6) Linking your Awareness to your Dreams Step One) Doing the Mental Prep-Work This step involves setting up the right mental foundation and building a mental framework that will maximize your success. Here are four key questions that you need to ask yourself. "Do you think you can do this?" "Do you think dreams are important?" "Do you really want to have lucid dreams?" So be positive. 1.)