Biphasic Sleep Guide

Core sleep: 01:30 - 06:00
Nap: 20:20 - 21:50

The last 72 hours or so, I’ve only slept a total of six hours a day. I can feel that this is getting back at me already; today, in Physics, I was dead close to falling asleep. I was barely saved by a highly timely nut-cake.

And so, I conclude that I need more than six hours a day to get by. On the other hand, 7.5 hours seemed too much. Perhaps alternating between the two is a good idea.

Only yesterday, I told you that I had stopped remembering dreams. Well, I take that back — after my core sleep this morning, I remembered three dreams, and they all were much more detailed than those I usually remember.

I’ve been keeping a dream diary for about three months, and today I noticed something — since I started sleeping biphasically, I’ve had a lot of trouble remembering dreams. I used to remember at least one dream every sleep session, but since i started sleeping biphasically, I’ve only remembered one every fourth night (two nights over four days).

According to Wikipedia, “general observation shows that dreams are associated with REM sleep”. My own theory, completely lacking any scientific proof, is that it is easier to remember a dream which you wake up in the middle of. Since I try to wake up in the end of a sleep cycle, the chances are very low that I wake up in the middle of a dream.

The two dreams that I did remember, I didn’t remember when I woke up — the memories came back to me after some hours, in the middle of the day.

Another explanation would be that I am too excited about non-monophasic sleeping to think about my dreams, which I think is likely since other bloggers have reported an increase in remembered dreams.