www.Paul-Bradley.com : Ecce Homo

Dymaxion sleep - Day 6.1

I’ve just woken up from a 2.5 hour oversleep.

I had been experimenting with how far I could push the naps back and forth at this stage, it was too early in the adaptation to be doing this. I moved my 4pm and 10pm naps back half an hour each to 4:30 and 10:30, which I thought was a small enough movement of the naps that it wouldn’t negatively affect the schedule. I think I’d have got away with moving the 4pm one if I had then got back on schedule and taken the 10pm nap on time, but I took it at 10:30 and woke up feeling very tired. I managed to stay awake until nearly 1am then decided to take an extra 20 minute nap, but instead of taking it in bed I set a countdown alarm on my laptop and took the nap on the sofa - the alarm on the PC wasn’t loud enough to wake me and I slept until nearly 4am, so 2 full sleep cycles. It probably didn’t help that I had just eaten before this unplanned extra nap as well, I try to eat early in the waking periods and go to bed on an empty stomach as I find this leads to better quality of sleep and makes it easier to get up at the end of the nap.

This is disappointing and is the longest oversleep I’ve had so far. It’s good feedback though since I have learned that I can’t be flexible with the naps yet, and that napping without my loud alarm is not a good idea at this stage, especially if I am particularly tired like I was when I took this nap. It’s also a very positive sign that I woke after 2 sleep cycles - I clearly have adapted to some degree, as I seem unable at this point to sleep a full monophasic nights sleep even when really tired.

So bearing these two lessons learned in mind I’m going to start bringing my extremely loud alarm downstairs with me when I awaken from the nighttime naps, or indeed any time I’m really tired (although this has only been in the night cycles yet) and setting it for 20 minutes ahead constantly to prevent an oversleep if I nod off. I’m also going to stick very strictly to the nap schedule (no more than +/- 10 minutes) for at least a month regardless of how well I think I’m adapting.

I’m on a meditation course for 10 days in the middle of May, so this may prove difficult to do then - I will certainly try to keep to the nap schedule strictly, but if it proves to be impractical and conflicts with the course I will go monophasic for the duration of the course then restart afterwards - hopefully this should not be necessary though as I already have a partial adaptation and the start of the course is over 2 weeks away so I stand a pretty good chance of being fully adapted by then.

Up until shifting the 2 naps yesterday I was sticking to the nap schedule within a matter of a couple of minutes either way, and even if I had trouble getting to sleep for a nap I was in bed and attempting to nap, which seems to prevent any disruption to the schedule - there have been times when it has taken me as long as half an hour to get to sleep - that’s how much I tried to move the naps yesterday - but in the cases where I have been in bed and trying to nap I have noticed no fatigue later and no disruption to the schedule.

Sleeping monophasically it’s fairly easy to move one nights sleep by several hours and to take the next nights sleep on time if you desire. With polyphasic sleep I feel an intense pressure to nap if I’m even a few minutes late going to sleep, since there’s so much more of a knock on effect on the later naps. Going to sleep later leads to 2 undesirable options - either take the next nap on time when you will be less tired than you want to be, and falling asleep will be harder, or try and push the next nap further back and wake up feeling exhausted. The tradeoff for all the extra time is the discipline required in keeping to the schedule. I’m not saying shifting one nap by half an hour or maybe even an hour is not possible, just that it has a definite impact on the later naps and your level of alertness over the following couple of waking periods, and is not (for me at least) a good idea during adaptation when you are already somewhat tired as a baseline.

In any case, the flexibility once adaptation is complete is an unknown quantity as yet - last time round I started mapping out the flexibility in the uberman schedule, but never really got it down to a fine art and would quite often push my luck a bit far and end up tired later from shifting a nap. The flexibility, if any, in the dymaxion schedule is yet to be established because as far as I know no-one except Bucky Fuller has slept this way before, and as far as I’m aware he never documented it.

Moving the naps also made me aware that I am starting the feel the kind of sleepiness I used to feel when I adapted to uberman before - it’s different from the kind of sleepy you feel when you sleep monophasically, it’s like your body and mind both start shutting down of their own accord. I have never kept a strict sleeping schedule at all when sleeping monophasically, so I am unused to feeling tired on a regular schedule, but the regularity with which I feel tired when nap time approaches is such that you could set your watch by it.

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2007 04 24 Paul Bradley Polyphasic sleep Comments (3) Permalink

Dymaxion sleep - Day 5.2

It’s now the 5th day of the Dymaxion schedule for me and the 7th day on polyphasic sleep overall. My average sleep for the last week is 3 hours per day, and a little less than that over the last 5 days.

Overall I feel I’m adapting pretty well. I’m not as functional as I would like, but I am as functional and alert as I would expect to be at this stage. I’m noticing that the 4am to 10am waking period is the hardest for me. I normally wake from the 4am nap pretty tired but feel fine within about 10 minutes, that I can cope with, but I feel a real drop in energy between 6am and 8am. It is possible to push through it, but I’ve decided to insert an extra nap around 7am whenever I feel like I need it, at least for the time being.

I’m still not spontaneously awakening, and still haven’t remembered a dream from a nap. I suspect yesterdays oversleep when I accidentally set my alarm an hour too late has slowed my adaptation a little, but I am expecting to be experiencing dream recall and spontaneous awakenings any day now.

I’m still a bit under the weather with this cold, but it’s no worse than a normal cold, it’s just come at an inconvenient time. It’s getting better though and my overall alertness and level of function is improving every day now, so I feel confident the adaptation is really starting to take hold.

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2007 04 23 Paul Bradley Polyphasic sleep Comments (0) Permalink

Dymaxion sleep - Day 4.2

Well after I posted, about an hour later I started having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open: Video

Between 6am and 7am I had about 3 or 4 instances of falling asleep for a few seconds at a time, and a couple where I fell asleep for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. I then felt fine again by 9am. This only goes to show how predictions are not of any value at all at this point - I really can go from alert to zombie and back within the same waking period.

Annoyingly, I accidentally set my loud alarm for 11:50 rather than 10:50 when I went for my nap at 10am, I slept through the quieter countdown timer alarm and didn’t wake until the loud alarm sounded, so allowing for how long it took me to fall asleep I still must have had at least one complete sleep cycle, which has probably delayed my adaptation. In any case, my body needed the sleep anyway, as my cold and swollen throat have recurred again this morning, though not as badly as yesterday.

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2007 04 22 Paul Bradley Polyphasic sleep Comments (0) Permalink

Dymaxion sleep - Day 4.1

Well I’m into day 4 of the dymaxion polyphasic sleep pattern and although I’m not remembering dreams during the naps yet I must be adapting since I would surely be in zombie mode now if not.

I am feeling very alert and awake, although I didn’t exactly spring out of bed after my 4am nap - in fact it was the first time I’ve needed my extremely loud backup alarm, which was set for about 5 minutes after the main alarm and successfully woke me up. I got up feeling pretty groggy, but it can’t have been more than about 15 minutes after getting up until I was feeling fine. I had pretty much the same experience after my 10pm nap last night.

The 4pm nap yesterday was more immediately restorative though, so it is still a little up and down right now, but there is a definite overall trend towards adaptation. I think I am past the zombie stage, but it is too early to say for sure, so I am still taking all possible precautions against unforseen zombification leading to oversleeping episodes.

Although I am physically adapting I still need to make the psychological adaptation - even when I don’t feel tired I psychologically crave the withdrawal from the world and the sense of letting the outside world fade away that I get with monophasic sleep. The more I think about it, the more I realise that it’s not actually the sleeping part that gives me this feeling, after all I am asleep during the sleeping part and not feeling much on a conscious level at all! It’s the going to sleep - the luxurious feeling of knowing you don’t need to awaken before you are refreshed and feel satiated by sleep. So there are 2 components - the first is the feeling of enjoyment from going to sleep, the second is that this enjoyment is contingent on knowing you will be satisfied by the sleep when you awaken. I intend to give myself both of these things the next time I nap at 10am by:

1. Knowing I will feel refreshed when I awaken
2. Allowing myself to enjoy falling asleep

I have been making an effort to fall asleep quickly since I though it would be best to try and take the naps as close to their scheduled times as possible, as a result of this effort I have been robbing myself of the pleasure of relaxing and falling asleep at leisure without pressure or effort. Although it undoubtedly takes an effort to adapt to polyphasic sleep, it shouldn’t be an ongoing effort in the longer run once an adaptation is made - taking the naps should be a pleasure, not just the satisfaction of a bodily need. I am going to try going to bed 15 minutes before my scheduled nap times and allowing myself to enjoy the additional time this affords me to fall asleep at a leisurely pace. I will set my alarm as though I hadn’t gone to bed earlier - this means if I fall asleep straight away I will get around an hours sleep, which is in no way enough to cause any difficulty in adapting, since it is still substantially less than a normal sleep cycle.

I have started recording video logs of my adaptation which are available here on youtube.

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2007 04 22 Paul Bradley Polyphasic sleep Comments (0) Permalink

Dymaxion sleep day 3.2

I have decided to adopt another convention to make posting reports easier. Since my convention for what is night and what is day says that day starts at 4am, I will call my 4:30am to 10am waking period day n.1, 10:30am to 4pm day n.2 and so on. Technically then my last report was misnamed and was actually day 2.4.

I just awoke at about 11:10 before the alarm sounded which was good. I’m also feeling about an 8/10 for alertness. The downside is I’m not certain what time I went to sleep. I know I went to bed at 10am exactly and I remember making a big effort not to nap early as I thought that would cause more tiredness later, so I was walking around, spraying myself in the face with water etc. to stay awake until 10.

I normally set the second loud alarm for 50 minutes or so, and the main (countdown timer) alarm for 42 minutes. I do remember being unable to sleep (after all that effort to stay awake, wierd huh) and deciding to give myself a bit of extra time to fall asleep.

When I woke up spontaneously at 11:10am the alarm was set for 11:20, and the countdown timer read 00:00 which means I either decided not to set it (probably thinking I’d sleep through it since it’s not very loud) or I slept right through it.

Let’s assume the worst case that I set the loud alarm for an hour, which is the most I’d ever set it for, and that I fell asleep immediately after doing that, which I doubt, then the longest I could have slept for is 50 minutes. Probably more like 40 to 45, and I spontaneously awoke. This is a very promising sign. This happened during my uberman adaptation too - I’m not there yet with this one by any means, but it’s really cool to be able to go to sleep and just spontaneously awaken minutes later feeling refreshed.

In fact, one of the wierdest things that happened to me last time I was polyphasic was when I was having a dream in which I was trying to fix something that needed close examination (I can’t remember what), it was dark and dingy in the dream room and I remember asking someone to turn the light on. As I heard the light switch click on my eyes opened and I sat upright in my bed. It was a bit of a shock.

On the downside I seem to be catching a cold, I have been sneezing a lot and my throat is sore and a bit swollen. I’m going to take some vitamins, drink a lot of water and juice and continue with dymaxion since I feel I am far enough along with the adaptation now that taking a block of monophasic sleep would not necessarily be any more restorative or healthy than continuing with the naps.

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2007 04 21 Paul Bradley Polyphasic sleep Comments (1) Permalink

Goal setting

I used to rank goal setting among the more mundane aspects of self development, I still set and achieved goals, I just could never get very inspired about the whole process. Now I realise this was because I had not yet discovered a powerful enough purpose for myself, so I felt unmotivated to set goals.

I didn’t see it that way at the time though, since I had allowed myself to be satisfied with the excuse that goal setting was a boring, mundane task rather than an opportunity to consciously decide how to live “on purpose”.

Why set a goal at all if it’s something you can’t get really motivated to do?

If you’re setting goals that you’re not achieving, and you can see that this is because they don’t emotionally compel you to make them real, then spend some time soul searching and deciding what it is you really want to manifest in your life, not just in terms of the end products of your goals, but in terms of the purpose of your life. Goals are merely steps along this path. Goal setting is not an end in itself, it is a tool to be applied in the service of something that both transcends and incorporates individual goals – your purpose.

Once you have a sense of purpose in setting goals, it becomes surprisingly easy to get motivated to use the tools and techniques which can help you to set your goals in the way that serves you best. In my experience, learning and using the right goal-setting tools will require a moderate amount of willpower to learn and implement the techniques initially but will repay your investment of time and energy many times over

I’d like to share with you a kind of stream-of-consciousness narrative of some of the distinctions I’ve found helpful in setting goals. Often I will set a goal and keep refining it with a slight rephrasing for some weeks or even months, always working on the goal assuming the current definition is perfect, but also being sensitive to the feedback I’m getting to refine and further focus my goal to make it more closely express what I want.

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2007 04 21 Paul Bradley Self development Comments (1) Permalink

Dymaxion sleep - Day 3

I’m posting this around 00:30 on Frinight (Saturday 00:30 for the normal people) going into day 3 of the dymaxion sleep pattern and I’m feeling great. I’ve slept for a total of 4 hours in the last two days, all my naps have been taken strictly on my schedule of 4am/10am/4pm/10pm and each has been for 30 minutes.

It’s very difficult to express just how good I feel right now, at least by contrast to how I felt when I last posted - I think I might even be able to be somewhat productive overnight tonight. Thursnight was spent in a semi-zombified state unable to do much other than browse the web and do a little studying, but I had a very short span of attention and felt unable to really focus on anything for long enough to make any progress.

Although I’m not perfectly mentally clear right now I am wide awake and lucid, and I’m pleasantly surprised that I seem to be adapting so fast this time around - it’s early days to be drawing conclusions but the initial indications are promising that I will be able to adapt to the dymaxion sleep. I’d put myself at around an 8/10 physically and a 7/10 mentally right now.

If you look at the total time I have been polyphasic since my last monophasic sleep on Monday 16th it’s now 4.25 days during which time I have had one oversleep of 5.5 hours and 7.5 hours of total naps - 13 hours of sleep in over 4 days. It averages out to 3 hours sleep a day even including the oversleep where I neglected to set my second alarm.

On the google polyphasic sleep group I have been corresponding with Placebo, Kirk Kahn and Opus who are all starting polyphasic sleep around the same time as me. Zelshark7, topping345 and ZeThomas are video blogging their adaptations to the uberman schedule on Youtube. Drop by their pages and give them some encouragement. I have ordered a webcam and will be posting videos of my adaptation on youtube within the next few days.

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2007 04 21 Paul Bradley Polyphasic sleep Comments (1) Permalink

Dymaxion sleep - Day 2

It’s just gone 6am here and I’m feeling pretty tired now. I woke from my 4am nap fine, but I’m really starting to feel sleep deprived now, which is good since it means my adaptation is well underway. I slept for the last nap better than I have before. I’m not getting any REM yet that I can recall, but at least I’m tired enough to nap properly so the REM will come pretty soon.

I’m using SleepTracker to keep track of my naps, according to the software I’m averaging a little under 3.5 hours sleep per day over the last 3 days, which includes my oversleep. This should still be little enough to be causing a major REM deficit and I’m certainly starting to feel it. If you don’t count my oversleep I am now at 39 hours with 3 hours sleep (averaging 2 hours per 24 hour period).

I just noticed something else about this stage of the adaptation which is that I am principally in foveal (central) vision most of the time, I’ve noticed this when sleep deprived before but never really paid much attention to it. Now that I think back on what I experienced with the uberman schedule last time around this ties up with the fact that once I was fully adapted to the schedule I was almost constantly experiencing enhanced peripheral vision. I get this whenever I’m in a relaxed state of heightened awareness. Time dilation seems to accompany this peripheral vision state and events seem to slow down so that I seem to have all the time in the world to think and respond, even when things are happening “objectively” quickly. It’s the same state athletes call “the zone”, and is a peak state that shows up in all sorts of different contexts.

It would seem that being REM deprived tends to inhibit this uptime state of consciousness, and having abundant REM sleep like you get when adapted to napping tends to encourage and permit this state. I guess it’s the body equipping you to deal with whatever has prevented you from being able to sleep - in nature, if you hadn’t been able to sleep in days there would probably be a pretty serious reason and you would be in dire need of a biochemical boost to help keep you awake and lucid. The body responds with elevated levels of the catecholamine hormones (adrenaline, noradrenaline and dopamine) which activate the sympathetic nervous system and trigger the fight-or-flight response to equip you for action.

The evolutionary explanation that these states correlate with either foveal or peripheral vision would seem to be because your foveal vision in the centre of your retina is predominantly comprised of cells called cones which give you detailed vision in this part of the visual field, this would be needed in a fight-or-flight situation, wheras the peripheral area of the retina is mainly comprised of cells called rods which are not so densely packed - your visual accuity in this part of the eye is lower, but your sensitivity to movement is higher. During periods of rest it would be most adaptive for you to have a wide field of view so as to be able to see predators or prey approaching from a wide range of angles, and to have a high sensitivity to movement to easily detect them.

Another thing I have noticed already is that my body feels like it is going through a detox. This may be partly because I have been particularly careful over my diet, and have completely eliminated caffeine and alcohol, but I suspect it is also directly related to having less sleep.

I have a huge todo list, some of which is mental work I can do sitting down but a lot of it is physical work which requires moving around, even if it’s only something like tidying up, putting up some pictures or cooking some meals for later today. I’m glad I made up a big todo list, and I would recommend doing that first to anyone starting polyphasic sleep - once you get to a certain point in the adaptation you won’t be able to think of things to do - if you have a list in front of you it’s just a matter of carrying out the tasks in a zombie like manner - you can do it on autopilot and that’s important when you’re in a state where your capacity for thinking and choosing is impaired. Right now I cannot get motivated to do anything, even as I type this it almost seems like someone else is typing it, and I am just watching it happen.

I’m prepared for the next few waking periods to be among the worst, so I will be performing my tasks, going out for a walk and basically anything I can do to keep myself on my feet and awake.

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2007 04 20 Paul Bradley Polyphasic sleep Comments (1) Permalink

Walking through the fire

I recently did my first firewalk. Firewalking has been around for long enough that no-one can really say where it originated. It has been popularised in the last few decades by Tolly Burkan who first brought it to mainstream western awareness, and later by Tony Robbins who uses it in his seminars.

Typical firewalks involve temperatures between 1200 and 1500 degrees fahrenheit. That’s hot enough to melt aluminium. Dr. Ron Sato of Stanford university medical school and director of a nearby burns unit says that human flesh even momentarily exposed to these temperatures should sustain third degree burns charring the entire thickness of skin to a blackened carbon residue. Dr. Sato has treated people who have accidentally stepped on hot coals who have sustained injuries requiring skin grafts.

Theories about how firewalking is possible are widespread. I’m not going to put forward my explanation for it here, or even discuss the theories that are out there. What I’m more interested in is what firewalking serves as a metaphor for, and what it teaches experientially.

The fear of fire is one of our most basic and early learnings - hot objects, fires, cookers and other such dangers are one of the first things we learn to avoid as children. You have to make a leap of faith to take the first step onto a bed of burning coals - you have to know you will not burn - I’m not talking about an intellectual knowledge, I’m talking about a positive conviction. It’s one thing to imagine doing it, but when you are standing in front of the coals and can feel the heat radiating from them it becomes apparent that no-one would take the first step without the certainty that they were going to be able to walk across them without injury.

This re-examining of beliefs, where they came from and whether or not they serve you is key in so many different areas, and is one of the reasons firewalking is such an excellent metaphor for personal change. When you can change your belief about something as basic as this, it becomes surprisingly easy to re-examine other limiting beliefs and make a decision to change them for beliefs that serve you.

Milton Erickson used to tell the story of a war veteran who he met who had returned from the war with an artificial leg, he first saw the man looking at ice and eyeing it suspiciously because he knew he was likely to fall walking on it. Erickson offered to teach the man how to walk on ice. He could see Erickson had a limp, so he knew that he was speaking about what he knew. After he had walked across the ice the man asked him how he did it. He said “I won’t tell you, I’ll teach you” - Erickson had the man close his eyes and walked him back and forth over the ice free pavement until he was utterly confused and disoriented, finally he walked him straight over the ice. The man was able to understand that you can walk on ice when you don’t know it’s there. When you walk as if the road was bare you put your weight down straight and walk confidently. The slide only comes if a person tenses up and doesn’t put down their full weight.

Courage is not the absence of fear - it is the ability to act in spite of fear. To re-examine your limiting beliefs and realise that you already have all the resources within you that you will ever need to face the challenges you want to overcome. Fear is just useless baggage which prevents people from doing what they already know how to do. When you put yourself in a resourceful state, focus on the end result and make a conscious decision to take action you may not know how you can accomplish whatever it is you desire, but you’re getting momentum by taking the first step - how would it feel if you were already one step closer to whatever it is you desire?

This overcoming of fear (False Evidence Appearing Real) is the first lesson of firewalking - once the fear is faced and overcome you realise that what seemed terrifying turned out to be nothing at all. Like making that presentation, approaching that girl or guy, starting that new business or handling that spider the fear is often an illusion, and when you walk with purpose and know where you want to go fear reveals itself for what it is - an illusion that you put in place, and which you can choose to see clearly for what it really is.

All of the lessons firewalking teaches are highly generalisable and this is one of the main reasons I think firewalking is such an excellent change tool, I’d thoroughly recommend doing it if you get the chance to take place in a firewalk organised by a reputable organisation.

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2007 04 19 Paul Bradley Self development Comments (1) Permalink

Compersion

Something we talk a lot about in NLP and hypnosis circles is the power that words have to rob an experience of its juice - when you put a label on something you often strangle the life out of it and reduce it to just a concept. On the flip side of this coin is the fact that sometimes putting words to a feeling you had but hadn’t named can solidify it in your mind and help you to think more clearly about it and make new more resourceful choices in how you respond.

One of my favourite words at the moment is compersion. It was coined in the polyamorous community to express the feelings of vicarious pleasure and empathy felt when one of your partners is having great experiences in another relationship. To define it by contrast, it is the opposite of jealousy. The feeling of compersion is also sometimes informally referred to by the adjective frubbly and the noun frubbles.

I got to thinking how these words could apply outside the context of polyamorous relationships. Although I haven’t been practicing much recently due to other commitments I often get compersive feelings through my therapy practice, through introducing other people to self improvement and in many other contexts, but the real reason that the term was coined was to have a word for the opposite of jealousy, so it is best applied in situations where it would be possible to feel jealousy but instead you choose to feel good about someone elses success.

We have a strong anti-success culture in the UK. A lot of people hate to see anyone doing better than them, and have a jealous reaction. One the one hand this originates in a delicate sensibility in matters of good taste - conspicuous bragging, brashness and complacence are negative traits the English have a higher than average sensitivity and aversion to, and with good reason, but this often gets twisted into a generalised dislike of any kind of conspicuous success which manifests as jealousy. This is amplified by our media who love to scandalise and slander those who have risen to positions of obvious success.

Feelings of jealousy originate in the fear and insecurity that come from the illusion of separateness. When you are conscious of the connectedness of all-that-is it’s impossible to feel anything but good about the success of another - it is your success too.

Instead of feeling jealousy when I see someone doing better than me in any particular area I feel compersion. This positivity creates a kind of feedback loop - the more you feel it the more success you enjoy yourself and the freer you feel to feel yet more compersion. It’s an instance of the law of attraction where feeling the positive feelings of success you would feel if you had yourself achieved what you are observing draws the same success to you.

It’s a good practice to notice times when you feel jealousy at someone elses success in any area where you feel they are doing better than you. Perhaps they are making more money, have a better social life, are in better physical shape or seem happier and more fulfilled. As soon as you notice this stop and make a conscious decision to feel frubbly instead, I’m sure it’ll be a very rewarding habit for you just like it has been for me.

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