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
Sleep may help us to forget by rebalancing brain synapses | Science
We spend one third of our lives sleeping, but we still do not know exactly why we sleep. Recent research shows that that the brain does its housekeeping while we sleep, and clears away its waste. According to another hypothesis, sleep plays the vital role of restoring the right balance of brain synapses to enhance learning, and two studies published in today’s issue of Science now provide the most direct evidence yet for this idea. We do know that sleep is important for consolidating newly formed memories. Giulio Tononi argues that the synaptic strengthening that accompanies learning increases the brain’s energy consumption, and may overload its capacity for processing information. Tononi and his long-term collaborator Chiara Cirelli have already shown that even short periods of sleep or wakefulness alter synaptic activity at multiple levels, and make synapses shrink or grow, respectively. They also created genetically engineered mice lacking the Homer1a gene. References
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
Kriya for Conquering Sleep
1. Sit on the heels with the palms on the thighs. Keep the spine straight and lean back 30 degrees from the vertical position. Hold the posture with long deep breathing for 1 minute. Then relax. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Comments: If sleep is a constant problem for you, practice this kriya regularly for 90 days. © The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan This Kriya can be found in the Sadhana Manual available from KRI. Note: Always seek the advice of a trained health professional before beginning any exercise program.
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.
