8 tweets · December 2020 · 29 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
Replying to @liminal_warmth
@liminal_warmth Great idea! Learning how to REM nap is a totally worthwhile skill although afaik it requires being exhausted for a few days. I played around with uberman & everyman in 2011 & 2013 and settled on biphasic. malcolmocean.com/2016/04/polyph…
@liminal_warmth My current "Learn to REM Nap" protocol reco would be: 1. stay up all night 2. starting ~8am, take a 20min nap every 2h for the next 24h or so 3. then 20min nap every 4h for 24-36h 4. then sleep as long as you feel like (to recharge SWS) 5. then repeat 1-4 immediately or weekly
@liminal_warmth ^ based on observation that SWS (slow-wave sleep) & REM sleep get deprived at different paces. REM you need like every night, so after 1 night missing it'll show up in naps. SWS you can miss for 2-3 days w/o noticing, but then FUCK WHY IS MY FACE MADE OF BRICKS.
@liminal_warmth These 2 kinds of deprivation feel totally different, and I think almost nobody who hasn't experienced insomnia or tried crazy sleephacking has experienced full SWS deprivation. It's absurdly awful. That feeling is your cue to sleep as long as you want (in this protocol).
@liminal_warmth Worth noting that this protocol I'm suggesting is not one I'm aware of anyone having tried explicitly, *although* it's a conservative subset of uberman (where you just keep to 20min nap every 4h) and everyman (where you switch to 1.5-4.5h core after a few days)
@liminal_warmth So it should be basically safer than either of those two, since you're not intending to actually spend days SWS-deprived. Those require being SWS-deprived in order to get the SWS to restructure itself into smaller containers, but you don't need that just to learn to REM nap.
@liminal_warmth Also worth noting that most of what I've said above is based a combination of probably-not-that-epistemically-sound polyphasic blogs, plus anecdotal experience (FACE BRICKS is definitely a THING, whatever is going on under the hood)
@liminal_warmth On the gripping hand, mainstream models of sleep are shit. There literally isn't a separate wikipedia page for "light sleep", ie the type of sleep that is neither REM nor slow-wave, even though most people spend 2-4 hours doing it every day.