7:00 am EEST (GMT+3). This is the June 23 2020 daily proof of life post. Today I want to talk about biphasic sleeping, which is something I’m still learning about myself. It goes against everything I’ve ever been taught, but it’s currently working for me.
Basically, instead of one long 8-hour sleep session you sleep in two segments per day. Because of pain issues, I only sleep around 5 or 6 hours per night. That’s what exacerbates the “brain fog” of executive dysfunction. Several months ago I started adding a nap in the afternoon. Anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, really dependent on how long and how well I slept the night before.
Once I started doing that, a lot of my problems went away. More energy all day, not just following the afternoon nap. Definitely less brain fog later in the day.
Katie was the one that found out that this had a name. I checked with my doctor, and found out it’s not only pretty common in many parts of the world, there’s some science backing up the benefits. The main reason I never heard of it is, surprise surprise, it’s not something most people with 9-to-5 corporate jobs can do. We are, one again, expected to adapt our health and well-being to the work rather than the other way around.
While it has been beneficial for me, not being in pain and getting 8 hours would still be better. What I am happy about, besides having the ability to do it, is that it’s legitimately a thing. It was common in pre-industrial Europe, as well as parts of Asia and Africa. Society and corporate culture left me feeling that I was being lazy for taking a nap. I doesn’t matter that I’m putting in the same number of hours, or that biphasic sleep makes me more productive. I’m happy to put one more toxic notion behind me, and focus on living a happier, healthier life.
What is Biphasic Sleeping
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3 replies on “What is Biphasic Sleeping? It’s Something I Fell Into”
Apparently, there is the idea of more than 2 wake sleep cycles – polyphasic. But this article argues it’s mostly fiction – https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/polyphasic. The same author discusses sleep factors and free-running sleep – http://super-memory.com/articles/sleep.htm
Hi, Berin.
Have you read REST by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang? He devotes a whole chapter on the benefits of naps.
I have not, so I just downloaded it. I already had his book SHORTER in my “to be read” queue, so now I think I know how I’m spending the upcoming weekend.