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June 2nd, 2008
Sleepy Tales
Lucid Dreams and Segmented Polyphasic Sleep
“It’s possible to dream what you want to dream!”
I’ve been sleeping an average of 5 hours a night the past few weeks with an nap at in the afternoon and sometimes if I’m still sleepy, another nap early evening. I see this continuing for at least another month (especially with the Euro 2008 matches to watch in June!).
My dreams are more vivid now, and now more than ever, I’m aware of the fact that I’m dreaming and can control my dreams. I recently found the term for this:
Lucid Dream
“A lucid dream, also known as a conscious dream, is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. A lucid dream can begin in one of two ways. A dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD) starts as a normal dream, and the dreamer eventually concludes that he or she is dreaming, while a wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD) occurs when the dreamer goes from a normal waking state directly into a dream state with no apparent lapse in consciousness.” Wikipedia
Apparently, you can learn how to achieve lucid dreams. So it’s possible to dream what you want to dream!
Segmented Sleep
I’ve not experienced any adverse effects from the reduced number of sleeping hours apart from feeling very sleepy after lunch (then again, I’ve always been sleepy after lunch with or without enough sleep), and this is relieved by taking a nap.
I was slightly worried about the effects it would have on my body but the article What is a natural sleep pattern? on Scienceblogs is reassuring to a degree:
“In a natural state, humans do not sleep a long consecutive bout throughout the night. The natural condition is bimodal – two bouts of sleep interrupted by a short episode of waking in the middle of the night.”
Steve Pavlina took segmented sleep a step further by experimenting with Uberman or Polyphasic sleep, dividing his sleep into 6 half-hour segments and sleeping a total of 3 hours a day for nearly half a year. Yikes!
Given a choice, I think I’d still prefer to sleep 7-hour straight at night but at least I can rest in relative comfort now. :)
Related Posts:
I've had sleep paralysis a few times and believe me, the first time I experienced it I thought I was in the process of dying! A very terrifying experience indeed.
Ginger M at 11:10 pm on June 2, 2008
I've had a few lucid dreams and I actually am able to remember most of them. Found a lot of good useful info about ld at luciddreaming.com
Heidi at 2:25 am on June 6, 2008
Lucid dreams are very powerful but it's not really true that you can control everything you want in the dream. It's more life setting an intention and then wandering around in amazement at the dreamworld while conscious. there are some meditation techniques as well for moving from sleep paralyis to lucid dreaming.
Ryan at 5:30 pm on July 22, 2008
[...] have been having more lucid dreams these past few weeks. In one of the dreams, I made Daniel Craig meet me in Thailand. In a tux. As [...]
Natural Polyphasic Sleep Pattern | Growing Happiness at 9:33 am on September 14, 2009
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Christopher at 6:14 pm on June 2, 2008