Biphasic sleep resources

by Scott Andrew Bird | November 19, 2006
Filed in Sleep

A recent comment on one of Steve Pavlina's forums indicated that the information covering Biphasic Sleep is somewhat lacking. Sadly, it is; these however are good places to get started :

Blogs

This is the article that helped to establish by basic sleeping times and their split. Although originally written in 2003, it was updated in 2005 and contains some good information.

Six hours of sleep daily
Eric (Distinct from Ultimate Health & Conditioning)

Eric has recently switched over to a biphasic sleep schedule, and is posting brief updates of the experience on his site.

Biphasic Sleep FAQ
Devin Reams
This covers several of the common questions and answers for biphasic sleepers (Devin follows a similar split to my own).

Cutting out the crap
Joesph Young

Whilst I don't agree with a couple of statements in this article, the overall ideas are interesting (alternative viewpoints always are). In particular, this strikes me as odd :

Take a step back and realize that if you are to adopt a biphasic or polyphasic sleep system, you are asking yourself to make a HUGE change in your life. I mean HUGE - on par with buying your first house, or deciding to go strictly vegetarian, or even taking care of your first child.

Personally, I didn't find the change all that dramatic (in a negative way - there were plenty of benefits, and they keep growing all the time). It would surely depend upon the lifestyle of the person making the switch; immediately prior to the change.

In my case, I've essentially just lopped a little off the end of my monophasic sleep (I used to wake up around 9am, now it's around 7am, and moved it to a 75 minute nap start around 7:30pm. The core sleep now begins around 2am; when I was monophasic I started around 1:00-1:30.

However, the article - in fact the entire biphasic sleep category on that site - is still a good read.

Finally, I humbly offer up several of my own pieces on biphasic sleeping :

• Biphasic Sleeping update
  An update a little over two months after the switch to biphasic sleeping.
• Napping in the afternoon
  Results of a week-long trial of switching the nap from early evening to mid-afternoon.
• Biphasic Sleep: 30 day summary
  This post takes a comprehensive look at the initial 30 day trial. It was a very rewarding experience. This post also contains links to journal entries from each day of the trial period.
• First week of workouts on biphasic sleep
  Exactly what it says on the tin.
• 30 days of biphasic sleep
  Initial plans for the trial, and a brief discussion of the original motivation for the change.
• Power of the 90 minute nap
  The post which started it all.

Forums

Glen Rhodes forum

If the abovementioned Glen Rhodes article left you curious, take a wander through this thread on his forums. Some very interesting stuff there.

Steve Pavlina Forums - Health and Fitness

There are many threads on biphasic sleep here - highly recommended. These include :

• Biphasic long-term sleepers
• Eliminating sleep is closer than you think
• X-phasic sleep experiments: where do you sleep?
• Sleep learning?
• Post your polyphasic sleep logs here
• Polyphasic sleep
• How to get rid of sleep-o-holism
• Anyone successfully reduced sleep hours per night
• Remove the clock, sleep less
• Hybrid sleeping schedule
• Midday nap
• Biphasic sleep resources
• Getting back into a regular sleep schedule
• Anybody have this sleeping problem?
• Weird sleeping schedule
• Bodybuilding and polyphasic sleep
• Speak while sleep
• Pzizz
• Free running sleep
• How to sleep early
• Biphasic sleep - need help

Other biphasic sleepers

From the abovementioned Steve Pavlina forums, the following people have all made the switch to a biphasic routine and are excellent sources of first-hand information on the subject :

• Ati
• Cactus
• Andrew Fitzgerald
• David Hausladen
• Marc
• Romain

and of course

Scott Bird.

If you have more resources to add to this list (especially studies specifically covering biphasic sleeping), either email me or leave them in the comments.

Discussion

I'd love to hear what you think. Pop over to the forums and share your opinion. See you there.