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The myth of the eight-hour sleep

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#121

Post by nazgulnarsil »

jfoldi wrote: post #94
VonLipwig wrote: post #42

I am really into 'do what works for you'. You may find that that sleeping in two 4 hour blocks changes your life. You feel alive! Alternatively you may find yourself more tired. Personally I like sleeping 8-9 hours a night. I find myself fairly alert a few minutes after I wake up and I can start my day. It certainly doesn't feel 'unnatural' to me. I am also a big fan of sleeping when other people sleep so I can enjoy…

You don't feel like you over slept after 9 hours of sleep? Either way I have to agree with doing what works for you. I always made an attempt to sleep a full 8 hours and failed. I get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night and feel fine!

'oversleep' is often dehydration.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#123

Post by jarek »

swah wrote: post #120
nostrademons wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find my acceptable waking points occur in 1.5 hour sleep cycles, and how many I need depends on how mentally taxing the stuff I'm working on is. For ordinary work, stuff I know how to do fairly well already, I need 8 hours. If I'm learning something new or putting in long hours that require concentration, I'll need 9.5 hours. If I'm thrown into a completely new situation - say, I need to decide the architecture of…

But how do you do this? You wake up and go to sleep again and again? I wake up naturally after 7 or 8 hours, would be kinda hard for me to sleep 11.5 hours.

I've never had problems sleeping up to 12 hours. Might be a personal thing, or related to whether you have accumulated sleep debt.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#124

Post by Florin_Andrei »

mmwako wrote: post #111
lobotryas wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds pretty interesting. Any suggestion on books or ofher resources for peope new to meditation? How did you get started with meditation?

I'm far from being an expert, but I learned this type of meditation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation from a guy my mother hired to teach all my family. There are many different meditations and practices, and I've actually never read a book about just meditation but I recommend books by Osho and Deepak Chopra (just google'em) to have insight on Indian practices and philosophy. I would recommend t…

> as cliché as it sounds, if you are looking for it, the appropriate practice will come to you

Yeah. Keep looking for the right career / hobby / spiritual path / etc., and it will likely come to you. Provided you are sincere and are actually looking.

I've a different bias, myself, but to each his own. The various buddhist techniques also seem well suited for the western skeptics, since they typically don't require adherence to any theology at all. You could practice Zen and be a total agnostic or atheist. "Brain hacking" in its purest form. YMMV.

I find Zen difficult, myself. Feels too... um... dry, for lack of a better word. I require something that engages the emotional apparatus, and the physical base, in a more active fashion. I guess this is like preferring Python over Ruby over Perl over etc.etc.etc. Everyone's different.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#125

Post by cleaver »

VonLipwig wrote: post #42

I am really into 'do what works for you'. You may find that that sleeping in two 4 hour blocks changes your life. You feel alive! Alternatively you may find yourself more tired. Personally I like sleeping 8-9 hours a night. I find myself fairly alert a few minutes after I wake up and I can start my day. It certainly doesn't feel 'unnatural' to me. I am also a big fan of sleeping when other people sleep so I can enjoy…

I once got caught up on sleep over a period of several weeks. I then started falling into the segmented sleep pattern like in the article.

I didn't get out of bed when I woke up, but I found I was extremely lucid. As soon as I could use the time for problem solving, I stopped waking up :(

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#126

Post by ars »

Xurinos wrote: post #29

There is only one study in this article, and it involves how a group of people adapted to a 14-hour sleep pattern. Other than that, there are no studies of importance here, nothing that confirms concretely that this kind of segmented sleep is effective for humans. It is based on historical hearsay but cannot make a prescriptive judgment. The evidence purely anecdotal. Please be careful in reading things like this tha…

> Please be careful in reading

You should take your own advice. Bi-Modal sleep has a lot more evidence than just that, and the article includes some from historians, which I guess you missed.

This sleep pattern is well accepted, and has been known for decades. Not sure why they are writing an article about it now, except maybe the author heard about it and decided it would make an interesting article.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#127

Post by kiba »

cleaver wrote: post #125
VonLipwig wrote: post #42

I am really into 'do what works for you'. You may find that that sleeping in two 4 hour blocks changes your life. You feel alive! Alternatively you may find yourself more tired. Personally I like sleeping 8-9 hours a night. I find myself fairly alert a few minutes after I wake up and I can start my day. It certainly doesn't feel 'unnatural' to me. I am also a big fan of sleeping when other people sleep so I can enjoy…

I once got caught up on sleep over a period of several weeks. I then started falling into the segmented sleep pattern like in the article. I didn't get out of bed when I woke up, but I found I was extremely lucid. As soon as I could use the time for problem solving, I stopped waking up :(

Lucid dreaming?

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#128

Post by pestaa »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #121
jfoldi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't feel like you over slept after 9 hours of sleep? Either way I have to agree with doing what works for you. I always made an attempt to sleep a full 8 hours and failed. I get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night and feel fine!

'oversleep' is often dehydration.

What do you mean? Am I just dehydrated when I feel overslept, or oversleeping causes dehydration? The latter makes little sense to me, but I'm asking for clarification because this issue happens to me quite often.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#129

Post by Florin_Andrei »

Natsu wrote: post #116
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're definitely not alone. Extraordinary insight and creativity, rich, vivid, inspired and out-of-the-box thinking, are typical for "twilight" states, when you're floating between waking state and sleep; not fully awaken to the outside world, but not fully unconscious either. The only problem is replicating and maintaining these states. It is sometimes possible to remain fully aware in what is essentially a full-on…

I sometimes get there by being sleep-deprived. It's pretty hard to get there, though. Sometimes you just fall asleep. And even if you feel creative, you might not have the energy to actually get anything done. Also, dreams tend to fade rapidly. If you plan to use them to get ideas, it's best to write the ideas down immediately, before the ideas evaporate.

> I sometimes get there by being sleep-deprived.

Ah, yes. It's a little bit different. Clarity, calm, a kind of purely-mental energy, an ease to achieve good focus. Sometimes a positive, sunny feeling (unless you're completely exhausted or stressed, in which case it's nasty); other times quite an intense but smooth joy. But at the purely physical level, batteries are running out.

The twilight state has less clarity (it's not obscure, though), and calm doesn't enter the picture. But it's full of this roiling primeval emotional drive to create (in a very wide, general sense). It's where dreams come from, and most inspiring ideas. Some folks find it easier to experience it if they linger in bed in the morning, trying to avoid yanking themselves out of sleep directly into full waking state. It's a fragile thing, handle it gently.

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