Types of sleep cycles

A good sleep pattern is the cornerstone to getting great sleep. A messed up sleep pattern is one of the main causes of insomnia. The key to getting it right is to choose a sleep pattern and stick to it like glue.

Don’t think you’re limited to just one sleep and wake time. With an understanding of the stages of sleep and the sleep cycle, you can sleep multiple times during the day and effectively feel great on as little as 3 hours of sleep per day. It’s possible, but it’s not for the faint hearted! To have any chance of succeeding you need to know the theory behind what you’re doing.

In this post we’ll take a look at the theory behind sleep patterns to see exactly how they work and what creates a great sleep pattern. Then we’ll investigate the range of different sleep patterns that are open to us, from the traditional to the down right insane!

How Sleep Patterns Work

Your sleep pattern is like a timepiece which your body uses to understand when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to wake. This works alongside your body’s need to sleep which is governed by two factors:

• How long you have been awake

• The regular timing of your sleep

The timing of your sleep is controlled by something called the circadian body clock located in the depths of your brain. Once your body clock has decided it’s time to rest, it works with other functions in the body to help prepare you for the night of sleep ahead, stopping the various bodily functions associated with being awake. The same goes for when it’s time to wake, where the reverse happens.

Types of Sleep Patterns

So, you’ve learnt about how sleep patterns work. How about we throw all that out the window and create our own?! It’s actually not as bizarre as it sounds. There are many advantages to adopting a different sleeping pattern, although there can be just as many drawbacks. It will take plenty of planning and commitment so you have to be careful and know what you’re doing or you’ll have one heck of a messed up sleep pattern!

Monophasic Sleep Pattern – 1 Sleep Per Day

Monophasic sleep is essentially what most people would call a normal sleeping pattern. A person sleeps for around 8 hours per night, variable per person. It’s the most common sleeping pattern and the one most societies have adopted. Nothing abnormal here.

Biphasic Sleep Pattern – 2 Sleeps Per Day

Biphasic sleep is where a person sleeps twice per day. Most commonly, it consists of a long sleep during the night with a shorter rest during the day. Usually, the naps throughout the day lasts around 20 mins.

Alternatively some people adopt a biphasic sleep pattern by having a much longer nap of around 90 minutes. This works because it gives the body time to complete a full cycle of sleep so you would most likely be in either REM or NREM stage 1 so when it’s time to wake up you would feel naturally awake and refreshed.

Everyman Sleep Pattern

Everyman incorporates a core sleep, usually no longer than 3 hours, giving plenty of time for all the components of NREM and REM sleep to kick in. This is then followed by around three 20 minute naps for refreshment during the day.

Everyman is considered to be one of the easiest, sustainable and flexible polyphasic sleep patterns available. But that’s not to say it is easy! As with any polyphasic sleep pattern, you need a strong amount of dedication and willpower to get through the adjustment period where sleep deprivation is inevitable for the first week or so.

A typical Everyman sleep pattern is a core sleep from 1-4am and 20 minutes naps at 9am, 2pm, and 9pm. These can be adjusted to times that suit you best.

Uberman Sleep Pattern

Uberman makes use of 6 naps no longer than 30 minutes (usually 20 minutes) at regular intervals throughout the day. As a result, you can get the sleep you need in just 3 hours.

Uberman is one of the hardest sleep patterns to implement and it’s also one of the least flexible. if you miss a nap, you’re likely to encounter strong sleep deprivation until your next nap. This is a sleep pattern that really stretches the limits, but it is possible and it has been done.

A typical Uberman sleep pattern is a 20 minute nap at 2am, 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, and 10pm.

Dymaxion Sleep Pattern

Dymaxion sleep is the sleep pattern where you take a 30 minute nap every 6 hours. That’s just 2 hours sleep per night.

How Polyphasic Sleep Patterns Work?

The whole idea of polyphasic sleep patterns isn’t as crazy as it sounds. In theory, they work much more efficiently than a regular monophasic sleep pattern.

Deep sleep is essential for refreshment, but with the regular monophasic sleep pattern, we only spend approximately the first 3 hours in deep sleep. The remaining time is spent in the lighter stages of sleep and REM sleep which is far less effective than deep sleep. If we were able to spend more time in deep sleep, avoiding light sleep and REM, we would be able to spend less time sleeping.

This is exactly what polyphasic sleep patterns aim to do; maximise deep sleep and reduce light sleep so that the amount of time spent asleep is reduced. And since we only enter into deep sleep when we first fall asleep, the idea is to fall asleep more often, hence multiple sleep and wake times.

What’s the Best Sleep Pattern?

There are many advantages to both biphasic and polyphasic sleep patterns. These include:

• Reducing the number of hours spent asleep per day​

• Increase the quality of sleep (more time spent at NREM rather than REM)

• Improved dream recall

• More energy throughout the day

So should everyone shift to polyphasic sleep patterns and reclaim the extra time gained? In the future maybe, but at the moment, people have enough problems with just one sleep/wake time, imagine what it would be like with 6!

Here is a video of a persons experience with using different sleeping patterns:

Hope you guys learnt something from this post! Next time, I will be posting on rice. Bye!