Interesting article about polyphasic sleep over at the Zeology blog. Polyphasic sleep is the practice of sleeping (or napping) multiple times during a 24 hour period instead of getting all required sleep at once (monophasic). Zeology recently discovered a fascinating post on the "Polyphasic Sleep" Google Group and had the author, Oki, produce a guest post: Sleeping ’round the Clock: A Polyphasic Experiment. Of interest to the Zeology blog and qualitative self gurus, Oki used Zeo to transition to a polyphasic sleep pattern and track data.

In summary, Oki writes:

• Took very little adaption. The only tricky part was training myself to go to bed between 8 and 10pm instead of midnight but that only took a few days to get used to. Bare in mind that I’ve been experimenting with polyphasic for the past 2 years so napping comes pretty easy to me.
• Easy to pop in and out of. I have the old problem of a partner who I sleep with fairly regularly. If I join her for the morning nap there isn’t much of a problem because I just try to time my wake up to be similar to hers. If we go to bed for the evening nap, however, it’s a bit awkward and annoying for me to be woken and get active in the middle of the night while she is trying to sleep. For one, I’m a much heavier sleeper than she is. We’ve tried a bunch of things over the past couple years and it just doesn’t work. Cuddling is important to a relationship That’s ok! If I sleep monophasically once or twice a week it doesn’t mess up my schedule at all! I still usually hit the mid-day power nap if this happens. Also, if work or a social engagement absolutely can’t be avoided or worked around at that time I can still do it and just sleep monophasically when I finally get to bed. I really need to get an extra power nap in there before I do whatever is going to keep me out late, however, or I’ll start getting really sleepy by 10pm.
• Don’t have a hard time doing any normal activity at night including computer work or reading.
• No apparent decrease in athletic ability. I’m still able to do vigorous exercise for hours at a time.

I'd be curious to know if any of my readers have tried a polyphasic cycle and whether or not it worked for them. My intuition tells me that monophasic sleep, as an evolved sleep mode, is probably best for us, but I'm open to the possibility that it could work.