Dream analysis

I've been talking with Angie's sister Jaclyn Cowen, who studies sleep and sleep-related phenomena (sorry Jaclyn, I don't know what you officially call your studies!). I specifically told her about the polyphasic experiment, the smells I've noticed in a few dreams, and the dream about the horse that I had (see Polyphasic sleep schedule Day Eight). She was kind enough to send me this analysis, and even kinder to let me post it on here. So, here it is!

Hey Craig!!!

Thanks for sharing that with me. Wow!! I just read most of your blog entries and I am very impressed with your stamina!!! I also found the entries highly amusing especially the chat you had with your brain!!

I would like to study your entries in a more detailed way, unfortunately I only have time for a quick take on what I think is happening. Some of what I say you may or may not already know.

The reason why you are feeling like a zombie many times after awakening is because you are coming out of delta phase sleep which is the deepest sleep phase of all. Usually a person will travel from delta at the beginning of a normal nights sleep and then move mostly through the other lighter phases of sleep for the remainder of the night. Because you are only sleeping for a short period, you are still in delta sleep after awakening. It would be interesting to know how your brain is responding when moving through the sleep cycles in such a short period of time. However, those times you are dreaming means you would have entered the lighter phases of sleep. You said you seem to feel ok after the morning nap so maybe you are coming out of those deeper phases of sleep more quickly??

When the body is put through extreme sleep deprivation it also tries to recuperate itself through disconnecting the astral body from the physical body. This is in an attempt to more easily absorb natural energy from the environment and makes you more prone to having out of body experiences. Some of those dreams you had, include aspects which suggest it might be an out of body experience. However due to your state of mind being affected by severe sleep deprivation most likely there would have been much interference from your altered perceptions, resulting in an experience that was a mixture of both hallucinatory dream images interspersed with real-time projective events.

Three aspects of your experience showed that it may have been an out of body experience, including:

1. Heightened sense of smell which occurs when using the more finely tuned senses of the astral body.
2. Telepathy or transmitted thoughts in which you heard the horse speak to you.
3. Your normal reactions to the event in which you spoke to the horse and tried to calm it down.

Of course having interacted with horses recently, as expressed in your blog entries, it seems you have established a rapport with these animals which may have been why you had the experience. You may have been communicating with a horse or your imagination may have led you to believe you were communicating with a horse. Nevertheless, as there was telepathy involved and you had normal reactions to the situation, of trying to calm the horse down, makes me think that some type of projection took place.

I hope you have more interesting experiences and I look forward to reading your future blog entries!!!

All the best and keep me posted!!

Love Jaclyn