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

Polyphasic sleep schedule Day Eight

I made it through the doubts and drama of this morning and am happy to report I've been feeling much better since my 10am nap earlier today. I spent a few hours conducting some more online research and found a lot of polyphasers found that extra bump when they least expected it, and I was warned it could last a couple of days, or even resurface again at some point in the future. But it does seem fairly common, so I'm content to work with it as best I can and keep forging ahead.

The rest of today has been much more bearable, and whilst I'm still a little drowsy even now, it's not that desperate, frantic fight against sleep that I had earlier. Of course, it's not yet midnight, and I usually hit my low spot after the 2am nap, so we'll see how I go! I plan to counter attack with cold showers, long walks under the spectacular starry sky I'm fortunate to be under tonight, and maybe another cooking experiment.

I thought I'd write a little bit more about dreams again. Since starting this schedule, I've noticed my ability to recall dreams has hit a success rate of nearly 100 percent, which is virtually every nap I take. This is remarkable for someone who rarely ever remembered his dreams, I'd guess maybe five to ten percent of the time if that. Obviously it makes sense if I'm waking up during REM sleep, but it's still so exciting to have this whole dream world open up to me.

I've had a couple of nightmares (my nightmares are often nothing like the horror films I love to watch, but usually involve very normal circumstances with the horrible twist of having loved ones die or something similar), and a couple of very strange dreams where I'm connecting with animals. I had a dream yesterday where I was in a basement somewhere with a large horse that couldn't seem to find the ramp leading up and out. He panicked to the point of squashing me against a wall, slowly but surely squeezing the life out of me. I put my hands up on his neck and shoulders and patted him, whispering, "It's okay, you're okay, calm down, you're okay." He finally quietened, then very clearly I heard a voice inside my head that said, "Excellent, I've never been able to connect to a human like that before," then the horse turned and calmly walked up the ramp and left.

Something that I'm finding really strange is the sense of smell coming in to my dreams. In that last dream, I could smell the horse so strongly as he pressed me into the wall. In my 6pm nap this evening I dreamed that the people who live here were having a huge party in one block of motel rooms, and when I poked my head in, I was overwhelmed with the odour of cigarettes, alcohol and that musty, seedy party smell so many parties emit. This was such a throwback to the parties that used to occur frequently in the share house I rented in Newtown with some friends, and the smell was so strong I was almost shocked into waking.

Angie's sister does a lot of study into this kind of thing, so I think I'll hit her up and see what her thoughts are. Perhaps I can be a study subject for her! At any rate, I'll post any information I find about it.

Polyphasic sleep schedule Day Two

I thought I knew what tired felt like.

I've been really tired many times in my life, especially whilst on tour. I could tell you some excruciating stories about driving under the slumber influence, and stories about sleeping under the merch desk as punk bands sound checked not ten metres away. But I don't think I ever knew real tired until today.

I was feeling okay, especially after my 10am nap. That 10am nap is my best friend at the moment. I woke from that one feeling on top of the world. But the 2pm nap went all strange, and I spiralled downhill faster than a drunken skier. This is what happened.

I was down outside the office talking to Angie. Matt was just pulling out to go do a shop. I thought this was odd because I was pretty sure I'd seen him leave earlier in the day. Perhaps he had been doing something else. Anyway, a lady drove in and got out of her car. She looked after Matt, perplexed, and asked me if he was the one she had to speak to. I told her that Angie and I worked here too. She asked for a room for the night, and I told her Angie could help (it was, after all, my day off). Angie spoke under her breath and told me she was really busy with something, and I replied that I couldn't do it as it was time for my nap. She smiled and said not to worry, she'd take care of it.

Just then, all hell broke loose. A huge blaring sound errupted in the air, and I woke as I fell off the couch. You see, none of this had happened, although the dream felt more real than almost any dream I've had. I could have sworn I was awake, but the screaming alarm clock, the time and my body sprawled on the floor of the library said otherwise. I mention this not because it was odd to dream of such a mundane scenario, but that I absolutely believed I was awake. I don't tend to remember my dreams too much, and I think I usually have an inkling that I'm dreaming when I do. Too much weird stuff usually goes on (like the dream I had the other night with an elderly lady chasing me and my arms growing into lengthy, ape-like apendages to assist my escape...but that's for another time). This was so vivid and realistic that it took me a good ten minutes after waking to convince myself I was now actually awake and not the other way around.

My afternoon very quickly descended into the zombie-like state I've read so much about and had started, optimistically, believing might pass me by. At one point I actually felt my jaw hanging down a few inches lower than it should be. Angie has been hugely entertained by all this, taking every opportunity to come and laugh at  me. On the plus side, she's been around a lot to ensure I don't just curl up into a ball somewhere and fall asleep, which has been one hell of a strong urge to fight. I finished my 2am nap a little while back and have been feeling almost human after that one, although I can feel the weariness settling in again as I type now. Two and a bit more hours to the next nap though...

So, some things I've realised in the last two days:

1. I haven't been yawning, until this afternoon. Normally when I'm tired I yawn like the television demon in Aphex Twin's Come To Daddy clip, but not this week (until this afternoon). I just find this interesting.
2. I'm still mostly waking up before the alarm goes off (with the notable exception of my parallel universe experience this afternoon).
3. Most of the time I wake before the alarm, it's about 15 minutes or so into the nap, which means I'm probably averaging close to an hour and a half's sleep each day right now.
4. This is probably a good thing because it's really bloody hard to sync up a collection of analogue alarm clocks.
5. I really need to cut back the activity. I've stopped running in the morning, but I'm still walking up the big hill for a round loop of close to 8km each day, and with the added activity of all the walking I do simply to keep moving and stay awake, I'm getting quite tired. I had to stop halfway down the hill tonight on a walk with Angie and sit down (terribly close to sleeping on the road). I also stopped my yoga session after about ten minutes because I knew if I didn't I would fall asleep, probably in a position that I would regret after a few hours of sleeping in it.
6. I've found myself drinking so much water I could be mounted in the herb garden and used as an ornamental fountain. I'm not sure that this is a conscious choice - either my body needs the fluids or it's another reactive mechanism in response to the tiredness.

I thought there were a few others but everything's a little cloudy right now. I can feel that sleep net tighten as I type, pulling my eyelids down and constricting my muscles. The best way I've found to deal with it is to try to view it exactly as I asked for - as an experiment to see what happens. If I start feeling sorry for myself then the tiredness feeds off that with rapacious hunger. If I remember to keep breathing deeply and try to watch it all with a curious eye then it doesn't feel quite so bad. And besides, there's every chance that this will be the hardest day. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Oh, that's right, there is no tomorrow for me anymore. We'll see what the next waking period brings.