It's probably easier if I just copy and paste the relevant info on this from my blog. So far it has happened three times, yesterday 2pm, yesterday 9pm and today 2pm. Here's the info:
Yesterday 2pm:
This is crazy stuff, listen to this: I got into bed at 2pm exactly for a 20 minute nap, but the dog kept whining and pushing the door so I couldn't sleep. After ten minutes I got up and shut him in another room where I couldn't hear him. I reset the alarm for 2:30 so I'd get 20 minutes proper sleep. Well I tried to get to sleep, but instead I went into a sort of hypnotic trance. It was like being asleep (I couldn't move any limbs, but oddly I wasn't bothered by this at all) except I was fully conscious. I know what a hypnotic trance feels lie and this was definately one. Then it finished and I sprang right back into consciousness at... guess what - exactly 2:20pm!
There's some weird shit going on there I'm telling you. The really crazy thing is, I feel really refreshed now, just as if I had actually slept for 20 minutes. Go figure.
Yesterday 9pm:
This is starting to freak me out now - my second nap from 9 to 9:20 was exactly the same as the previous one. I spent ten minutes just trying to get to sleep, then in the second ten minutes I could actually feel myself going to sleep, except I was still conscious. I was lying there one minute waiting for sleep to come, then I thought "ahh here we go" and I felt myself sink into sleep, except I was conscious and knew what was happening. It was like one part of my mind was watching the other part of my mind sleep. I was woken up a tiny bit early at the end of it but I was conscious the whole way through, I didn't actually sleep in the usual way.
Yet I am barely tired at all - the nap where I went into a paralyzed conscious state refreshed me exactly the same amount as a proper sleep nap. It will be interesting to see how I sleep in my three hour core tonight.
I wonder if these hypnotic state naps are just a phase in the transition from monophasic to polyphasic, or whether they will become the norm. Very very odd indeed, I'd love to discuss this with a neuroscientist.
Today 2pm
This is starting to actually annoy me now. I just had a 20 minute "nap". Only it wasn't really a nap. It was the same hypnotic trance phase that I had yesterday afternoon and evening. It followed the same pattern (light trance for ten minutes, then complete awakening, then deeper trance for the next ten minutes).
Remember how the dog made me get up ten minutes through the first one? Well I've regained complete consciousness exactly ten minutes through yesterday 9pm and 2pm today. This is not only weird and freakin' spooky, it's also annoying! I wanna goddamn sleep for twenty minutes, not drift into a trance.
I'll describe the "nap" I just had. There are a number of idintifiable stages which I will go through:
0 Fully conscious and awake
1 Very very light sleep, like you get wen you are trying to go to sleep.
2 I can feel myself sinking into this and losing a little bit of conscious control sometimes I get the random thought trains that I usually get when dropping off to sleep
3 I really have to let go to reach this one, there is quite a bit of random thought involved, I am no longer consciously aware of breathing. My facial muscles and eyelids tend to twitch a bit.
4 This one is interesting. Like the previous stage but slightly more vivid. Most interestingly, I felt my eyes darting around very rapidly in all directions. Could this be REM sleep?
I am pretty lucid throughout all these stages. I can look objectively at my own state of conciousness and say "hey look, I'm doing such and such, that's kinda cool, maybe its like a stage of real sleep." I have a full memory of what happened afterwards. I FEEL like I have full control over my consciousness but I don't really, it's a sort of "I could wake up but I won't" kind of thing, which has exactly the same effect as not waking up at all, or being unable to wake up.
The sleep pattern went like this just now:
01210 - this is ten minutes in - 0123234210
I only hit 4 for a very brief period of time. My theory on this extremely weird phenomenon is that I AM actually sleeping, but whereas normally you have no memory of it, the change to polyphasic sleep pattern has shocked my brain into recording the memory of me sleeping, whereas normally this is not recorded.
Each one of my "hypnotic naps" has led to me reaching a deeper level on unconsciousness each time. This is very very interesting, because if it carries on getting deeper then sooner or later I may hit real REM sleep and that could lead to some serious lucid dreaming. It's odd that this morning I slept in my nap like a baby, just like yesterday, but the afternoon nap was a lucid hypnotic one.
This is kind of annoying, I'd much prefer to just straight sleep, but it is very interesting, and I am doing this thing in the name of science so I will record the results of my next "nap" here for people to see.
Has anybody else experienced any of this extremely weird type of sleep? The crazy thing is, I do feel quite refreshed right after I've "woken up" from the weird hypnotic type of sleep. This is what leads me to believe that it actually is sleep, just more lucid sleep than usual. I'd love to heare what people think about this, I am as freaked out about it as anyone.
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