The Uberman Series Day 3
I transitioned into the third day with ample curiosity, which lasted till the morning. I read a lot about the experiment I am doing and boy, did I get so many reminders that this is going to be insanely difficult—given that I am more or less a beginner. How there are countless bloggers like me out there who began as strongly as I did but they could go nowhere, they never made it through the series, and rightfully so. Their unfinished blogs on the subject serve like tombstones along the way, warning anyone treading the same path to head back while they still can. The Uberman routine is quite advance and you require a lot of skills you have to acquire first by adapting to simpler routines. What I am doing here is comparable to suicide. However, no matter how relatively unscathed I feel right now, I am vulnerable to this routine and can crumble and get blown by winds after winds like sawdust. Things may seem easy right now because they are, but won't necessarily be tomorrow.
After reading some more anecdotal stories, I learned that it typically takes your body between three to four days to switch predominantly over to REM to try and recover it. Simply put, the naps are coloured with dreams during this period. And to tell you, I had my first REM nap today—It was the 12 pm nap. I could not recall the dream down to its details; it felt more like recalling unrelated faint memories after I had woken up. Also, today's 4 am nap and the 8 am nap went well. I did not feel inoperable or fatigued or zombie-like as I previously did and I also had no issues with sticking to the nap times. The strangest experience of the day occurred during my 8 pm nap, the last of the day. Generally, when I nap I am not awake through them, consciously waiting for my alarm to go off or anxiously pondering over falling asleep. To me, naps feel more like laying down and wanting to rest instead of wanting to sleep. I learned from my previous attempt at the Uberman that the more you approach sleeping with the context of sleeping, the more unlikely you are to actually fall asleep whereas approaching it as if you were to rest or relax for a while takes no time to wipe me mentally off this world.
For a couple of minutes, after I lay down to 'rest', several thoughts whiz through my head while I choose to focus on my breath. The next thing I always recall is pushing myself up from the bed and grabbing my phone to turn the alarm off, and many times I will even wake up moments before the alarm goes off. But the naps never feel 20 minutes long, they always perceptually seem to feel longer than that. So when today I got up naturally, as usual, I assumed that time was up. The sleep also felt longer than it should, which reassured me further. The moment I checked my phone, though, I saw that barely five minutes had passed. At that time, I felt puzzled but chose to go back to my sleep and completed the remaining time. I had read that the SWS stage of sleep distorts your notion of time and perhaps that is what happened. I had a short SWS stage, which felt lengthy and convinced my habit-ridden careful self to wake up just in case. I did not have any dream so it definitely wasn't a REM stage. I'm sure I will have the REMs in a day or two—their requirement hasn't been met yet.
Post this nap, I felt fresh for a while but soon began feeling suboptimal. I felt a little sleep deprived. I was bored and somewhat dazed. I could feel that my actions slowed down as if a slow-motion potion was used on me. I felt like that for much of the latter part of the night, leading me to believe that I was to expect some zombie-like and action-packed night to make it through. Only time will tell now.
Also, excuse me if you find any errors in the grammar, tenses or anything else. I am writing these at night and especially during this one, I am having a hard time deciding if I've worded and framed certain sentences properly, or if my writing is cohesive and if you are even able to follow.
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