4 Hour Sleep Training – Week 1

Well, one week down. I have to say that the last couple days have been tough. Really tough. I think I’m starting to get a rhythm down though and have had to take some short power naps to recharge. Which I love by the way! Taking a nap is fantastic, and after 20-30 min I still wake up feeling juiced, like a shot in the arm of adrenaline. And I hope this supercharge after the nap is because I’m starting to get into a deeper sleep faster and able to recharge faster.

So with one week down it’s time to test it out and see the progress. So I won’t set an alarm tonight and instead see when my body wakes up. I’m hoping in the range of about 6 hours which would be great after only a week and should mean that I’m getting better rest in the shorter period. Stay tuned!

The most amazing part so far is this:
Despite the times when I feel really tired and dragging, it still becomes a choice. In other words, I can ALWAYS find as much energy and focus as I need, when I really want it. That has become one of the most fun parts about the challenge. Since I’ll find myself dragging and I end up having to check myself. I think something along the lines of, “I know I feel tired, but am I really tired?” “Could I feel energized right now?” and almost always I will just by asking myself the question. Obviously it still takes work to change my physiology and create action, movement and momentum.

This is absolutely incredible to me, because I’ve been here before. When I lost 50 lbs, and got in shape in only 2.5 months. I realized there is a huge difference between the feeling (sensation) that I would get when blood sugar levels were low and the way my mind would take it and interpret it to mean “I’m hungry, I should eat”. In other words a shift happened in my mind.

where before: I would interpret that sensation to mean it’s time to eat (and eat a lot) so that it goes away because I was conditioned to see that hungry feeling as very uncomfortable;

To: if I could give my body what it needs for nutrients, vitamins and necessary ingredients to build and maintain health, I could eat only what I needed for health & fitness. And not so much to “make the feeling go away.” Which would mean that I would often still feel like I needed to eat more, or well… gorge. And once I saw the bigger picture I could make the better choice. That’s the key to all weight loss. It’s so easy. Much easier than popping pills which never works, I tried that before also.

I absolutely believe that everything I’m doing is enhanced by meditation, and interestingly as I mentioned before, meditating itself has been enhanced. I think that my state of mind can enter into a flow state much easier. Any anxiety has really been reduced.

Don’t get me wrong though, it still feels like I’m running a marathon, low on sleep, low on food, and in the dark (at least early in the morning). It takes a ton of concentration and focus on my intention and goal to not feel totally drained, grogy and grumpy. My going is for me is to push the limits of potential and see what I can train my mind/body to do. Just like racing, I some how find the desire to endure the pain in the process because I link so much more pleasure with pushing, testing, and developing training, abilities, potential and performance. As my close friend Matt says, “Hey, I’m trying to get enlightened here!”

About the 4 Hour Sleep Project

4 Hour Sleep Training – Day 6

Note to self: drink less water. Yep, lesson of the day is this. If I going to try and optimize and get the most restful sleep in 4 hours, I need to make sure that I’m not getting up to squirt. That’s a technical term. I didn’t end up sleeping that well because of it. I did still wake up ok after preparing myself to do that (like I talked about yesterday).

But this whole morning I was dragging. Then came mistake #2, drinking coffee. I decided to make up a cup of joe before heading up the mountains to watch the sunrise. Drinking the coffee was fine at first but a few hours later when the caffeine wore off, I was comatose. I couldn’t peel my eyelids open. So I had to take a 30 min nap which really hit the spot. Interesting how little I needed also, because I set my alarm to wake up after 1 hour but got up early. I think I need to get a book on sleeping to have a better idea of what’s going on because it’s so amazing.

Thanks Travis for the support and inspiration on watching the sunrise:

You’ll get used to it, just remember that 55% of the people in the world don’t watch the sun rise daily, what a waste of one of the worlds most beautiful creations and it takes no money, no traveling just an open window and an open eye. Thinkin of you bro.

I couldn’t argue:Moon over the Boulder Flatirons

Boulder Sunrise – overlooking Boulder from Flagstaff Rd.

About My 4 Hour Sleep Training Project

4 Hour Sleep Training – Day 5 point 2

Update-
This morning I was definitely feeling the effects, being sluggish. Especially with it still being dark outside for a few hours. I had enough energy to read and didn’t feel like much else. So what happens when you don’t have energy and you want more? Coffee? Nope. Just bite the bullet and move, change the physiology, build momentum which changes mind and body states.

So I did, I went to Rally Sport and got on a Spinning bike. Besides the fact that I almost instantly felt like a million bucks, I seemed to be in a state of incredible creativity, thought, ideation, it was fantastic! Some brilliant ideas came to me, which I’ll be working on but can’t share quite yet.

It seems that less sleep effects my conscious mind in a positive way by reducing the wasted energy on unnecessary worries, anxieties, perfectionism. But doesn’t seem to effect my unconscious or my body (as long as I don’t let my mind get in the way). Despite the difficulty, I’m actually have a ton of fun with this.

It’s the first day here in Boulder in a while that is actually nice weather outside. Think I’ll go get in some more saddle time.

What would you do if you had an extra 4 hours of daytime all of a sudden?

About my 4 Hour Sleep Project

4 Hour Sleep Training – Day 5

7:17 AM Yesterday was the hardest day yet. After I posted about fantastic Yoga, I started to get a lot of work done and saw my energy start to drop off. But what blew my mind, was how easy and powerful it was to recharge with a quick 15 min of meditation. In the meditation, I hit a point where it felt like I got a shot in the arm of adrenaline and was completely juiced again. It was wild being both the experiencer and the watcher and I couldn’t stop talking about it, as if my friends had any way to truly capture what it was like.

Part of the most amazing things so far has been my ability to even more in tune with my energy, physical and more importantly psychological. It is a tough but very interesting challenge to optimize energy throughout the day and has already taught me a ton.

What do I mean? I can relate it well to a race. Energy management is vital, you have to be able to lay down maximum power at times and then recover, or focus all the energy into a rhythm with little wasted energy, all of which requires energy management.

My level of reading has shot through the roof, with more time and a flowing focused attention, like I’ve talked about a bit already. So, I headed to the library to pick up a stack of some more books Including some on NLP, Dr. Erickson hypnotic techniques, Huna, and FLOW.

Waking up this morning was also pretty tough. But like I said yesterday, there is a huge shift that happens once I make the decision of getting up and actually enjoying it. I think I realized that part of what is making it hard, is that I’m waiting until I wake up to see how I feel and then put myself in the position of having to deal with (change) it then. So, I’m really curious to try and make decision before I go to sleep about how I want to feel when I wake up, and really imprint it. So, I’ll try that tonight.

Makes you wonder, am I Pavlov, or am I the dog?

About My 4 Hour Sleep Training Project

4 Hour Sleep Training – Day 3 Update

It’s about 10 pm right now and I’ve been completely surprised so far. I’ve had more energy, vitality and spunk today that is “normal”. In fact, I rode almost the entire Super Bowl on a trainer. And I still feel good. I know the real adaptation probably hasn’t started to set in but I’ve really been working with my mind to keep it focused and directed.

Other amazing side effects include, feeling more relaxed in a calm and focused mentality and physiology. And, the vision in my right eye has improved, supposedly a stigmatism (?), and while reading at Barnes & Noble trying to decide on a new book, I was more easily able to speed reed. Can’t explain it, but at this point, I like it.

About the 4 Hour Sleep Project

4 Hour Sleep Training – 2 Down 28 To Go

Last night was the second night in my journey to sleep training. I ended up getting 5 hours waking up at 5 am on purpose. It came from my unknowing of the effects of trying to dive completely in from being a 7-9 hour sleeper to 4 hours in one night, so I decided to go with 5 to start.

I feel good and didn’t have any problems waking up. In fact it was better than I expected on the 2nd day as I was up so early and had a great chunck of time to meditate, write, think. All of which seemed to have more of a clarity to it, an uncluttered purity that was in itself refreshing and invigorating.

Yesterday, after my first full day of 4 hours of sleep, I had a big day spinning in the gym for over 2 hours, since there’s still so much snow and it’s friggin cold outside. Interestingly, I found that I had more than enough energy to make it and then some. Today I have more planned and it’s Super Bowl Sunday, so I gotta get my exercising in early. I’m thinking about doing more running early since I can’t bike outside right now, maybe tomorrow since I’m focused on putting in some good saddle time today.

Related:
4 Hour Sleep Training – From Dean Karnazes