In part 1 of this post I described, that I expected on the 4th day I will make it. But when I got to sleep for my 4 a.m. sleep, I slept all the way through to 9 a.m.
Day 5
It worked almost all night, after sticking to my schedule during the day, but I had a long sleep between 4 and 8 am. It was the first time since I started the experiment, that I had a very productive day. I felt relatively fit during my awake phases, which was hardly ever the case in the first 4 days of this experiment.
Due to the fact, that I slept in the past usually about 8-10 hours a day, sleeping 4 times a day for 30 Minutes and once for 4 hours is already a big step, which gives me 2 to 4 additional hours per day, or 1.000 hours a year. This is more than half the time people with a 9 to 5 job on a 5-day working week spend at work!
I am still not used to it, but I want to make it a habit, so I want to go on. I have to do it still consciously and it needs a lot of discipline to lay down on time and get up according to the schedule, even if I still feel tired after my nap.
If it is physically implemented as a habit, what is approximately after 21 days the case, it should become automatic and easy. But if you count each awake phase as a day, you are already at the 4th day done, but it does not feel like that.
1-4-2 deep breathing exercise
After trying different things how to fall asleep quickly, I found that the 1-4-2 deep breath exercise worked the best.
I used the deep breathing exercise in combination with tightening my pelvic floor while imagining the kundalini energy flows up along the backbone into the crown chakra. During deep breathing in, I relaxed my pelvic floor and I tightened it while holding the breath and breathing out. This is a kind of Progressive Muscle Relaxation technique.
Deep breathing exercises help to fall asleep and wake up quickly
Additionally, I kept using a progressive breathing method, by reducing the breathing frequency with each breath. So I extended the number of heartbeats for each breathing phase:
- 1st breath:
- 4 heartbeats of a deep breath in
- 16 heartbeats holding the breath
- 8 heartbeats breathing out
- 2nd breath:
- 5 heartbeats of a deep breath in
- 20 hold
- 10 out
- 3rd: 6-24-12
- 4th: 7-28-14
- 5th: 8-32-16
- 6th: …
I guess you got the pattern?!
Mostly within 5 to 8 deep breaths, I am falling asleep, during the phase in which I hold the breath, waking up again from the respiratory reflex. As soon as that happens, I just continued breathing normally and subconsciously. Then it is only a matter of a second until I am falling asleep. You can use this, of course, also if not on the 2-4 hour sleeping plan, but anytime you got problems to fall asleep.
Doing so I managed to sleep on the ferry, while waiting for public transport, after sunset at the beach bar, and on the sunbed at the pool.
Day 6
I changed the approach to two alarms per sleeping phase and just used one to go to sleep. Too often it was not possible to sleep right away, which always required to readjust the wake-up time. So for the wake-up time, I used a timer, which I set to 30 minutes as soon as I started my sleeping phase, which turned out to be much more flexible.
Breath of fire deep breathing exercise
I kept feeling better during the wake time, and the time to get back to power got a bit shorter. To wake up I tried a Bikram yoga deep breathing exercise called “breath of fire”.
If available jumping in the pool, going for a run and get up to speed with a coffee also helps. Due to the variety of the methods and that it got better in general, I cannot say which method works the best. So just “listen to your breath”, as the yogis used to say.
Day 7
I thought it’s my first day, sticking to the schedule, but then a new challenge appeared. I will keep you posted how I fucked it up …
Further, I will record a video about this breathing pattern and provide you with an mp3-audio file download so that you can also utilize it, even if you are not online.
