This morning I had my first Uberman “heightened sense” experience. I woke up from my 9:30 am nap utterly filled with energy. I must have gotten some pretty solid REM because I had a couple dreams. I doubt I was functioning above 80%, but it felt like I was at 150%. It’s such a strange feeling to wake up at 10:00 and be overflowing with energy when my entire life I’ve hated mornings and been generally unable to function before noon.
At 3:00 pm, I got really tired so I tried taking a 10 minute nap. I set the alarm to go off in 12 minutes and hit the bed… and it worked. It was just the charge I needed to carry me to my 5:30. I passed the time by making a drawing using white charcoal on black paper. It felt really good to draw again, and it was nice to have the time to crank out a 4-hour work all in one sitting (interrupted briefly by a nap.)
Right now I’m pretty darn tired, but still functional. I went dancing again tonight, so I took my 9:30 pm nap in my friend’s car. It worked surprisingly well. I fell asleep immediately, but the quality of sleep must have not been very good because I didn’t dream and I’m tired now. I wonder if I need to take my naps in quiet, dark, and comfortable spaces in order to get good enough sleep. In the stories I heard of other people doing uberman, they would take naps anywhere, whenever the time hit — even if that was a street corner in broad daylight. I doubt that I’d be able to fall asleep in sunlight.
Today’s the first day I’ve been able to recall dreaming at all, so I’m sure the quality of sleep is getting better. After I have a nap with a dream I get lasting energy that takes me to the next nap, but when I don’t dream I crash again only 2-3 hours later. I’m really hoping that after adjustment I get lasting energy from all my naps. Otherwise I might have to schedule short 10-minute naps to keep myself going.
5 Comments
Francesco! I’m glad your second round with uberman is turning out much better. Are you still eating heavenly amounts of food to keep your body going? Maybe what you eat could have something to do with the crashes. And what about caffeine to keep you up before your next nap?
Yep! I find I eat an extra meal and a half more than usual. I’m staying completely off caffeine. 1) I don’t really need it. 2) caffeine stays in your system for longer than 4 hours and messes up the next nap.
Also glad to hear that Uberman Take-Two is having more success. I think you’re onto something when it comes to scheduling meditation throughout the ‘day’. Lacking any reflection time will burn you out. How long ’till you go back to school?
Sidenote: This site is ballin’, duke. Seriously, the comment link-to-my-website deal is sweet. I also accidentally put in a false email address (no @ sign), and the site gave me a message and shot me back to the Post-a-Comment page without erasing my post. Good work, man. I’m impressed.
Hey Charlie!! great to hear from you.
The email address validation and site linking is all wordpress, I only wrote the site CSS on top of a sandbox theme and hacked and tweaked things around stylistically. Writing an ENTIRE BLOGGING PLATFORM in 3 days would truly be an uber-feat.