Use it in good health:

First, close your eyes.

Second, either imagine you are doing this (and if you can please do) hold out your hands palms up.

Third, imagine that the activity of your verbal inner voice (the one that you will be using to actually talk yourself through this process and also the same one that says unkind things when you really want to say them out loud) is represented by a light. Today I was using a candle light image to represent the activity; sometimes it was red, sometimes orange and sometimes yellow. By “activity” I mean that if you have a stereo with an equalizer and when music plays the lights are very active, I mean active in this way. The more noise or verbal activity of your inner voice, the more that this light flickers in your palm. Use your inner voice in a constructive way and announce to yourself what you are monitoring. “Right hand.” “Left hand.” “Right hand.” “Left hand.”

Fourth, imagine that the sensations you feel are represented by a flicker in your left hand. The idea is to actually FEEL with your skin, feel how hungry you are, feel any pain in your body, feel any discomfort, feel any kind of sensation that you can feel. Feel your own breath. Feel your own weight. Tense up your feet and relax and FEEL that tensing and FEEL that relief. Work your way from the bottom of your feet up through tensing your legs, torso, arms and up to your scalp. Today I was imagining the the flickering to be a blue candle flame.

Fifth, as you work your way up your body in the fourth step, check in with your inner voice and watch the activity for both as you go. Try to do these alternately. Right hand, left hand, right hand, etc. Announce these to yourself as mentioned before. Watch the activity with your mind’s eye but feel the sensations and watch the activity in both palms.

Sixth, as you watch the activity light in one hand, you also watch the other one. You will notice that as you work your way up and announce what you are monitoring, your mind will be calmer. At a point, you will only hear your own inner voice and your body will be floating without sensation. At that point, you tell that voice to stop. If you hear anything again, you just watch your palms in your mind’s eye. Watch that activity until it dies out like a fire that has no more fuel to burn.

I’ve been doing this for a year now, so I actually don’t have to hold out my palms and I was able to do it curled up for sleep.

I’m delighted to share this with you.

Enjoy.

I’ve been meaning to share that I have heard about someone who used polyphasic sleeping although I don’t know what their schedule was, but I do know that they were the captain of the USS Carl Vinson and that my friend, who was in the Marines with me, shared about how he used to do these catnaps but he was always on his post. I think it’d be great if the US Navy did more research on polyphasic sleep because if a ship’s captain can do it, then it would dramatically reduce the number of people needed to do one job and would also reduce the vulnerability of a fighting force if it is awake all day and only napping occasionally. At night, a military installatoin goes dark while some people stay up on 3rd shift watching the base. What if they could all be awake all day and napping occasionally instead? What could they get done with fewer people?

Anyway, the reason I mention this is that the captain of the ship may or may not have used a clock to wake up, which is basically what many polyphasic sleepers do without. They have trained their minds to wake up after a short rest period which is pretty cool.

But is what I am doing the same thing? Because I’m using technology to do this, does it make it any less useful or valuable?

Well, you would have to be a Luddite to believe that. You’re using the internet right now to read this, so your life must in some way be improved by technology, even if it is for pure entertainment alone. If you use Microsoft Windows or Apple OS, then you probably use programs such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and any other host of software to get stuff done. If you use anti-virus software, then this is proof that you want to protect your ability to get stuff done.

Do you drive a car? Take pictures? Listen to radio, watch movies or have a cellphone? Do…you…use…electricity…?

The question is really not “Does using technology compromise us as human beings?” but instead is “At what point does the use of technology not let us be independent of technology?”

I think that people who are not in some Third World country without electricity know the difference between life without technology and with and they prefer with. Even homeless people use the bus to get across town.

But then there are the Amish, right? And Lord knows what a soft spot I have for them in my heart after heaing the incredible display of Christian principles at the Amish school shooting in 2006. Not only does it make me glad to call myself a Christian, but it also makes me question whether or not I should become Amish and abandon technology. They are clearly doing something right.

And yet I know that there is detriment in excess, but I can’t say that having more time can be an ill of excess. The only concern that I have is for my own health. However, I run at least three times a week, I am eating a largely raw food diet and my only serious nutritional flaws are caffeine and sharing a bottle of wine with my wife at least one day a week (with the intent to only have it one day a week) and perhaps the monthly or bi-monthly fast food visit. I’m certainly not at the right weight as I am technically overweight but not obese; however, I’m tracking my progress to lose the extra weight using our new Nintendo Wii.

But wait a second…

I’m using the Wii to track my weight loss and my wife uses it for exercise (as do I on occasion).

When I go running, I use an interval timer on my Timex Ironman watch.

This means that I am not only using technology to get less sleep, but I am also using technology to improve my health.

Based on everything that I have read, I can’t see that getting less sleep is as much of a problem as not exercising, so I think I’m going to be just fine doing this.

Thanks for listening.

Just for the record, I am an inventor in addition to the other things that I do for a living. I’ve got this amazing board game that I created and I have a prototype; what makes it a patentable invention is that the board game design is unlike any other. It costs between $5,000 and $10,000 to get the patent done and about that much to get the first run of production made, so one of my reasons for doing this is so that I can get more done at night so that I can focus on that project and some other projects as well.

So the really nice creative boost that I got was when I was putting together my daughter’s lunch for school. She likes Mac N Cheese, but it’s not my first choice to give her for school (and I would only buy the organic version). One of the reasons it’s not my first choice is that it’s got no protein. So, I got the idea that if I boiled an egg, chopped the egg whites to be the same size as a macaroni noodle and mixed it in, she shouldn’t really think that it’s not good to eat.

Well, we did hear that she didn’t eat much lunch, so I don’t know if it worked, but I love the idea and there are other things here and there where my creativity came out to play.