Section 6-2: More than monophasic.

A Time lapse camera captures a couples sleep.
-Courtesy anzenbergergallery.com-

Circadian rhythms, the approximately 24 hour day-night cycle that people move through which tends to persist even with the elimination of any external cues. A significant segment of this cycle is a sleeping period, one which usually lasts between 6-9 hours a cycle. The textbook interestingly enough does not make any mention of different sleeping patterns aside from "abnormal" sleep patterns and cultural variations in sleeping arrangements.

There are many different and varying ways one can achieve their required sleep in each circadian cycle. I myself subscribe to one of these sleep patterns not described in the book. While most people around the world sleep in a monophasic sleep cycle (that is, one continuous sleep cycle) I personally use a biphasic sleep cycle. My first rest through the night runs from approximately 11pm-3am, and then I am awake again from 3-5am, during which I almost exclusively partake in leisure activities such as reading, video games and television, (on some days this period is the only leisure time I take) and I then rest again from approximately 5-8am before awaking for my longer waking period. I find this sleep pattern to be much more effective for me than any other sleep pattern I have attempted and according to some research on the area of sleep it is suggested that this is the typical way in which humans used to be accustomed to sleeping.

Monophasic and biphasic are not the only two types of sleep rhythms either, it can be further divided into what is known as polyphasic sleeping... the most frequently talked about in popular culture is the multiple 30-minute nap cycle in which the body becomes accustomed to slipping directly into a deep sleep and through a series of naps throughout the day an individual attains the required 6-8 hours of sleep.