Bimaxion

Mechanism

A standard Bimaxion

Bimaxion (often referred to as Bimax) for short, is a polyphasic pattern of the "maxion" family. The typical trait of this family of schedules is the use of 30m naps, or Dymaxion naps. Following from the original Dymaxion sleep schedule, Bimaxion is designed with the intent of creating a fallback schedule after Dymaxion is no longer sustainable (e.g, sickness, more physical activities). Originally mapped out to total only 4h sleep each day by GeneralNguyen, the schedule used to be called "Quadphasic" (4 sleeps per day of 1h each, but more focus on nocturnal sleep and less sleep during the day). It then became Bimaxion with 2 core sleeps of only 1 full cycle each, and 2 30m naps, resulting in the change in naming (2 naps = "bi") to clarify naming.

Because Bimaxion possesses 2 core sleeps that are concentrated around the night hours, it sparks the traits of Dual Core sleep, where one core is always scheduled before midnight to take advantage of the SWS peak, while the other core is around sunrise hours for REM sleep. At face value, Bimaxion coincidentally looks like a shortened DC2 schedule where the core sleeps only have 1 full cycle, and an overall low total sleep. However, at its heart, Bimaxion is often considered "easier Dymaxion", just like how E3 is to Uberman. Bimaxion's distribution of sleeps is made to closely resemble Dymaxion's - one sleep around midnight, another around dawn, late morning/noon and mid/late-afternoon hours. Bimaxion, therefore, is one of the two "-maxion" schedules that theoretically can pave the way for a transition to a Dymaxion adaptation. To make the schedule sustainable, the first core sleep now has to be placed in the SWS peak to get as much quality SWS as possible. The second core will be dedicated to REM sleep, and the naps provide different types of sleep. The first nap, being early in the day, is bound to give a lot of REM sleep, while the second nap can give only NREM2, or potentially some more SWS as the SWS core alone does not provide enough SWS for a regular 90m SWS requirements each day.

30m naps vs 20m naps

Although 30m naps can be placed in any polyphasic schedules, scheduling them outside of non-reduced Biphasic patterns is often heavily discouraged. As such, only the "-maxion" family of schedules capitalizes on 30m naps right from the beginning of the adaptation. Over the years, there have been more discoveries on the pros and cons of a 30m nap compared to the ubiquitous 20m nap.

• The most noticeable difference is that these naps are longer than 20m naps by 10 minutes. It has been concluded that naps beyond 25m (up to any duration below ~90m) will most likely lead sleepers to an SWS wake, following the regular/standard/non-repartitioned progression of vital sleep stages in a certain sleep duration. When adaptation first begins, sleep cycles remain as they are, and in the naps, light sleep (NREM1 and NREM2) will initiate the transition from wake to sleep in the process. After roughly ~25m asleep, SWS, the deepest stage of sleep, will start to enter the nap. Thus, the odds of waking in SWS increase when a 30m nap is scheduled. This is the primary reason that makes 30m naps unpopular because of the requirement of extra willpower to wake from it.

• The longer duration of these naps also potentiate more recuperative effects than a 20m nap would. When sleep is fully repartitioned, a 30m nap may contain a higher percentage of REM sleep, or give some amount of SWS if homeostatic pressure is high enough.

• Together with 20m naps, 30m naps are considered short naps, and their duration makes it easy for them to fit into a normal daily lifestyle. However, a 20m nap may be preferred in the event that the noon breaks do not allow for a 30m nap; all in all, the slightly longer duration is only considered a slight loss of a 30m nap to a 20m nap, but this largely depends on personal lifestyles.

• On a non-reduced Biphasic pattern, 30m naps actually have a lot of viability. The main idea is that most, if not all of SWS has been provided in the main nocturnal core sleep, the nap duration often contains a trace amount of SWS, and there have been a few reports of natural wakes around the 30m mark. It is believed that SWS pressure is very low when sleep is not reduced, and the nocturnal sleep setup is the same as the monophasic core, so for the most part, SWS exerts little effects on wake, making it easier to handle 30m naps (especially if they are a result of a natural awakening). It is also very possible that since sleep pressure is low on non-reduced Biphasic conditions, it may take some more minutes to actually fall asleep in the nap - this immediately reduces the chance for an SWS wake because of the longer sleep onset (and partially turns the nap into a ~20-25m nap instead).

• A 30m nap may be at a disadvantage with the dream recall opportunities, because of the SWS wakes. This suggests that lucid dreaming may not be as strong on a 30m nap than on a regular 20m nap. However, adaptation to Bimaxion or any reduced polyphasic schedule can turn a 30m nap into a huge reservoir for dreaming if the nap is scheduled to be in early daytime hours (dawn to early afternoon). Excluding Pronaps that last for 30m long, the first nap on Bimaxion, for example, can proliferate a lot of REM sleep once SWS repartitioning has been stabilized in the core(s) and/or the second nap.

• On an "-AMAYL" polyphasic schedule (e.g, SEVAMAYL, DUCAMAYL), a 30m nap can be occasionally added to the schedule, replacing the usual 20m naps occasionally, if it is still early in the day. The whole purpose is to simply avoid SWS wakes through this nap extension, without worrying about a great chance to oversleep the nap and turn it into a core. Because of the nap flexibility of these polyphasic schedules, it is expected that sleep onset for nap(s) is longer than on fixed, scheduled nap time on a schedule with the same sleep times everyday. As a result, in conditions that sleepers do not have adequate time to cool down and get ready for a certain nap, they can utilize a 30m nap to buffer the time it takes to fall asleep, while still granting them recovery from the nap. As an "-AMAYL" polyphasic sleeper takes a 30m nap, they can then effectively skip their next nap for the rest of the day, or schedule fewer naps later on to accommodate their commitments, strategically abusing the longer nap duration that a 30m nap offers. For this reason, a 30m nap can be considered a "compound 20m nap".

• In rare cases, some polyphasic sleepers may be more prone to 30m naps as they feel more "natural" than 20m naps. It is unknown as to why and probably comes down to preference and exposure to both nap durations.

With all things considered, on Bimaxion, a very reduced sleep total that causes very intense repartitioning of sleep stages, the Dymaxion naps' behavior do not follow the logic of the regular 30m nap on biphasic sleep or any casual 30m naps taken when needed.

Difficulty Scale

Alongside DC3 and E3 (3h core), Bimaxion is a polyphasic schedule whose total sleep borderlines on the minimum sleep threshold that an average sleeper should be able to adapt to. However, compared to the aforementioned two schedules, Bimaxion is often considered far more difficult to adapt to, because of the SWS wakes that appear near the end of the naps, and the single-cycle core sleeps promote SWS deprivation symptoms and REM deprivation symptoms until an equilibrium of SWS and REM is reached in all the given sleep blocks, even if the wake gap between each sleep does not appear to be as long as on many other polyphasic schedules.

While Bimaxion's sleep distribution looks very similar to that of E3, adaptations are very rare compared to E3 itself. The 20m naps on E3 at least can delay the oversleeps from the rising sleep pressure over the course of even several days, while an awakening from Bimaxion's 30m naps can be utterly devastating with long-lasting sleep inertia in Stage 3. Staying awake during the graveyard hours between each core can become overwhelming with SWS wakes from the first core as part of the segmentation of the cores.

Adaptation Methods & Alternate Variants

So far, all successes reported on this schedule are done cold turkey. However, most of the successful adaptations are from sleep mutants (~5-6h monophasic) or heavy insomniacs (which is the patent cause behind a consistently low amount of vital sleep stage requirements). A gradual adaptation method to a polyphasic schedule with a 30m nap (e.g, DC1 with a 30m nap) may be possible, but it has not been an effective way to adapt to Bimaxion so far. Because of the difficult nature of the 30m naps, cold turkey method is the most recommended means for a successful Bimaxion adaptation.

Up to date, only the default version of Bimaxion is adaptable. Any other possible variants, including swapping the second nap and the first core's positions, or slightly shortening one or both cores down to ~70-80m to squeeze in a bit more wake time will only increase the hostility of the adaptation process. Bimaxion can be extended, with an extra cycle added to the SWS core, but then its higher total sleep causes it to lose the niche of the hefty sleep reduction amount and the extended version is still much harder than DC2. No one has succeeded with Bimaxion-extended, either. At this point, it is simply better to adapt to DC2 or E3-extended instead.

Lifestyle Considerations

Because Bimaxion contains 2 core sleeps to support SWS requirements, it is more flexible than Dymaxion after adaptation, but only to a small extent. The naps may be somewhat flexible, but it is unlikely that the cores will be as flexible. So far, only one sleep mutant has been able to make Bimaxion highly flexible as a pathway to adapt to DUCAMAYL. It is only reasonable that only a low sleep requirement would be able to enjoy a flexible Bimaxion.

Like other schedules with 4 sleep blocks each day, Bimaxion can actually fit into a consistent lifestyle with 9-to-5 work hours as long as a nap around noon is permitted. The short daytime naps provide alertness to help fulfill the remaining vital sleep stages while not being too long to be interrupted by certain events if there is room to schedule them. Compared to DC2, it offers an even more impressive amount of sleep reduction, at the cost of a grueling adaptation and potential inflexibility after adaptation. Light exercises are also forgiving on this schedule thanks to both deep core sleeps, but it is doubtful that the body can recover from a hard workout quickly enough, with normal sleep requirements.

The low total sleep can also deliver a lot of benefits for intense dreaming. Days on Bimaxion have been anecdotally reported to last twice as long as a normal day because of the highly condensed sleep blocks. This is further consolidated by an anecdote of a sleeper, who after adapted to Bimaxion, could still sleep through a whole strong fire alarm system at his apartment complex, and only woke up after a full 90m had passed in the SWS core.

Despite all the promising sleep reduction and the scheduling viability with regards to a standard lifestyle, the SWS core is still considered early for a lot of people, as sleeping at 10 PM is far from popular today, as it was in the preindustrial era. This can effectively nullify a lot of social time in the evening. After adaptation, any events that interrupt or force any of the cores to be skipped can be very destructive to the schedule. One of the biggest motivations that one would adapt to this schedule would be to experiment with 30m (REM) naps or love the distribution of sleeps in a Dymaxion style.