I got this pretty interesting idea the other night.
Basically, what I will do is that I will sleep normally and then mark on a graph what I felt like after sleeping for a certain time.
For example, if I tend to wake up fairly alert and with great dream recall after sleeping for 5 hours then I can be fairly sure that I’m normally having a REM period at that time (this will be marked as “REM” on the y-axis and “5” on the x-axis), and then I will just do the same with a lot of other times.
If I experiment with this for a few weeks then I should get a fairly good estimation of what my personal sleep cycle looks like.
I will make it easier for myself by measuring the times from when I go to sleep, since it’s obviously impossible to know exactly when I fall asleep, and I will only count the nights when I fall asleep fairly quickly.
Have you ever done something similar?
It should be especially useful while practicing lucid dreaming, since you can then more easily pinpoint when you have your REM periods.
I like the idea. But I think it’s also important that you have constant sleep pattern. So if you sleep for example 8 hours then go to sleep each and every night at the same time at try to wake up at the same time. The waking part is not that important as going asleep part at least in my opinion…
