NREM, more realistic than REM?

Quest for Lucidity
1

I’d like to post this in the lucid laboratory but I don’t know what you have to do to become a “researcher”…

Do you all find that your NREM dreams (how we establish when they are, and how we remember them I do not know) seem to be more derived in realism than your REM dreams?

I have developed a theory:
NREM tends to be related to learning, it tends to involve your mind going over familiar processes, processes it is trying to learn and integrate it, memories of the day… common activities, etc…

Therefore the parts of the mind active during NREM are firmly rooted in “real world” realism…

However once we shift into REM, there is no need for those parts to be active anymore, they already got their excercise… hence, the non-logical craziness of dreams.

But we do dream during NREM… most assuredly… the question is how do we get lucid in those dreams, and how do we remember them?

I have had a few in which I think given the span I was asleep for, that I was in lucid in NREM.

The best example I can give is when I tried to stay awake until I hit SP… well… of coures that fell apart when the HI showed up, and I lost focus… but I immediately found myself in a lucid dream of my room.

Now… I know you can be lucid during the first REM stage, sure… never really happens for me… but I do believe that it can, under normal circumstances, take a few hours to reach the first REM stage, as you have to go through all other cycles first?

Well at any rate… I was in my bed, a common dream theme… and there was a girl there… it started out much like a deepening of HI would start out, she was by my head, talking to me… doing weird things, blowing her clarinet in my ear… then we were playing guitar, yet the domintant feature of this portion was HER playing, not me…I had a bit of a difficulty in coordination…

Then she was sleeping next to me… then I wanted to do it with her… i started halfway waking and whatnot… but managed to stay in/reenter… still… not really making much use of my body at all… we had sex, and no, it wasn’t particularly realistic… but it lasted a long time and I lucidly worked on trying to make it real based upon what little knowledge I have of it… and it started working.

I remember, at the time, thinking “this has to be an NREM dream” … now I’ll conceede the sex wasn’t very real, how can it be for a virgin, though? But everything else ultimately was… the properties of my guitar, though hard to play… I thought of a song and eventually my fingers were drawn to the correct and going automaticaly, almost beyond control (as if revisiting a memory of how to play it)… her clarinet playing… the notes matched her fingering as far as I could discern… she was playing Gs and As mostly… I think she even named the notes she was about to play…

It just did not have the characteristics of a normal dream.

  1. it was rooted in a theme of sleeping/immobility
    -----we are not paralyzed during NREM, are we? Thus most NREM is either you remote viewing something like a movie (and this is why we jolt awake if sudden movement becomes involved?) or … my theory: it involves simply lying prone, doing something.

  2. increased realism in things I am familiar with, with little room for abstract qualities.

  3. normal unrealism in unfamiliar abilities… however better ease at controlling realism by revisiting memories (in this case, of porn) than available in normal dreaming.

  4. trying to have sex and trying to move seemed to have triggered the dream to fall apart… most of it seemed to be prone and inactive for a while… I did eventually do some moving… but the moving was still related to bed so who knows, if I was acting it out [how embarrasing] then it wouldn’t have put me in much danger…

  5. the advent of my friend suddenly appearing made me think “i have entered REM” and he STRONGLY wanted me to abort this scene and interact with him, which curtailed into moving into an abstract game room… out of the blue, from seemingly nowhere…

#5 suggests that upon entering REM, something is taken to tell the dreamer, providing he is in a first person dream “HEY, okay, get up, lets get going, I have various symbolic stuff I want to communicate to you!”

the lack of realism and logic (why does he appear? Why does he not care that I’m with a woman? Why does he so firmly want me to leave?) seems to really have signaled at least a beginning of REM, though I could have entered it before then… maybe.

I don’t know.

I know that “remote viewing” seems to just scream NREM to me… and it is characteristic of HI… and it is characteristic of what happens when an REM dream starts ending but you don’t immediately wake up…

I know that in any NREM dreams in which you are moving, they tend to result in you waking up…

I know that large portions of my dreams involve my sleeping, lying down, but still interacting with a dream envrionment, but for some reason do not want to get up (i am tired) or cannot get up (but it is NOT the same feeling as paralysis, at all)… then eventually they pick up pace and I go get up, as if I had just “woken up” (into a dream, though I’d been in one forever) and then I can move around freely.

I just think that perhaps in an NREM dream, you are going to be likely to dream about sleeping… I know they say this is true for REM, since you ARE sleeping afterall… but the point is, during REM, you shouldn’t be aware of your body much at all, since it is paralyzed and all sensory information it receives is largely filtered out…

while drifting into NREM you can stay fully aware of your body for a long time.

I’m not sure about this… but I think a majority of my dreams about sleeping occur during periods of NREM before reintering REM, and rather than being in nothingness, given my lucid and observant nature, I want to see a continuity of the dream theme, hence me sometimes spontaneously feeling tired and needed to “sleep” inside a dream, then I’ll get up and be able to resume it for normal.

I think these periods of “sleep” or bed ridden activity indicate going into NREM, as to prevent us from acting out our dreams…

But I’m not really sure, becuase sometimes given the time that I think it is, and being in a first sleep cycle, I feel like I’m not in REM, but I’m still moving around… maybe when you get deep enough (delta?) you can move?

I wonder if there is any reasearch on this… it’s just recently been acknowladged that yes, you can dream during NREM… so… I wonder if there is any research done with lucid dreamers on what they experience during NREM…?

I know that people can have OBEs while still awake and that they don’t normally ever act out what they are experiencing… so this would suggest that you don’t necessarily have to be paralyzed to have an active first person dream.

It is a general idea/goal of mine to try and really establish whether I’m in NREM or not so that I can see if the NREM environment is indeed much more realistic and logical (as if in the real world) than an REM dream.

if so I’d dare say for many different applications, NREM dreams could prove better than REM dreams, especially since seratonin is supposed to be produced in NREM, while not in REM (meaning if you force yourself to stay in REM too much while lucid you could not get enough seratonin produced in a night)

Hm.
I need an EEG.

2

You need to click on rainbow face on the top menu that says “Usergroups”. Then choose “Researchers” and click on “Join” or “Subscribe” or something (I don’t know, I’m already one). If there’s no such button, PM Atheist, group moderator.

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hey, i think that this aea is better for this disc, the lab is for experiments and afterreading your post i didnt find out what you would wnat other dreamers to do, do you mean that you want us to try adn find out if non rem and rem dreams are the same?

From past research of my own in nonrem where i did become lucid. Well i was lucid in the rem dream and slipped into rem and retained consciousness, and after that entered a rem period and regained lucidity.

Now i have coped a bit of slack over that comment, some people saying that it can not be done, that i was dreaming in rem and then dreamed of being in non rem and then back into rem again, granted that this may be a cause, but is just as unlikly that i retained consciousness through rem and non rem.

what i found was that the rem period was much more active then the nonre period, in the state that there was a lot more happening. the dream was just a clear, but there was a difrent feeling to go with the drea, more slow easy going, more peaceful.

I didnt move around much at all, all of my movment was slow and well i just didnt want to move, it was as if too uch activity was…wrong???. i know that there was a massive lack of DC, there were a few, but didnt say much and my dreams always have alot of people in them .

when i would say that non rem was ending the dream pace appeared to pick up, there seemed to be a dream feeling of beeing more awake compared to being… sleepy, druged up, dozey, i was more alert now. DC appeared, the dream changed and i was once again aware that i was dreaming. during nonrem i was not lucid, although i was aware that the state was not an awake state.

Yes we do dream in non rem, these dreams are just harder to remeber and they are less active. they are more like a doccumentory then a action film of rem sleep. I cant remember who said that maybe laberge, not sure.

Now i have a lot of articles that i got from the lucidity inst about this topic and from all around the place, over the next few days i will read them and see what i can see about it.

From memory we dream in the beta stage of sleep, during this stage our brain waves are extremly close to the brain waves of being awake, infact if you didnt know that the person was dreaming then you would say they were inded awake. In this stage, as you know the eyes move left and right and up and down, rapid eye movment, hence the name of the stage of sleep.

In nonre sleep, as implyed by the name, the yes do not move…alot. i am pretty sure that indeed they do still move, just little bits, not very often. here in this stage , when patients have been woke up they have reported very fuzzy recall of dreams if any at all, and how they were very… non active :happy:

well that is a little harder to think about. if we were lucid then we would be moving our eyes around a lot right, our mind still vrey active, this may cause problems and force us to stay in rem. our body needs nonre sleep just as much as it does rem sleep. in the 4th stage of sleep delta sleep, our brain waves our slower, we can even appear dead, and not much wakes us up in this state, if we do awake it can take us a long time to get fully awake.

our brain needs these delta waves, for what i dont know, there are some suggestions that indeed it is used for sorting out memory, or used to repair dammaged brain cells that the active stages cause, or the stage where growth hormones are released etc. there is no real answer there yet, and if anyone does know the real answer with the evidence to back it up please let me know.

so if we were acheiveing lucidity in these stages i think we would be causing damage to our selves as we wwould be stoping our selves from reaching delta waves, and whats the other theta? i have a compleate char around here somewhere. yer theta. i think we need them.

well taht bout does it for e i htink i just lost my self :razz:

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What’s NREM? Cos knowing that would give me an insentive to read all of that… :wink:

5

non-REM.

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gr8 work r3moot very helpful lol.

and well it was i spose lol.

it is a stage of sleep where you are not in Rem, which is rapid eye movement, as that little cursor over things says…

in non-rem you are ment to have less active dreams, and your eyes well dont move so much :happy:.

in non-rem sleep you enter the states in your brain waves like Theta and Delta, which are very slow brain waves, like the state you reach when in med.

7

science.howstuffworks.com/sleep.htm
i’m pretty sure you enter REM with theta… and that you cannot be asleep during beta, as that is our waking brainwave state.

but… it says you are awake but relaxed during alpha… which means that when i do my meditation I must be on the borderline of alpha/theta… which means that when a person falls asleep, shouldn’t they go IMMEDIATELY into a dream? Becuase I mean why else do we get images and semi-dreams while falling asleep?

But does that equate REM dreaming or NREM dreaming? Hmm…

Last night I had a dream about watching my friend play video games, and I was very very tired and could hardly pay attention, he wanted me to play (probably because I was on the verge of gaining a tiny bit of lucidity and was wondering why I wasn’t allowed to play) and I was like “man i’d like to, but I’m really tired, I can hardly move… I’ll probably be asleep soon” and then I looked a bed next to me and struggled to just try and touch it with my hand.

I think that must’ve been an NREM dream… it wasn’t immediately after falling asleep though I don’t think, it felt like an hour or two into it… which would say it might’ve been REM… but…

My sleep cycles are really screwed up… it could’ve started REM and faded into NREM.

8

Keep in mind that REM doesnt have to start regularly like the books say.
Great part of our dreams takes place during REMs but its proven we can also dream in NonREM periods
REM has its own ways- when it starts depends on many factors ,mainly on how much are u in a sleep debt:)

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yes i think that is called rem rebound isnt it? where your brain tryes to catch up to the rem period that it missed. we did a study on this in psych, cool stuff conisdering it was my zone.

I swear we dont dream in theta, somthing is yelling at me, when i get back home this arvo and not at school i am gonna look this up, if i am wrong well i am wrong.

I dont know Holy reality, i know there is one way taht you can be sure, go and get a nova dreamer or somthing that will record the time that you are in rem, like some sort of mask that will tell you on graph when your rem periods were. i know there are a few of these devices around, might cost a bit tho, then when you think that you are in nonrem wake your self up and take a look at the output… that would give you a good answer

10

I have experienced many LDs over NREM, but I’m not dreaming in NREM. What usually happens is that I have been lucid an amazing amount of time and things start slowly turning to black, then black. Shortly I can start visualizing my hands and rub them together and go back into the LD when I reach REM again. I think one of the reason that dreams take such wild turns is they span NREM.

I have also had experiences of becoming lucid when leaving NREM and entering REM. I always feel drugged, and can barely move. Eventually I start to gain control and over come the drugged feeling. I know this goes form NREM to REM, because the scene goes from black directly into a dream with the DP(dream paralysis… hah).

I have had some dreams over NREM, and it is similar to how holy reality describes it. I feel really tired and am not able to interact much. Another involved me seeing blur and thinking I was on some drug for a long period of time, which then was lifted and I entered a dream.

One comment on how holy reality says that he feels NREM is more based in reality. When I go from NREM into the DP and then LD I am usually in a VERY familiar dream scene, maybe even some place I had been that day. I can’t argue one way or the other about your thinking etc in NREM, because my experiences with NREM have been blackness followed by DP and then dreams. Like I said though, my periods of DP are usually more closely related to likely and daily events, and usualy lead to realistic not far out dream sequences.

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thanks for the replies toadstool

i really think that if somehow we got over the problem of the drugged/lethargicness… that NREM dreams could be the ideal LD envrionment…

I suppose I’ll in the near future try and look up what parts of the brain are active during NREM vs REM… because definitely if the logic centers and memory centers are going crazy during nREM, I’d see that as definite potential to harness a VERY realistic lucid dream.

It would also explains why you can often times read hypnagogic images (like seeing a news ticker flash by)…

In fact that happened a night or so ago… I bet that’s how remote viewers maintain their accuracy that they do?

Hmmm… I should take a class on remote viewing, that would be great and might help me with this falling asleep problem of mine.

But at least so far I like that we all at least have the drugged or sleepy or inactive themes in our NREM dreams… this makes me feel better about my sleep habits becuase I used to think I never had nREM becuase I’d always constantly be dreaming, but in fact when I’m like that a huge portion of the dreams just inovlve me dreaming about being in bed…

So… that would mean that my sleep is fairly normal, hopefully…!

I guess forcing yourself lucid from an NREM into an REM might cause some chemical imbalance problems for a while until you go into a rebound? Hmm…

I’d love to get a nova dreamer, not for the sake of it making me lucid (though if I could fine tune it to send me signals during NREM that would be spiffy) but for having a cheap EEG at my services… does it really log brainwave activity? or JUST REM cycles?

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that is what i wanted it for as well Holy, i think i might go and and buy it now just for it i have already given it a lot of thought, still. the last time i tryed to get one, it was over the net and when i could get it in person i never heard a responce back…

anyway.

correct me if i am wrong but ld are ussaly very active right? by becomming lucid i belive that you will be forcing a state of REM. thus denying your self of non rem., keeping your brainwaves up in the high range like awake, not letting your self reach delta. I have a major feeling that this will cause problems. just a gut feeling i have no research on this.

Oh. the nova dream just records REM periods, as far as i am aware it doesnt do brain waves. i think the dream light did, but they dont sell that anymore. But seeing that i do not own one, i can not answer that to the letter. You could always ask them?

from waht i have been reading it seems that you are focusing on remote viewing, or at least the possibilty of it during non rem and this is a good idea, i mean sure the brain is relaxed like in med no out side influnces, and i do agree with you there

but as for the fact or it being the best lding places. well that i am finding hard to understand, why is it?

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well… here I’m thinking that you CAN be somewhat active in NREM… it might force REM… but I mean, wouldn’t it then be a very abrupt transition.

I want to be lucid in NREM becuase I do think it tends to promote realism, being able to read, etc… but I reall don’t know, it’s just a theory…

But so anyway, imagine if you are lucid in NREM, and you manage to move, now maybe it triggers REM, or maybe you sleepwalk (ugh… hopefully not!) but the point is… you start off with a VERY REALISTIC ENVIRONMENT… whereas in a normal LD you might become lucid in some confusing wonderland like place.

So I think, if we could get up and move during an NREM, whether it forced us into REM or not… I think it might produce more realistic dreams than normal, as you would sort of disrupt the sleep process, your mind is still used to running over memories (making the possibility of reliving past memories very good!) and I think the resulting REM dream that abruptly follows would be more real than if you just became lucid during a normally induced REM cycle.

also, I don’t know if there is truth to this, but some people are supposed to be able to OBE while basically in beta waves… so theoretically if you used NREM to LD, it might basically just completely activate your entire mind, making realism very easy.

I realize the REM mind is similar to the waking mind, just the problem is many parts associated with logic and memory and common sense are not working very well.

I don’t know, perhaps doing math in a dream and really reflecting upon memories of how things should look might serve as a way to make an REM dream realistic in the first place.

I just know that my dream with that girl, despite some unrealism really mirroed real life experiences with her very well, it felt very solidly enjoyable, real… the sex got weird, which is to be expected of me… at one point we went into the “future” and she looked different… but… STILL… it had much of a more “real life” nature to it than a normal LD would… and I even told her I was in NREM… so…

I just think that perhaps NREM dreams feel more real to us, even if lucid, since different parts of the mind are active… and you know… it’s just an idea.

An idea I want to test… because once my friend appeared (and i concluded that REM started), even when I tried to stay in this dream… it got less and less real… I tried to summon Paz Lenchantin (mega beautiful!) and she ended up looking like some sort of aboriginee… it was weird.

I summoned Jennifer Connelly successfully though for a bit… that was fun.

The realism severely fell apart the longer it lasted though, and especially when my friend showed up seeming to spark REM.

So… just some ideas I have.

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I don’t know… it sounds like you are counting low level LDs as LDs… Usually when I have an LD it is as real as real life. It is a completely authentic world. I would think that using NREM for posible telepathic abilities and remote viewing etc would be more posible, because as your brain becomes less active it becomes more reactive and sucesptive.

Even though my LDs are not based on real places, they are still real as real life. I know that it seems that NREM could be used to introduce more present day material into the dream, but couldn’t you conciously accomplish this?

It just seems to me that once you become lucid you over come the world without reason etc and take control. It sounds like this is what you want to get from the NREM?

Wow 14 LDs in may!>!> thats like 4+ per night every night. wow

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i agree with Stool :razz:

Holy reality, i personaly have found my own lucid dreams extremly realistic and life like and even sometimes more so then life. My non rem dreams even through realistic. are slower yes, but i really dont think gaining lucidity in non rem is not a good idea. i dont think you understand what i mean when i say you will shift from non rem into rem. i mean you will shift your brain waves from delta or theata, into beata, which i did find out, is where dreaming takes place. i have no clue if it will be quick or not, not the point, it is taht you wll not be getting delta and theta brain waves.

now unless you do med during the day and get these brain waves, i really dont think it isa good idea. Why? i dont know there is a voice yelling at me that missing out on these brain waves cant be reall good for you. And that voice is ussaly right, for your sake if you go ahead with getting lucid all the time in non rem, i hope it is wrong.

16

Toadstool… how/why are you dreams realistic?

Mine aren’t… even when i KNOW what something should look like or do, it’s really just… not real.

For example flying… I can’t gain altitude (except for rarely) i might look like i’m 50ft off the ground, yet if I stop flying I feel myself “standing” on the “ground” even though there is nothing under me…

or likewise i might appear to be very high but really i’m just a few feet above a sort of tiny world… etc…

People, people are horrible… often times I know what someone is supposed ot look like but can’t find “them” and the person I do find doesn’t look anything like them, but still claims to be them… and like…

I don’t know, I just don’t have much realism except for a few rare occasions…

and yes, cutting NREM short by putting it into REM via attaining lucidly on a regular basis may be bad for you, but then again just prolonging REM to longer than it is supposed to be might be, too.

17

I don’t know how they are more real, but they are… heh. When I fly I can feel the gravity when I move in different directions, I can feel the wind, I can see the ground thousands of feet below (or miles). If I know people in my dreams, they are the same as the person in real life; they look the same and even sound the same when they talk. Something that I have found is important to have the solid reality in LDs is to not take too much control. You need to let your subconcious continue to take part in the dream, because conciously it is imposible to construct the thousands upon thousands of details required for a real world experience.

What I basically attempt to do when I am lucid is merge my concous with my subconcious instead of entering fully into the concious while in the dream world. I don’t mean that I am not fully concious, its the opposite, I am more aware of everything in the world than I ever am in real life, but I don’t try to manipulate everything with my concious, because the LD will be much better if you can find the balance between the two.

BACK to NREM… I think the feeling of being drugged and over coming that is shifting your brainwaves back up into theta from the beta or delta levels. So it would make sense that, like timeless-soul is saying… when you become lucid in NREM you are either going to wake up or the dream will become REM instead of NREM. Howeverm I don’t think that this is as dangerous or harmful as timeless… Think of people who sleep half as many hours as you every night. Clealry they are missing out on REM and NREM, so what is the deal with that. I also think that, because NREM and REM both serve phsyiological purposes, if you cut either period short, they will rebound at a later time, in order to serve their purpose.

18

Now that I read your post a little mroe carefully… a few feet above a tiny world… that is strange… it sounds like one of my early lucid flying experiences…

I flew cross country from boston to my hometown, but when I got there and was trying to land, the world was a bunch of 3d blocks like the world was rendering. Everything was the correct shapes, but it lacked any details.

I’m not say the experiences sound the same, but this is an example of what I mean by using the concious to create the world, this is what happens when I do that. My dreams aren’t very real or even fun for that matter when I take full concious control.

19

This may have been answered in one of the lengthy posts, but i was told that dreams only occur during REM sleep. But my main question is aimed at the topic title… How can you tell what are NREM and REM dreams at all?

20

^ that is why i have such a problem.

do i surrender to the dream in order to maintain a level of complacent realism? Or do I get fully lucid and get nitpicky and frustrated with every little detail?

I haven’t found a middle ground… my best flying dreams are just very very smally lucid, lucid enough for me to desire to fly and know that I can, and use my memories of how to fly… but not lucid enough to pay much attention to anything else or really think “this is a dream, this isn’t real”

It’s like I relinquish myself to the dream that I am, but approach it with SOME lucidity and use my various dream tricks now and then.

But the thing is it isn’t analytical enough for me, for example if I could take off RIGHT NOW and fly… that would be amazing… this mindstate I am in now is what I want to be in while flying… not in a doped up kind of stupid dream mindset.

But when I have LDs where I’m basically fully conscious it can be very very hard to appreciate activities such as flying, let alone to make them realistic.

So I don’t know… maybe I should just spend a long time passively observing a LD environment and trying to feel in tune with the surroundings, and how everything fits together… maybe actually try and make a symbolic merge of my conscious and the dream conscious… or something.

I do remember once I told my unconscious to work on making guns more real, and the next day it gave me an ND with a fairly realistic gun (though still very dream quirky)

But just lately I want to have HIGH LEVEL LDs again, isntead of these low level “this is a dream, but I treat it like it’s real and don’t deviate from plot” dreams.

Those are fun, but they are all I’m having lately… when I wake up I can’t help but wonder why I thought those people were real… I guess I want them to be real, but still.

Part of the fun of LDing is being a little scientist inside your own head, rather than being a child… and it makes you appreciate it a lot more when you are in an analytical frame of mind and you happen to experience more intense realism than you could have ever expected, too.