Hello, all. I was wondering if using an alarm clock (or cell phone) to wake you up is at all detrimental to the WBTB process. I’m sometimes able to just wake up after dreams through autosuggestion and WILD, at which point I can do WBTB as desired. But sometimes I don’t wake up at all. Does using an alarm work out just fine, or does it tend to mess up dream recall?
Thanks in advance!
It should be fine, just make sure it doesnt keep you up.
I think its not necessary and can be annoying some time.
If youre in the middle of a unbelievable dream and the clock sound to awake you , you’l be mad at you to have settling the clock.
Thanks for the responses. I’m actually in the middle of a WBTB session right now, and I used an alarm to wake me up. I don’t remember the alarm going off, but I do remember a dream from before. When I go back to bed in a few minutes, I KNOW I will have a lucid dream.
For a WBTB timer, if you have your pc in your bedroom (or use a laptop or whatnot) you could always use my timed lucidity application to schedule your monitor to start blinking. I find this is effective, but more subtle than blasting your eardrums.
If you do use an alarm, I find it helpful to set some music to wake you instead of a buzzer, because you’ll wake slower. I find this helps in not forgetting the dream you just had 
Personally, I wouldn’t do the alarm. I’m still kinda new to this, but here’s my theory on it: tell yourself to wake up after your dreams; if your body is too tired to do that, then it’s definitely going to be too tired to get any good dreaming in.
But you dream the same way, whether you’re very tired, or not so tired.
That is true. It makes no difference. As for alarm clocks, if they wake me up during a good dream that can be irritating, but it is really not that big of a problem. Sometimes they can screw up dream recall or prevent dreams from happening that would have, but they are not always that bad.
I think I’m going to try editing together some soft music that my computer will play around 4 in the morning, and perhaps my own voice reminding me to wake up slowly and recall all of my dreams. We’ll see if it works…
It’s frustrating–the first night I was interested in LDs and dream recall, I woke up in the middle of the night without any external assistance and recalled multiple dreams. But now I have trouble waking up at all. 
That sounds like a good idea since you can’t wake up at all. I am in the “wake up naturally” school of thought. I think an alarm can impair recall (in the beginning). My best advice would be to set things up so you can turn the alarm off easily with out moving much. Then just lay in bed and try to recall your dreams.
Happy Dreaming
I very much prefer that “wake up naturally” view, and it worked for me at first. But perhaps during slumps when awakening is difficult, a sort of gradual alarm would be fine. I’ll try it out tonight and see if my recall is markedly better or worse.
One technique to “wake up naturally” is to strongly visualize the time you would like to wake up, just before you fall asleep. I find visualizing the time in bright LEDs (like a mains powered alarm clock) against a black background is particularly effective. The high contrast of display seems to get “burned” into your subconscious 
heh, my “wake up naturally” would be after i get 14 hours of sleep 
for wbtb, i use the alarm clock. i might try that music idea though
Untrue. Scientific documentation showing the period of awakeness after a WBTB shows a new system of brainwave activity, composed of brief REM-like periods called SOREMPs. These are not encountered from first sleep. So maybe not from going straight to bed, but certainly from WBTB, there is a definite physiological/neurological difference and this is why WBTB makes your dreams more intense - not because you fall right back into rem quickly (as some people think) but because you actually increase the -frequency- of rem periods (into SOREMPs.)
Actually if you do WBTB the way Labarge recommends, you should stay up for about an hour. According to Labarge, this somehow tricks you brain into thinking you have slept longer than you actually did. So a person how sleeps for 7-8 hours by using WBTB will have rem periods like a person who slept for 9-10 hours.
However, for people like me that does not work. I would never get back to sleep after staying up that long. So, if/when I use WBTB I go directly back to sleep.
Both methods work, but if you can stay up for an extra hour and can still get back to sleep it is worth it to get those long rem cycles.
that’s my point. you don’t get longer rem cycles. you get shorter ones. you just get more of them.
laberge’s recommendations are qualitative, ie, do this and get this result, not quantitative, in this particular part of research.
Just look at the graphs for SOREMPS man… that’s what WBTB is all about, not a qualitative wholistic magical thing. 
I cant find a plausible reason for sleaping 7-8 hours, then staying awake 1 hour (8-9 hours) just to trick my mind into thinking it’s been asleep 9-10 hours… see how in the worst case scenario, the ranges overlap? that means the data is inconclusive as no two distinct seperated ranges can be used, so simply put, you’d have to do more statistics to get a plausible statement for what you state, otherwise there is no net gain on WBTB. (since the times overlap)