I don’t think it’s nessicarily how long you stay awake but how awake you become (although obviously the longer you stay awake, the more ‘awake’ you’re likely to become). What I mean is if i only stay up for 10 or so minutes I still feel mentally groggy and not very alert. When this happens chances of getting a WILD LD are almost zero. However if I stay up for 30 mins / and hour I feel fully alert and am almost garunteed to LD. This morning I woke up for an hour but spent most of it dozing in bed and didn’t feel very alert or awake the whole time. No surprise I didn’t have a proper lucid dream (although I did have a very low level lucid dream that lasted a few seconds).
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I have tried to only stay up for a few minutes and that doesn’t seem to help at all, even if I’m very awake mentally . I would say that one should be up atleast 10 minutes and probably no more that 30 minutes.
I’m usually awake for 30 minutes. Seems to be working out well for me.
Can the length of sleeping before awaking change if you will lucid dream? Monday night I tried 6 hours of sleeping before getting up for 30 minutes and going back to bed. Last night I tried 5 hours and got up for 30 minutes.
Anybody know if 6 hours is more successful, or…?
I think that 6 hours would be more successful based upon the REM cycle. You would be having longer dreams and such after 6 hours.
Plus I’ve always found that the more sleep I get the better WBTB works for me.
ypm.
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Yeah but the more sleep you get the harder it will ultimately be to fall back asleep, no?
I can fall back asleep in only a few minutes after staying up for about 30.
Whenever I attempt WBTB, I stay up an hour or two. It seems to work though.
I find that if I stay up longer than 10 min it is disturbing to the quality of my sleep. I will not feel rested. 5-10 minutes seems to work good for me with WILD.
Does anyone have any good ideas about how to drag oneself out of bed to do WBTB. I have tried putting my alarm so far away that I have to get up to turn it of. That hasn’t helped that much. I usually end up going back into the bed and falling asleep again. The times I have been able to get up I have usually gotten a LD. Or maybe I just should let my internal clock wake me up instead. Any suggestions are welcome.
From lucidity.com:
Staying up x minutes and performing MILD when going back to bed.
20 persons participated, 11 nights
60 Min, gives 60% chance of getting a LD
30 Min, gives 50% chance of getting a LD
10 Min, gives 10% chance of getting a LD
No WBTB about 3% chance of getting a LD
If someone what’s to read the artice: www.lucidity.com/NL63.RU.Naps.html
seems like WBTB rocks big time 
This is interesting. What’s also nteresting is that I would think that these WBTB numbers would be inversly proportional to success wth WILD - as WILD is associated more with brief awakenings.
You could always jump online and browse the forum or talk to us in the chatroom. 
A few months ago (while I was experimenting with the Suneye WBTB technique), I used to coordinate my efforts with Stokesy, who lives in the same timezone as myself. We’d arrange to meet in the ld4all chatroom about 6 hours after we went to sleep, then we’d spend the hour chatting and discussing other methods for lucid dreaming. A couple of times one of us slept past the designated meeting time, but at least we were more motivated in general.
Yes, but that study was only done with 20 people which is hardly conclusive enough to set firm rules or expectations.
I agree the less time I stay awake the better and even if I do not succeed with WILD I still have a pretty good chance of waking up in my dreams later.
Oops, just noticed that there where 22 people that where participating. I really had my intention set on doing WBTB this morning, but as usual I went back to bed. But I woke up again after 20 minutes and had some really anoying feeling in my legs and couldn’t fall back to sleep. So I got up for 30 minutes and I did get a LD later 
. So WBTB seems to work really well for me.
Awesome! You know, I haven’t really given WBTB a fair chance -mainly because I have a hard time falling back to sleep and also because i can change your waking schedule during the day but maybe this weekend I will try…
Hey JaRoD,
One if the things that I like doing is writting my dream down in my dream journal, then going back to sleep trying to incude a lucid dream using the MILD technique. Did it last night and was rewarded with a lucid dream.
ypm.
Didn’t La Berge say, in that radio interview, that the optimum time to have LD’s is 10 hours after you initially fall asleep, so the best method is to break up your sleep so that you’re asleep during that period. Eg. sleep from midnight to 6am then from 9-11am, or something along those lines.
Staying awake from six to nine will probably “reset” your sleep cycles, but the idea is sound.
It depends on what method you are trying.
With WILD you do not want to be up very long at all. At most a couple of minutes.
I don’t do MILD with WBTB and everyone seems to have a different opinion about this some people say 10 -15 minutes just long enough to wake yourself up, While others say 30-60 minutes which I think is to long.
As a general rule the more sleep the better.
You could also adjust your sleep schedule by changing your sleep time so you go to bed a ½ hour to an hour earlier than normal and get up ½ hour to an hour later. This would give you 9-10 hours of sleep and would not be as disruptive to your sleep.
For some maybe, but for me if I’m up after 6 hours of sleep I generally have no trouble falling back asleep. Sometime I end up awake for 1 or more hours though.
ypm.