I’m hoping that if I get as many sleep/REM cycles (90 mins.) as I can each night that will help with my dream recall and in turn help me to get lucid. But I’m wondering, if you wake up to use the bathroom, does that mess up your current cycle?
Example: Say that I plan to sleep for 7.5 hours to get 5 full sleep cycles, from going to bed at 9:30 pm and setting my alarm for 5 am. If I awaken at 10:30 to use the bathroom after only an hour of sleep and not completing a full cycle, then go back to sleep, can I pick up where I left off if I’m still sleepy enough or does the cycle start all over? If it does, this may be why I am having problems with not waking up in the middle of REM sleep so I can remember and record my dreams. I haven’t had much success with my dream diary lately (until this morning when I woke up naturally in a dream…hooray for Sundays!). I want to be able to have consistent dream recall before I try to get lucid…I know it’s not 100% necessary and I have had one low-level LD without even trying (a nightmare was a recognized dreamsign for me) but I want to do this right.
I’m sure I could just do WBTB which is supposed to be highly successful for dreaming and lucid dreaming, but the schedule I’m on makes it hard to do a WBTB although when my current schedule changes that will be my main objective I think.
Any insight into the sleep cycle thing is much appreciated.
The interuption shouldn’t reset your cycle. The time you go to bed, and the time you get up, and the light conditions when you do, are much more significant. Especially if they’re pretty consistent (ie. the same from one day to the next)
I personally have found that setting a count-down timer to 90 minutes, and doing an RC every 90 min. seems to entrain my natural bio-rythm to match. Before this I worried about how well I was co-ordinating my alarm-clock to my actual cycle (My bed-time and sleep-time was not very regular or predictable).
I don’t know if this works for most people – but since I don’t see much complaint on this board about people not being able to set their clocks/wakings to their actual rythm, I suspect it’s true for most people.
If you have trouble finding a consistant, effective wake-time for dream-recall, choose and stick to one that’s convenient, and your bio-rythms will adjust to it – probabaly in a couple–three days.
And don’t worry about the early REM-periods – they tend to be short and chaotic. Give them a pass.
As a rough guide, the
1st REM period will only be 6-7 minutes long
2nd REM period will be about 13 minutes long
3rd REM period will be about 20 minutes long
4th REM period will be about 26 minutes long
5th REM period will be about 35 minutes long (or more)
… you get the idea.
And later dreams are more coherent and “story-like” too, which makes them more fun and easier to remember.
However, you could use the WBTB method to manipulate your rem periods. Now this does not work well for me but according to Labarge:
(For example)If you normally sleep from 12am to 8am = 8 hours of sleep. Now if you wake up say at 4:30 and stay up for an hour then go back to sleep you somehow trick you brain into thinking you have slept for 9-10 hours instead of 8 hours thus yielding you more and longer REM periods.
Most of the things said so far are quite true; unless you stay up for quite a long time (at least 2-3 hours, with high levels of activity), your REM periods shouldn’t experience any sort of displacement/disturbance. After all, the WBTB method wouldn’t work if they did.
On another note, I’ve always been under the impression that using WBTB merely interrupted your sleep schedule, allowing you to perform inductions and techniques during REM and thus increasing your chances of success. I’ve never heard of it actually extending your REM periods; milod, where’d you get that info? I’m intrigued.
that you basically skip (ie. are awake) a sleep cycle or two (1.5 – 3hrs)
and then resume sleeping, so that you are getting your sleep time later on in the morning,
and your REM periods are longer.
(The REM periods get longer each 90 min. bio-rythm cycle, which we usually find convenient to call sleep-cycles, but in fact continue around the clock. The REM periods naturally peak around late-morning/early-afternoon, depending on personal variables).
You are sleeping the same number of hours, but shifting some of that sleep time to later in the morning.
Your brain doesn’t actually think that you’ve slept longer, but some of your sleep is now occurring while your percentage of REM-time is closer to peaking.
well i’ll be this truely honestly worked very well.
i set the alarm to wake me up at 4:30 having fallen asleep around 11:20
… i then lied in bed trying to doze but trying to stay semi-awake for a while… about 20 minutes later I fell asleep and immediately into an LD… and I continued to LD (with tons of FAs every few minutes ) for the next hour, in total I was lucid for about an exact hour based upon my observation of going to sleep and waking up times.
and i supposedly had a shared dream with a neighbor… it was cool…
Well doesn’t that just suck for those of us who have day-jobs! Do you know what types of personal variables affect when the REM periods are? Is there a way to alter the REM period peak-time? With the schedule I’m on right now I need a REM peak-time around 3 or 4 a.m.; I’m usually up by 5 a.m. during the week. Maybe my personal peak is already around that time…who knows. It’s hard for me to do WBTB because my schedule is quite full and I would have to go to bed so early that I would have almost no time to do basic waking life maintenance. I guess I’ll really have to try it on Sundays and hope for the best.
if light levels have something to do with it, which i’d halfway expect…
perhaps a supreme schedule would be to have WBTB set up for the darkest part of the night, but it would have to mean you’d have to go to sleep real early.
I just awoke to try WBTB and was looking in my copy of EWLD for mention of WBTB but couldn’t find it. Does LaBerge actually call it that? I did find an online issue of the Lucidity Institute’s Night Light (NL6.3) called “An Hour of Wakefulness Before Morning Naps Makes Lucidity More Likely”, though: lucidity.com/NL63.RU.Naps.html
He says, “It appears there is something about the increased lengths of wakefulness that somehow better prepares the brain to become lucid in dreams.” I guess that’s the “tricking your brain” part? There is a graph on the page I linked to showing that more people in studies had LD’s after 60 minutes of wakefullness than more or less time. I’ll be coming up on 60 minutes in about 15 minutes so I hope it works!
My first attempt at WBTB didn’t result in a LD but I had a ND in which I visited a place where other dreamers were, so I guess I’m getting closer. I’ve only had one low-level LD so far so it’s not like I’m experienced with getting lucid; I just really hope WBTB is as successful for me as I’ve read that it is with others.
To Bernard: When you talk about bio-rhythms continuing around the clock, is what you’re referring to called the circadian phase? I think it’s mentioned briefly in the NightLight article I referenced in my last post.
I noticed that going to bed three hours later than my normal time caused me to have a dream right away. Isn’t sleep deprivation (not that I was deprived, but if I had been up for 24 hours…) another way to go right into REM sleep? Not that I have time to do that, WBTB is hard enough to fit into my schedule, and sleep dep can’t be healthy. But I did notice that being more tired caused me to dream and wake up and remember it pretty quickly.
There are two sides to it.First is that if you sleep deprived you indeed have bigger chances to hit REM right off.On the other hand going to sleep earlier than usuall effects in more awareness during your sleep.
If it does, this may be why I am having problems with not waking up in the middle of REM sleep so I can remember and record my dreams. I haven’t had much success with my dream diary lately (until this morning when I woke up naturally in a dream…hooray for Sundays!). I want to be able to have consistent dream recall before I try to get lucid…I know it’s not 100% necessary and I have had one low-level LD without even trying (a nightmare was a recognized dreamsign for me) but I want to do this right.
) for the next hour, in total I was lucid for about an exact hour based upon my observation of going to sleep and waking up times.
Do you know what types of personal variables affect when the REM periods are? Is there a way to alter the REM period peak-time? With the schedule I’m on right now I need a REM peak-time around 3 or 4 a.m.; I’m usually up by 5 a.m. during the week. Maybe my personal peak is already around that time…who knows. It’s hard for me to do WBTB because my schedule is quite full and I would have to go to bed so early that I would have almost no time to do basic waking life maintenance. I guess I’ll 
But I did notice that being more tired caused me to dream and wake up and remember it pretty quickly.