When do dreams occur - just after you go to sleep, halfway through sleep or at the end? My dreams seem to happen before I wake up. The other day I went to bed at around 11 o clock at night. I woke up at 7:40 in the morning and could not remember having any dreams - absolutely nothing. I was a bit peeved as I had just started my dream journal… anyway I had another 20 minutes to sleep so I drifted off. When I woke up at 8 o clock I could remember having a dream and it was quite vivid. Now, did I have this dream in those 20 minutes, or did I have the dream before that but did I maybe just forget about it?
This happened again today - I woke up at 7 and nothing. Went to sleep for another hour or two and when I woke up again I could remember having a dream.
What experiences have you had and what do you think?
Dreams are distributed all over the night period - but mostly late in the morning, when you already had 6+ hrs of sleep. So it’s very possible, and in fact almost certain, that you had a dream in those 20 mins.
Dreams late in the sleep period are also easier to remember, so you may want to put a little more effort to remember earlier dreams. Just remember to lay in the position you woke up in and gently think what you could have dreamt of, and you’ll be fine ^^
If it has not already been said, dreams are distributed throughout the night through REM periods (periods of “rapid eye movement”) that gain increasingly long during the night. First your body enters deep sleep for about an hour (to begin repairing) and then five REM stages occur. It is when these stages happen and are still going strong when you dream.
People say that during the night is when your brain is least active- but from my experience, that’s not true. This is part of what allows dreams or lucid dreams to be so… “real”. Science has shown that during the REM sleep periods when you dream, your brain is at least as active as during waking life. Isn’t that interesting?
PS. This morning, I had 3 lucid dreams - 1 preceded by a false awakening. I did not sense the need to journal them, though.
Ah I see. Maybe that is why I am remembering them! I cannot remember anything from before those dreams. I did have 2 dreams last night/today, I usually only have 1 but I had 2. The second one was not as clear and was very odd…
Interesting indeed. How long did those lucid dreams last? I’m going to concentrate on just normal dreams and remembering them, as well as doing reality checks to increase vividness - then once it gets good really focus on becoming lucid in dreams. I am hoping it will just happen, but I’ll try WILD’s as well.
