Why do afternoon naps work.....?

I was wondering why it is you can have a WILD or have long, vivid dreams when you take half hour/hour long afternoon naps… yet you don’t go into REM sleep until you’ve been asleep for around 90 minutes when you go to bed at night, thus you don’t usually remember these dreams and it’s virtually impossible to WILD.

Does your sleep cycle only start over once you’ve been awake for a certain amount of time? Hmm… any responses welcome. Thank you for those who can help shed light on this :smile:

My idea, and this is based on nothing, is that your body has gotten all the sleep it needs at night. When you take a noon nap, you’re able to devote everything to dreaming. Also, since it’s usually a short nap, you don’t get into a really deep sleep. In my experience, LDs are more possible when I’m just lightly sleeping.

I think REM cycles can carry out through the day. I heard this story of some people who conditioned themselves to only sleep when they were going to have a rem cycle and could live on 2 hours of sleep a day.
I also thought that afternoon naps had to be 2 hours long so you did havce a REM cycle…

No, I’ve had some pretty vivid dreams after having dozed off for a few mintues. No more than 15 mins and an LD. Full blown LDs are possible virtually any time. :cool:

From my experience, it’s possible to induce a lucid dream faster than 90 minutes, depending on the condition. Did you have 6 hours of sleep within 1 or 2 hours. Did you have a good and long nap and went to bed for a night solid sleep? Did you intentationally “force” or give it a “gentle push” to acceralate your REM cycle? Etc… etc.

For me, I am able to induce a lucid dream quite quickly on few nights on my first sleep. I believe that we just need to practice and learn how to recongize our trances so we can try and acceralate deepening our trances. I hope I’m making senses here! :grin:

Good luck everyone!

thanx for all the replies everybody. i was wondering why this was and realized that i haven’t really seen a topic about so i asked.

maybe afternoon naps only work if you didn’t get much REM sleep the night before, so since your body needs more for energy you go into it quicker… that could also be why if you stay up 24+ hours you can go straight into dreams easily as well. DM7, when you have induced lucids on your first sleep did you get a good night sleep the night before?

just curious, hehe. well thanks again for all the replies, good luck with all your dreams! :smile:

Your guess is right CC Hawk.Some science experiments has proven that the more deprived of sleep you are the faster REM phase starts.Seems its very important for our health and well being.
Thats why many ppl experience dreams on afternoon naps.
Theres also another thing- its not necesary to be in REM to dream.It is possibile to dream(or might it be hipnagogics) in earlier stages.
take care

thanx for the reply jack :grin:, I guess I get some points for that one, hehe. thanx to everyone else for your replies as well! so, do you think that is why people have reported being able to WILD at night? because they didn’t get enough sleep the night before?

shoot, this post shouldn’t be here… stupid thing posted twice.

Actually I’ve tried afternoon naps before but I they havn’t yielded one ld.

I can relate to this in that when I first started trying to recall my dreams and write them down, I noticed that I had more vivid memories after afternoon naps. I’ve started sleeping more in the day now, but that is mostly because I’d rather not have to get up in the mornings…:mrgreen:

with my new school schledue i take afternoon naps alot now and this is what ive found:

  1. my recall seems almost horrible

  2. WILD is the easiest after ive napped for about 30-40 minutes as im trying to fall back asleep.

  3. your concentration is much higher while u sleep at naps, especially for me because its usually after a few classes and my brain is very active. i find sometimes i just become lucid in my nap dreams for no reason at all.

That’s interesting what you say.

But how exactly would you recognize and accelerate trances? Especially if we are talking about deep sleep and REM!
To recognize, you must be concious, i presume, and if you’re conscious, you are already wild-ing?

so you’re saying there’s a way to train your subconcious to recognize/accelerate your sleep cycle or other trances?

Isaac, I’m afraid Dm7 won’t reply to your question. BlissfullBlues bumped a years old topic… which is not precisely advised by the Forum Guidelines… :tongue:

It seen that when im doing nap I don’t dream. Its like I sleep not too long for starting a dream. And maybe sound are annoying me.

I remember reading that we constantly enter a form of REM every 90 minutes, even during the day. I don’t recall the details but I do remember that we’re supposed to be very susceptible to suggestion during those times.