This entire week, I set my alarm (on weekdays) to wake me up at 5 AM, and when it sounds, I always wake up from REM sleep/dreaming. It just started this week, and it seems pretty odd that I wake up from a dream.
I go to sleep around 10-11 PM the nights before. I’m going to try timing my sleep cycles to find out how exactly this just started happening.
If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Thanks! 
just a guess, but you know how you can program your sub c to wake you up at say 6:00 am?
could you be somewhat programing it so you are dreaming at around 5 ish. or you are rally lucky and waking up at the proper time. not sure. i will re read waht you wrote after lunch :d
bye byez
Richard
First REM after 90 minutes lasts about 15-20 minutes,then after every 90 minutes it gets longer a bit- thats mathematicall theory.In practice it is extremely hard to know when our rem will kick in and how long it will last.It can be changed by many factors like naps taken during the day,different hour of falling asleep can move whole process,even drinks and food.So without getting under some monitoring device all you can do is roughly estimating and experimenting.
hmm… ok, I get it. Lately, I’ve discovered that drinking a glass of sweet tea (lots of caffiene) can give me great dream recall, so that should be taken in to consideration.
I’ll keep experimenting with this. Thanks for your thoughts!
Isn’t caffiene supposed to keep you awake?
I could be wrong, but from what I’ve heard waking up naturally almost guarantees that you’ll wake after the closest REM period. In fact, according to the lucid dreaming bible (EWLD), everyone always wakes up after each REM period anyway, they just don’t remember it in the morning. Based on that, I’d have to assume teaching yourself to ‘wake up’ would just mean staying awake when you would otherwise go directly back to sleep.
This is one of the reasons I like alarm clocks over waking up naturally. It allows you to actually interrupt the REM period, providing you with a greater chance to succeed in WILD (You can’t WILD if you’ve just missed your REM cycle and it’s time for deep sleep) and also certifying some very vivid recall in most cases.
As Jack said though, there’s theory, and there’s practice. It looks nice on paper when we can say things like “REM cycles occur every 90 minutes, and increase by 5 to 10 minutes each cycle”, but in effect it could be quite different. It might even depend on countless conditions like how tired you are, what chemicals you have in you, what time of day it is, and how much light is in the room.
From the looks of things AstareGod, you’re waking yourself up after about 6 hours of sleep, on average. Since REM occurs in 90 minute intervals (ideally), it doesn’t seem puzzling that you’re always waking up very close to (or during) a REM cycle. I always aim to wake up 6 hours into the night for this very reason.
OK, thanks a lot for your input!
Yeah, I have noticed, last week, that I woke up during REM cycles or right after them, and if six hours is ideally right after that last REM cycle, then I guess I better take advantage of that. Anyway, I’m now going to wake myself up 15 minutes earlier than what I usually do, just so I have the opportunity to write down my dreams (I can’t do that when I first wake up, and that is the most important time to do it).
Since sweet tea is doing a great job of dream recall, I’m going to continue drinking it about one hour before I go to sleep. Caffeine doesn’t really have a major impact on my sleep, because I drink it almost every day, so I’m used to it. But the caffiene wakes up my conscious mind, allowing it to remember dreams (and hopeully I’ll become lucid if I’m aware enough). Oh well, the tea thing should be on another topic, so I’m going to stop talking about it here, unless someone else has any other questions.
Well, that’s all for tonight. I’m going to bed early tonight, so I can get up earlier tomorrow morning. Thanks!!!