awareness of rem sleep time in LD

This night i had an unusually long LD. Everytime i wondered hmm this dream should be ending about now - it has been so long… but it kept continuing - and lucid.

i now wonder if in a LD you may be conscious of your REM cycle. As we know, they last some time, and after that you drop back into another wavelength, and then REM again, etc. and everytime the REM cycle lasts longer.

i think this LD was in one of the longer REM cycli - it was late in the night - early morning so that could be very well the case.

what i find so peculiar is that i have a sense of time the dream lasted and that i knew it was going to end.

my theory on this one is that you cannot force a LD to last longer - when your REM cycle is over, it’s over. whether you LD or have a regular dream.

So this plays a role also in staying lucid - do you wake up out of sheer enthousiasm or shock - or is it just your time to shift to another cycle?

:wiske: Q

I’d have no idea if it actually were possible to lenghten the REM period or cause it to end at will, but to me it seems unlikely. On many occasions I’ve had my entire LD fade, but FA kept me confined within my LD. Other times I wanted my LD to end (I don’t know why I would want that) and they did. Something I did find strange was after every LD I actually woke up, and I didn’t fall back in deep sleep.

Well,i think that length of REM is somehow unimportant when as we know the time here and then is totally different.In most cases i think.
But i know what your point is and for me it was allways both ways-sometimes i wake up due to activities that caused too much emotions and other times i just wake up while doing simple tasks-walking,watching etc(so i guess it might have been the end of Rem)

Apatr from that- it is very hard to tell why ld have ended(in cases without excitment).Keeping in mind that those times can be totally different and trying to figure out what Pasquale pointed causes quite big mess in my head.

" … my theory on this one is that you cannot force a LD to last longer - when your REM cycle is over, it’s over."- yes,but what makes me wonder is-sometimes we can dream for hours in just one Rem…therefore…it would be possibile to have 1hr(or more) long dream in a second of real time.
ummm,confusing:)

One time I had this dream the litteraly felt like it was 4 hours long, no exagerating. That was back when I had lots of problems with sleep paralysis. I COULD NOT wake up from the darn thing. If only this happend to me now! I could do some lucid exparaments. Actually I think I did try that at the time and managed to get semi lucid because I did realize that I was dreaming and bored of dreaming so I wanted to wake up but I had no control over what was happening… But I think with time distortion that dreams can seem really long and we can maybe stretch out our concept of time but I would say that yeah I think that sometimes when its over its over just like a normal dream. Sometimes I wake up from excitement but sometimes I can just feel myself gradualy waking up and then I’m awake and not tired at all and can’t sleep anymore so maybe my sleep juice wore out?

I think both is possible. For some it seems to be possible to stay lucid when going into another stage of the sleep cycle.
(Can you comment on this Jeff? :wink: )
But my guess is that lucid dreams for most of us occur during REM, opposed to normal dreams, who also occur during NREM.
But maybe I am wrong and is LDing during NREM also more or less common. I don’t sleep with an EEG on my head, so I can’t be sure about sleep stages and LDing.
Guess I should buy one :smile:.
Jeff, why the hell did you sell your EEG device! And why not to me! :grin:

Waking up shortens the dream, but significantly increases the chances that you will recall it. I posted something about Sleep interruptions effects on REM sleep regulation: slagt.net/ld4all/viewtopic.php?t=1644


It is possible to indefinately extend the period in which you stay lucid.
This is done through rigorous meditation.
You can then attain dreams of “clear light”.
Then if you go past level 2 rem sleep into levels 3 and 4, i.e. deeper sleep you still maintain lucidity without the trouble of harming your bodys healing time in the other sleep levels.
That is the problem with the other lucidity methods you will encounter.
It is not something easy to attain, in fact it sometimes takes years.
Even I do not have “clear light” dreams every night.
If you want to do this kind of thing, I recommend looking up information on Dream Yoga, and these meditation methods.

Thanks for all your insights into this one :smile:

Indeed, it is possible to experience ld’s that seem to last for hours, and irt (in real time) maybe lasted 2 minutes.

But what i find so peculiar is that you have a LD and you know it is going to end! I know i’'m not the only one that has this experience - so i was thinking: WHY should you have this sensation that the LD will end? Why don’t you have the feeling that it last eternal? I know IRL i certainly have no feeling like “oh I have to hurry up because any minute now i will wake up and all this is over” - i do have this in LD’s

the theory is therefore that you unconsciously know that your lucid “time” is not unlimited - and i linked it to the REM cycle - because that is when you dream.

come to think of it, in all my lucid dreams i have that feeling. Sometimes it is more in the background, and sometimes it is very clear, but it is always a knowingness that i don’t have time forever and that i have to go ‘back’ sooner or later.

Even when you could prolong your LD’s with the technique phantomspectre mentioned - i think that you still will know it will have an ending when you have to wake up. But it might be different indeed, you know you have to go back but it is you that determines when that will be - instead of that feeling that you cannot do anything about it.

also - if you have a 4hr LD how do you know that it wasn’t in your 5 minute REM cycle? Time IRL is different than time in other realities.

phantomspectre, can you enlighten me on this? or are there more ppl in here that have those ‘clear light’ dreams (i like the name!)?

Q :wiske:

Well, we certainly also dream in NREM sleep. (I’ll post some research about that in the theory area soon :smile:) But since brainwaves are slower and further away from consiouness, I don’t think it will be easy to stay/become lucid in NREM. Still it would be possible, I think.

Jeff, jump in! :smile:

“… WHY should you have this sensation that the LD will end? Why don’t you have the feeling that it last eternal?”

This might be due to all the reports we read.Everyone struggles to prolong their lds.Many has only short success.It might be stuck in our subcouncious that we need to hurry till it lasts cuz it may end anytime(dont get too excited,dont do sex,dont this dont that).This thinking itself can cause faster awaking.I wonder if it would help if we knew (for sure)that once achieved lucidity can last forever.I bet such a person would have them much longer.

Why dont i have a feeling it last eternal???crying