Thread: Lucid Dreams and Time

Flow, you should try to keep doing this for a few weeks and see if you can get more good results. This could be a major breakthrough in sleep if we can get a few different people that can testify to this.

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

Flow, you should try to keep doing this for a few weeks and see if you can get more good results. This could be a major breakthrough in sleep if we can get a few different people that can testify to this.

I have work, wife, martial arts, gym, run... I cant afford breaking my sleep schedule. But we have a lot of DV members who might try this one day if needed.

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

a major breakthrough in sleep if we can get a few different people that can testify to this.

I can testify to this effect as well & it is well known. FlowofMySoul mentioned getting very little sleep before the day he felt rested & his lucid dreams. I did this intentionally for a few weeks (3 hour core sleep, with REM naps) a year or two ago. Very good results.

I think the term is an "everyman" type sleep schedule. A short core sleep with naps interspersed throughout the day. A great way to get into REM very quickly and for us lucid dreamers, a lucid dream. I think his "rested" feeling was a result of getting that prized REM during his naps.

Unless you have an extraordinary amount of time on your hands though, be careful intentionally depriving for later REM. It might not be sustainable. For me it was not.

Apparently it has to deal with timing more than time dilation. It's called 'polyphasic sleep schedules'. Usually your own body adjusts it to your needs when you cannot have a monophasic schedule.
Basically, if for some reason you cannot sleep as we learned to normally do (around 8 hours in a row), when you feel the need to take a nap along the day, just take it and sleep until you naturally wake up or something like that.

Originally Posted by bro

I can testify to this effect as well & it is well known. FlowofMySoul mentioned getting very little sleep before the day he felt rested & his lucid dreams. I did this intentionally for a few weeks (3 hour core sleep, with REM naps) a year or two ago. Very good results.

I think the term is an "everyman" type sleep schedule. A short core sleep with naps interspersed throughout the day. A great way to get into REM very quickly and for us lucid dreamers, a lucid dream. I think his "rested" feeling was a result of getting that prized REM during his naps.

Unless you have an extraordinary amount of time on your hands though, be careful intentionally depriving for later REM. It might not be sustainable. For me it was not.

Glad to hear you experienced the same.

At the moment I sleep only once per day, around 7 to 9 hours, this is called Monophasic Sleep. Mainly because of my busy schedule, I want to do so much and I have so little time. So this 2 hour fast sleep was an exclusion, I had to go to work and I had only 2 hours to sleep. Usually I sleep my 7-9 hours every night.

Originally Posted by Box77

Apparently it has to deal with timing more than time dilation. It's called 'polyphasic sleep schedules'. Usually your own body adjusts it to your needs when you cannot have a monophasic schedule.
Basically, if for some reason you cannot sleep as we learned to normally do (around 8 hours in a row), when you feel the need to take a nap along the day, just take it and sleep until you naturally wake up or something like that.

First of all thanks for amazing link, I am going to read all the info there. At the moment I have Monophasic Sleep, so 7 to 9 hours every night. So my body did not have time to adjust to this type of sleeping, that day I woke up as usual at 8 AM and did not sleep until 6 AM of next day, followed by 1 hour and 30 minutes of sleep, woke up at 8 and went to work. Last time I did that was around a year ago.

But, around 5-6 years ago I had such a broken sleep schedule, that is the same time when I started lucid dreaming. I always randomly slept at any time during the day. I often did not sleep for 48 hours, followed by 20+ hours of sleep without wake ups. I am not saying that it is good, but I was young and did not have any responsibilities, was living every day as a new and last day. At some point I was sleeping by small naps, 1-2 hours naps during the day and my body got used to that schedule and I was feeling good with that kind of sleep. Well those times are far away in past now.

I will learn everything about those sleep schedules and how they affect lucid dreaming. What I payed attention to is that during long sleeps our every REM cycles is longer then the previous one, so it means that the longest dream will be accruing at the end of our sleep time. If we switch to shorter sleep cycles, for example if we split our sleep into two 3.5 hours of sleep then our longest REM will be exactly twice shorter then it would be in 7 hour sleep. Also I am sometimes questioning if there is any difference between nREM Lucid Dreams and REM Lucid Dreams, this is what I am experimenting with now. I am trying to figure out main differences between those two type of dreams.

Originally Posted by Box77

Apparently it has to deal with timing more than time dilation. It's called 'polyphasic sleep schedules'. Usually your own body adjusts it to your needs when you cannot have a monophasic schedule.
Basically, if for some reason you cannot sleep as we learned to normally do (around 8 hours in a row), when you feel the need to take a nap along the day, just take it and sleep until you naturally wake up or something like that.

First of all thanks for amazing link, I am going to read all the info there. At the moment I have Monophasic Sleep, so 7 to 9 hours every night. So my body did not have time to adjust to this type of sleeping, that day I woke up as usual at 8 AM and did not sleep until 6 AM of next day, followed by 1 hour and 30 minutes of sleep, woke up at 8 and went to work. Last time I did that was around a year ago.

But, around 5-6 years ago I had such a broken sleep schedule, that is the same time when I started lucid dreaming. I always randomly slept at any time during the day. I often did not sleep for 48 hours, followed by 20+ hours of sleep without wake ups. I am not saying that it is good, but I was young and did not have any responsibilities, was living every day as a new and last day. At some point I was sleeping by small naps, 1-2 hours naps during the day and my body got used to that schedule and I was feeling good with that kind of sleep. Well those times are far away in past now.

I will learn everything about those sleep schedules and how they affect lucid dreaming. What I payed attention to is that during long sleeps our every REM cycles is longer then the previous one, so it means that the longest dream will be accruing at the end of our sleep time. If we switch to shorter sleep cycles, for example if we split our sleep into two 3.5 hours of sleep then our longest REM will be exactly twice shorter then it would be in 7 hour sleep. Also I am sometimes questioning if there is any difference between nREM Lucid Dreams and REM Lucid Dreams, this is what I am experimenting with now. I am trying to figure out main differences between those two type of dreams.

I know of polyphasic sleep cycles. I have completely studied them. If you actually read what flowofmysoul wrote you will see that he didn't get any naps or anything else. He just slept 2 hours one day and had just as many dreams as he normally does with 7-9. That is still monophasic.

Everyman schedule is always 20-30 minutes 6 times a day. A 3 hour core and rem naps is still polyphasic, but not the everyman schedule, with the everyman schedule you will never sleep more than 8 hours a day.

Didn´t the theory about polyphasic sleep schedules rely specially on the fact that a single sleep cycle lasts around 90 min, and all what they do is just play with its multiples? A lot of people who's into dreaming knows that after the first 2 or 3 full cycles of sleep the body is fully rested and that's why the REM stage lasts long during the last 2 or 3 cycles after that, because of the body apparently doesn't need to rest more. I remember some guy who claimed that sleeping the equivalent of 2 sleep cycles should allow you to feel rested enough to continue with your WL until the next time you feel tired when you should take a nap or so.

I don't know, I will carefully read @flowofmysoul's post to see what you mean, although it must be later, because of I have to go to sleep now. I work at night and have to sleep around 5 hours before that, then I must take 2 naps of an hour and a half each to keep on going...

Finally I have some time to spend on my favorite subject, dreams. Last days I was very busy and didn't have much time, although, I was paying more attention on my daily routine because of some points were not clear to me.

First of all, I read more than twice @flowofmysoul's post and it sounds like one of my successful one-full-cycle naps which I noticed not necessarily last an hour and a half and not always I have two per day. That is to say, I'm not a regular scheduled sleeper. Basically it depends on how many free time I have.

On the other hand, I think those polyphasic schedules are designed for people who wants to spend more time awake than sleeping. Perhaps that's why I don't find one that fits my sometimes 3 cycles core + 2 naps which can last from 30 min to around 1h 30 min. Perhaps the closest I find is the 'siesta sleep' just that I add one more cycle along the day when it's possible.

What about the amount of dreams during @flowofmysoul's one cycle sleep? Should I consider he had as many dreams as in a full time monophasic sleep? I don't think so, from his post I understand he felt completely rested after that nap, what has sense to me because of he got to sleep a full cycle without interruptions which included REM and nREM dreams that possibly included some FA's, that's all.

Originally Posted by Box77

Finally I have some time to spend on my favorite subject, dreams. Last days I was very busy and didn't have much time, although, I was paying more attention on my daily routine because of some points were not clear to me.

First of all, I read more than twice @flowofmysoul's post and it sounds like one of my successful one-full-cycle naps which I noticed not necessarily last an hour and a half and not always I have two per day. That is to say, I'm not a regular scheduled sleeper. Basically it depends on how many free time I have.

On the other hand, I think those polyphasic schedules are designed for people who wants to spend more time awake than sleeping. Perhaps that's why I don't find one that fits my sometimes 3 cycles core + 2 naps which can last from 30 min to around 1h 30 min. Perhaps the closest I find is the 'siesta sleep' just that I add one more cycle along the day when it's possible.

What about the amount of dreams during @flowofmysoul's one cycle sleep? Should I consider he had as many dreams as in a full time monophasic sleep? I don't think so, from his post I understand he felt completely rested after that nap, what has sense to me because of he got to sleep a full cycle without interruptions which included REM and nREM dreams that possibly included some FA's, that's all.

As for the amount of dreams, I did have very little dreams compared to what I have during full night sleep. Those were short fragments and short REM's, as I said 5-10 maximum. I think the reason why I felt rested was a combination of things, first of all I slept one full cycle, then I made my self think it was a full night and I had many short dreams. It was not time delation, it was a feeling that I slept full night.

Abstract:

During sleep we minimize mental distractions by putting our physical body to rest. In this state there is more room for an inner world to be experienced.

Perceptual reality is formed through experience, thus with a clearer mind we can extend the perceived time traversed.





Perceptual time is measured by moments of presence; the "framerate"


let:

-a flicker faster than b (dreamtime)
-b flicker consistantly (measured time)

time dilation0000.jpg

Hypothesis:

With more flickers in a shorter period, as in the case of the graph "a" could experience the same moments in half the time "b" would take to experience the same.

"b" would appear to move slower to "a"

This also can explain why dreams are capable of being more vivid and intricate then the physical world.





Note: this does not say that every dream will have this time dilation involved, only that there is a logical potential for it to occur.

I really like that idea finnegan. It makes it so that you don't always have to have time dilation, but if you practice long enough you might be able to beat the system and make your dreams longer.

When I have time extended dreams, they usually occur right before my alarm kicks off.

But what I notice is; say for example I look at the clock and it's 4:30 I have to wake up at 6:00. So I fall asleep, I might wake up at 4:58, again at 5:20 once more 5:38 and finally at 6:00.

During that 1.5 hours I've had 4-5 dreams. Probably only remember 1-2--the ones that stand out.

Of those that I remember, One of them probably went along with normal time. While the other might have felt like it lasted 2-3 hours.

The longest time span in a dream that I can think of, has been a day or so. But it didn't feel as I was trapped in the dream for a whole day. Some parts just seemed to skip ahead in fast-forward while the more interesting aspects of the dream went along at a normal pace.

Thanks Brandon! I've been studying the physics of the "drealm" a lot recently, and thought I should share this bit here. Had some inspiration from Einsteins relativity theory, glad to hear it came out understandable.

Originally Posted by Lucky27

When I have time extended dreams, they usually occur right before my alarm kicks off.

But what I notice is; say for example I look at the clock and it's 4:30 I have to wake up at 6:00. So I fall asleep, I might wake up at 4:58, again at 5:20 once more 5:38 and finally at 6:00.

During that 1.5 hours I've had 4-5 dreams. Probably only remember 1-2--the ones that stand out.

Of those that I remember, One of them probably went along with normal time. While the other might have felt like it lasted 2-3 hours.

The longest time span in a dream that I can think of, has been a day or so. But it didn't feel as I was trapped in the dream for a whole day. Some parts just seemed to skip ahead in fast-forward while the more interesting aspects of the dream went along at a normal pace.

Same with me, most of my long dreams happen when just before I wake up and the longer I sleep the longer my dream will be. The logic is easy here, the longer we sleep the longer REM's we have. So our last REM will be the longest REM, and it will feel like we spent long time there. See this graph as an example


Regarding your wake ups, I think every time you wake up, you come back to your REM dream with DEILD. I am not sure if we can wake up and return to REM phase? If anybody got info on this please share. I believe it is possible, I am sure somebody already did tests on this.

It is very hard to say whether you skipped some parts or not, try to think of your waking life day, you will also feel like you skipped most details and at first you will recall only main events. I think this is how our memory works, we do not remember every single moment. Of course if you sit and think more, you will recall most small details of the waking day, but also some details you wont be able to recall anymore. Same with dream, when you wake up you will remember only main events, from even to event, try to visit chat and slowly step by step start writing your dream and you will start remembering all small details, or even write it into your DJ when you wake up and you will notice that the more you write the more details you will recall.
Some people might say that we imagine and complete our dream using our imagination, you can apply same for recalling your full waking day. Again that's how our memory works, we miss some details and sometimes we complete the picture using our imagination. Sometimes it is hard to understand whether your really had that moment or you simply added it on.

Originally Posted by Finnegan

Abstract:

During sleep we minimize mental distractions by putting our physical body to rest. In this state there is more room for an inner world to be experienced.

Perceptual reality is formed through experience, thus with a clearer mind we can extend the perceived time traversed.





Perceptual time is measured by moments of presence; the "framerate"


let:

-a flicker faster than b (dreamtime)
-b flicker consistantly (measured time)

time dilation0000.jpg

Hypothesis:

With more flickers in a shorter period, as in the case of the graph "a" could experience the same moments in half the time "b" would take to experience the same.

"b" would appear to move slower to "a"

This also can explain why dreams are capable of being more vivid and intricate then the physical world.





Note: this does not say that every dream will have this time dilation involved, only that there is a logical potential for it to occur.

Great post, this reminds me of FPS in games and Hz in Monitors. You are right this might explain why some dreams are more vivid then the others.

Recently I read article about how sleep forms our memories. Basically it explains that when we sleep we do a clean up in our memories, we delete what is less useful or less important and we re-play and anchor stronger what is important to us. The clean up process happens in nREM phase only. The reason why we cannot clean-up during waking life is because there is a lot of distraction and noise. We form memories by creating connections between neurons, so when memories are deleted those connections dissolve.

I think that our brain might have a limit of what we can remember and experience per day. On our first sleep most of the time we spend on cleaning up our memory during nREM and this is the reason why in our first sleep cycle our REM is very short. On every next sleep cycle our clean up process is shorter and our REM phase is longer and we dream longer.
I think our dreams memories might be lighter then our waking life memories. By saying "lighter" I am saying that they are printer lighter, they exist but they are not anchored enough to have the same weight as waking life memory. Dream memories are lighter and they can be deleted faster, this is the reason why in our last sleep cycles we can dream for a really long time. In the end of our sleep we cleaned up most of our useless memories and we have a lot of space to dream, so we can have really long dreams followed by a very short cleanup because clean up of dream memories is much easier and faster then clean up of waking life memories.

I have more to say, but I am late for my training. I will reply more later

Originally Posted by Finnegan

With more flickers in a shorter period, as in the case of the graph "a" could experience the same moments in half the time "b" would take to experience the same.

"b" would appear to move slower to "a"

The amount of flickers should have a limit, otherwise there wouldn't exist the 'Wagon-wheel effect' to the eyes under continuous illumination if it's valid the theory that it's because of the brain takes snapshots of reality. There's another theory that states it's possible that the brain superimposes its own motion effect to the real one to explain that peculiar optical illusion.

I was wondering if it would be possible that the brain is not working on just one single sequence, but many at almost the same time using different areas to work on each one separately from the others, and it sort of overlaps two or more sequences of the same story like a transition between scenes in a main point of view which could be what we perceive.

Box77:

Yes the alternate theory posited for this effect may be a cause in some cases as well. I'm not yet saying the dilation principle is limitless either, I was just making the process clear, to prove that it can occur. Although as was said earlier our memory works like a movie, remembering the important things and assuming time by transition. It is quite possible that our mind can emulate this effect to give the illusion that we have spent more time in a dream than we really did. Both possible causes make a good point and present a serious hurdle if we wish to know which one we are experiencing in a particular instance.

P.S.

One solution to telling the difference as flowofmysoul mentioned is that if we have a good enough ability for recall, we will notice either a lack or excess of experienced details.

Another is the classic cited method Stephen Laberge used to measure time in dreams, although somewhat difficult to set up, could give more credible scientific evidence.

^^I think your point about the brain minimizes mental distractions plays a very important role in all this time effect.

Originally Posted by flowofmysoul

On our first sleep most of the time we spend on cleaning up our memory during nREM and this is the reason why in our first sleep cycle our REM is very short. On every next sleep cycle our clean up process is shorter and our REM phase is longer and we dream longer.

Perhaps that's the reason why some polyphasic schedule models seem to suppress the longer REM cycles, because of the body already did the most fundamental maintenance, after that I think we just get high with vast amounts of self-made melatonin . And that people who made those long WL schedules apparently doesn't enjoy dreaming.

Originally Posted by Box77

^^I think your point about the brain minimizes mental distractions plays a very important role in all this time effect.

Yes, it made me think of part of an induction method. It would work similar to meditation; by clearing our consciousness of all unnecessary distractions, and then using that extra focus to immerse ourselves in the inner space. Although this could require a great deal of practice to consistently attain enough added focus to cause a noticeable dilation.


this ability is not limited to dream, but since it works through focused awareness, it can also improve reaction time while awake. Check this out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdD59aqjSMk

Originally Posted by Finnegan

this ability is not limited to dream, but since it works through focused awareness, it can also improve reaction time while awake. Check this out. Anthony Kelly - Ripleys Paintball - YouTube

Heeyy!! I love paintball!!! By the way, that's a pretty good timing

Yeah I know, self-discipline perhaps could be the cornerstone to achieve most of the goals that one proposes to him or herself, specially in the fields of lucid dreaming.

Edit: I was mentally checking the video that you posted and I found some other implicit things that fits like the piece of a puzzle in some of the stuff I was recently thinking: Attitude and anticipation, the first one apparently goes hand in hand with self-discipline, but I want to focus on the second one, which I think could actively intervene in time perception:

Perhaps, many of the things we remember, we just anticipated them to happen although they didn't really happen.

That's it by now, it's time for me to go to sleep.

I am starting to think that there is some fixed time speed in our dreams and it is faster then our waking life. I read many topics on this discussion and what I saw is that most people failed to attain time dilation on purpose. Most people who tried to slow or accelerate time failed, or did very little changes.
Also from my experience time dilation was almost always random, the situation that I wrote recently did not have any time dilation inside my dream. I simply felt like I slept full night, same for the dreams.

Long time dilation is very different, this happens very randomly. First of all it usually happens in "alien dream type" (more on my types of dreams here - http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...eam-types.html). You appear in such dream and you already know that it is different, at first you doubt that this is going to be a long dream, but the longer you dream the more you believe in it. You feel like you are awake, days pass by and you know you are dreaming, you can even go to sleep and wake up after a moment without any recall (at least in my case no recall in dream dreaming). You start a new day, you start another day. You say to your self that this is dream and it is already 3rd day passing by, you try to pay attention to details and all details are there, you are not moving from main event to main event. And this is what is interesting, I do not know a single case where somebody could achieve this type of time dilation on purpose. And when you wake up, feelings from such dream are really different, you cannot mistake them with any other type of dream, you wake up and you feel like you just passed a long course of study, your head is full of memories, you do not feel rested at all.

So what could push us unconsciously to such long dreams?

And do you think we dream at the same speed as we are living our waking life or everything is going faster in our dreams?

During your WL, have you ever been involved in such an interesting activity that hours seem to run like minutes? Perhaps during those apparently long dreams, the brain is using some sort of reverse algorithm to show us minutes that seem to last hours.

I will take into account 4 points in my attempt to explain it:

a. In nature, everything seem to move in a cyclic way.
b. If we take ourselves as the point of reference, our consciousness doesn't move. It's the world which moves around us.
c. During dreams, we are always doing something. I remember reading something about some corporal activity during REM stage is similar when we are immerse in some activity of our interest during WL.
d. If nature seem to be represented by fractal geometry, and dreams are part of nature, perhaps dreams could be represented under the same fractal principles.

There's a theory which states that the amount of deep sleep vs REM sleep, basically depends on the type of fatigue we present: body or mental. It's known that the REM sleep could vary from 90 - 120 min along the night. Although to exemplify, I will use an intermediate value, so I will have T= 1h 45min of REM sleep (or dreams) along a successful night of sleep.

Now I would like to perform some virtual experimentation, this time I won't consider physical fatigue in order to understand some phenomena I want to explain:

A.
A.png
Subject M must stay still the estimated time T of 1h of 45 min, in front of a clock, trying not to get distracted by other things (should I consider meditation as another type of distraction?), and focusing just in how time T passes by. As the mind tends to lose focused attention approximately every 10 sec, and the sustained attention span varies from 20 - 40 min, it could be a very painful experience.

B.
B.png
Now let M go for a walk alone from point X to point Y in the same time T. That's around 4 Km long if he walks at a speed of almost 1.5 m/sec. The only consideration is that M must pay attention on the followed path. This experience shouldn't be as painful as in A.

C.
C.png
In this 3rd experience we will add a second subject W who must be of M's interest and viceversa, and we will let them walk together and talk of whatever they want from point X to Y in the same amount of time. What most probably will happen is they won't notice the long path like in B if they get immerse in a very interesting conversation about their lives and perhaps it would be more painful to them when they get to Y apparently so fast from their point of view.


So, what happened? Why the time perceived by M in A seemed to last much more than in C?

I think because of M focused on it. That's why perhaps it's very difficult to exert time dilation when you pay too much attention on it.

I could conclude, that we are not using real time to measure what we dream but the events we dream as a reference to deduce time that compared to the actual elapsed time seem to be much longer. Such events don't necessarily last what their counterparts in WL because they could be summarized in a definite number of cycles, which according to the self-similarity statement in fractal theory there's a small portion that has the exact same characteristics of the whole.