Thread: Stages of Sleep.

I think there was a pretty good tutotial in the 'tutorials' forum-part.

But it annoyed me too that it isn't all That clear when you have what kind of sleep and stuff.. ^^

From a research paper i wrote a while ago.

In order to even begin to understand lucid dreaming, one must first know the basics of normal sleep and how it affects one's dreaming state. "Although sleep may seem like a steady state," the Lucidity Institute clarifies that "it actually consists of several stages that cycle through the night." In these cycles, the brain emits different brain waves because the brain's chemistry is changing with different brain waves. The first stage is unsurprisingly named Stage One, and it "is a kind of twilight zone between waking and sleeping and takes about five to ten minutes"(ld4all) long to complete. In this short transition stage, a person's eyes begin to slightly roll back and fourth. Theta waves are dominant, while short burst of "waking-life" alpha waves are present. (dream) A person in this stage will feel relaxed and may even experience a falling or floating sensation due to their muscles being slowly shut down. It is also common to hear sounds or see color and scene images. (dream) This is the time when most people quickly review events during the day and imagine what they have to do the next. As this stage quickly passes it leads into light sleep.
Light sleep, as it is called because "you are easily awakened," is known as Stage Two. (ld4all) If someone was to call out and ask a person in Stage Two if they are asleep, they would say that they were just sleepy and resting their eyes. Sharp peaks or theta waves begin to climb in intensity as this stage progresses. According to studies published at dreamviews.com, light sleep "can be as short as a few seconds or as long as ten minutes."
Within twenty minutes from the beginning of the sleep cycle a person enters the deep sleep of Stage Three and Stage Four. Heart rate dramatically drops, and as the body calms, One's heart rate and respiratory rate become steady. (dream) Dreamviews states that the brain emits half slow delta waves and the other half consist of theta waves. They also explain that this is the time when a person's body repairs itself by replenishing cells, and restoring the body. When adolescents and children are still growing, this is the stage where the growing takes place, thus they "will literally grow overnight." (dream) It is extremely difficult to be awakened from this deep sleep, and if you were "you would feel fuzzy and disoriented, and you'd want nothing more than to go back to sleep." (dream)
When Stage Three and Stage Four are completed, the "NREM" cycle is complete. The cycle will then go in reverse order up to Stage One and repeat, but the next time it continues past Stage Four into REM. (dream)
The final limb of the sleep cycle is REM, which stands for rapid eye movement. Along with the rapid eye movement, a person's blood pressure rises and their pulse quickens. (ld4all) This is the stage where lucid dreams can be tapped into and "although dreaming occurs during the other stages of sleep, the most vivid dreams occurs during the REM stage." (dream) The most unusual attribute of REM is that your brain begins to emit beta waves (dream) and "from your brain activity one would say you are wide awake."(ld4all) Fortunately the ld4all website tells us that the body is paralyzed during all of this. It is believed to be an internal protection system to prevent a person from acting out their dreams and potentially hurting themselves or others. Luckily for lucid dreamers, the REM Stage can last as long as ten minutes and increase from there because "with each cycle the duration of the REM-Sleep increases. In the last two hours of sleep the REM-Stage can be as long as an hour."(ld4all)
Just as the cycle repeats after Stage Four, the cycle repeats after the REM Stage. After the REM Stage is completed it reverses into the NREM Stages again. Studies at Dreamviews conclude that "one complete sleep cycle lasts about 90 to 100 minutes; therefore during an average sleep period a person will experience 4 to 5 complete sleep cycles." Of course, that all depends on the amount of sleep a person gets.

(lol, I pulled a "leo" )