WBTB/DILD Timing Issues

So for the past few nights I've been trying WBTB with DILD, but I seem to be having issues with the timing. Each time I've woken up about 4:45AM after falling asleep around midnight, so nearly after five hours. At first I would stay up around 40-45 minutes and go on Dreamviews before going back to sleep with the mantra "This is a dream". The problem I had was that I was too awake and couldn't fall asleep for quite a while so I think the thought left my head and I couldn't go lucid and also had recall problems.

I decided to change this and have been staying awake for roughly only 15 minutes and have been listening to an mp3 from Really's thread in Lucid Aids during that time. I also go and drink a cup of apple juice as this is supposed to help with vividness. Unfortunately, I still had the same problem of being too awake even though I was only up for 15 minutes this time.

My question is do you guys think I should continue to wake up around 4:45 (About 5 hours of sleep) and just stay up long enough to go get a cup of apple juice, this would only be a couple minutes? Or, would it be a better idea to get up at an earlier time and continue using this mp3? If the second choice, what time would you suggest waking up at?

I was thinking of waking up more around 3:30 (Three and a half hours of sleep), but I wasn't sure if this would be too early and longer REM periods wouldn't start until later.

Thanks

Thread i posted a few days ago describes my wbtb schedule and time window to go lucid. namaste.

http://www.dreamviews.com/f11/where-...cidity-117871/

I feel like I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep if I stayed awake for an hour, but you would say that waking up just about two or three hours after I fall asleep would be a fine period to go get a drink of apple juice and listen to the mp3? The only thing I'm worried about is waking up too early to take advantage of longer REM periods. Thanks for the response.

On avg. Non rem is about 90 mins at the onset of sleep. So two or three hours should be gd enough for your first non rem cycle. You have to experiment to find out where your non rem period begins and ends. Also by doing wake back to bed you should develope a natural time in which u get up in the morning. 3,4,5am etc. This is important because you want to fall back to sleep during the period your body is trying to naturally wake u up. Once u have a natural wake up time it doesn't matter if u get only 1 hr of sleep your body will always wake u up at around that time. In my case it's 3:30am. When u figure out your timing you'll atleast have gd recall of dreams every morning.