WBTB: Waking Up Early?

[Liolar]

I've been trying WBTB recently, and know that I should get at least six hours' sleep before waking up; last night I went to bed at 2:45 a.m and set an alarm for 9:00, but I' ve woken up at 7:30; what should I do about waking up early? Should I go straight back to sleep to make up for lost time, then when up at my intended time and have my period of wakefulness? Or should I have my period of wakefulness earlier (when I woke up naturally), cancel my original alarm, and then go back to sleep?

[spellbee2]

I think based on your previous post about what time you set your alarm for WBTB, your body has kind of gotten used to getting up at 7:30, so it automatically wakes itself up expecting the alarm to go off. Usually when you wake up naturally, you've just finished a REM cycle, so that is the perfect time for WBTB. I would suggest having your period of wakefulness then and just turn off your original alarm.

[martakartus]

I agree with spellbee2. It also happens to me a lot, I set an alarm and end up waking up before it goes off, but when this happens I just turn it off and do the WBTB normally. I have had good results with it, so I guess it's preferable that you wake up just after a REM period even if it's four hours into sleep, than you sleep the full six hours but are awoken when not in REM.

[Liolar]

Thanks guys! I'll bear this in mind for the next time this happens. ^^ If I wake up earlier than intended I'll just switch the alarm off; when I woke up earlier today I realised that if I kept the alarm on it would wake me up after just another hour and a half of sleep, which obviously wouldn't be nearly enough time to even enter a REM cycle, so I turned it off. It's a relief to know I don't have to bother waking up and then going back to sleep only to be woken up by an alarm and have to go back to sleep all over again!

[MisakaMikoto]

cancel my original alarm, and then go back to sleep? You don't need to do that unless you want to keep your plan strict for specific ways or techniques There are few cases in which you'd want to do that. For example: - Your doing CAN-WILD,Alarm DEILD or other technique in which you want to hit REM - You woke up way too early. After like 3 - 5 hours. And you wanted to wake up after seven hours before doing your technique raid

[FryingMan]

Take the wakings as they come. After doing enough WBTBs you will be able to judge better your drowsiness/wakefulness to determine how long (if at all) to stay up. And avoid alarms if at all possible, unless it's very gentle and preferably auto-off/snooze. For one thing reaching to turn off the alarm can damage dream recall. For another alarms tend to activate the reticular system waking you up for the day. Practice setting intention to notice your middle of the night wakings after sleep cycles and turn them in to micro- or full WBTBs.