Tons of awakenings and crazy dream recall when I go to bed much earlier than normal

So, I have decided to get back into lucid dreaming again, and my past experience has been that I tend to have an easier time with this when I go to bed early - so earlier this evening I went to bed much earlier than normal (9:30 PM this time, and I usually go to bed at 4-5 AM, lol), and I have noticed that I can catch my natural awakenings very easily, and I also have an amazing dream recall.
In the beginning I slept for about 90 minutes, and at that point I already had memories of at least 2-3 different dreams - then I fell asleep again for maybe an hour and got a couple more dream memories from that.
This has been going on for a while now, and right now it is 2:00 AM where I live, and I am about to go to sleep again, and it's gonna be interesting to see what will happen throughout the rest of the night.

What are your opinions on all this?
Is it a healthy sleep pattern, and do you think that the time you go to bed affects how successful you will be with lucid dreaming?

I think that most every person has the idea of consistent healthy sleep schedule in it. It is one of the three things that you should work on every day. :( you make me sad if that isn't something that I am spreading around the forum very well. I recommend working on recall, lucidity, and sleep schedule every day in some form.
I am glad that you have increased recall! Get to bed! :)

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Originally Posted by Sensei

I think that most every person has the idea of consistent healthy sleep schedule in it. It is one of the three things that you should work on every day. :( you make me sad if that isn't something that I am spreading around the forum very well. I recommend working on recall, lucidity, and sleep schedule every day in some form.
I am glad that you have increased recall! Get to bed! :)

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I have seen you mention these things a couple times, and I understand your point, however I was thinking more about the fact that I have made such a significant change in my betime schedules by going from 4-5 AM to 9-10 PM like this, and I am also not sure exactly how ideal this will be since my going to sleep so late in the night at most times obviously makes me qualify a night-owl.
However, I have noticed several times that my dream recall for some reason sky-rockets when I go to bed early, and I also really like getting up very early in the morning when I am actually rested (in fact, I would enjoy getting up as early as 4 AM if I could get used to it in the future), so I kinda want to get used to these early times when going to bed and getting up.
Would that be a healthy goal for a night-owl like me? :cheeky:

By the way, I study at a university right now, where almost all lectures and classes are completely optional (and a lot of them take place in the afternoon as well, which is cool), except for occasional laborations and stuff, so that's why I can mess around with my sleep schedule like this.

It's pretty consistent with me: to bed after midnight, poor/weak recall, dreams hazy/more vague. To bed before midnight, excellent recall, long/present/vivid dreams.

Just because you go to bed late doesn't make you a night owl, just a college kid. When I was going to college, I was consistently getting 4 hours of sleep every night because I had a full time job as well. I didn't think it was a big deal until I started LDing and switched to a perfect schedule during a summer where my wife was studying abroad. When she got back, we both tried staying up a little later for a month or so, but it couldn't compare to how rested you are and how amazing it is to actually sleep at night. I used to get in a car wreck (rear end another car) every year due to tiredness. I have add already, and when you aren't well rested, attention goes down too. I haven't been in a car wreck since I started LDing and sleeping good. it is pretty drastic for someone like me, but it should be drastic for everyone's recall. Your body was built to sleep in the night time. If you don't sleep at night, you won't know what it is like to be well rested. I know that some people seem to be an "acception", but those people are generally lethargic compared to me. :P

One thing you left out, Laurelindo: are you sleeping longer when you go to bed at 9pm?

If you are, then it might not be that your dream recall has improved, but that you are simply dreaming more, and those extra dreams are coming later in your sleep cycle, when your mind is closer to a waking state, when the dreams tend to be easier to remember (at least for a few minutes after waking).

If you are not sleeping longer, then I got nothin'. Where you insert your sleep cycle in your day is a matter of comfort and convenience relative directly to you, and, once it becomes routine, should not really change your dream recall (as long as nothing else changes, like the number of hours you sleep, or, say, the number of times you remember waking up during that sleep).

Sageous. Staying up later than midnight often results in people being too tired when they sleep (even if well rested) due to the fact that your body prepares to sleep at night time. Making people that stay up till 1 sleep until 11 and have less aware dreams (since they are going to sleep more tired) whereas people that go to sleep around 10 will wake up around 7 or 8 if well rested. Generally they will have more dreams and aware dreams too. This is the way all sleep books have mentioned, but I often see it contradicted here. Sleep at night time is note restful, and you require less. However everyone on DV mentions consistency vs a good sleep schedule. I know that all the "books" have different ideas and disagree on the amount of sleep you should get at certain ages, but they all agree that sleep at night is better for your mind.

Not trying to argue, but I definitely see this a lot when mentioning recall, and I thought it would be worth mentioning that I have never seen anything to contradict it. But I definitely think that everyone needs to find their own path with lding in most ways, so try different ways, do this for a month or two and then switch. See what works best for you. The first few days of a new technique or sleep schedule can give false results.

^^ Thank you for sharing all that information, Sensei, though I was already aware of it.

I'm not arguing either, and I understand that you were not standing firmly behind the information you provided, but I must say that I do not believe that you are bound or most likely to be more tired if you go to bed after midnight; many people (myself included) often don't begin to get tired until well after midnight, and going to bed at 9pm can result not in more or better sleep, but in just a few extra hours of restless wakefulness while you wait to become tired (or, worse, while you struggle to make yourself tired). Also, I'm pretty sure that in most latitudes even 4am is generally a time that still occurs at nighttime ;) ... I wasn't talking about sleeping during the day.

I think that when you go to bed ought to be based on when you are tired or when you know you need to go to bed based upon when you must get up in the morning, and not on potentially arbitrary numbers on a clock... especially when those arbitrary numbers are set by "experts" in books rather than your own experience:

I've been smiling at the "facts" supplied by books for decades, especially when I looked into the research that supported them, which was usually little to none: sleep studies are difficult to do on their face, given sleep's very subjective nature, and the fact that people tend to behave much differently in labs than at home (which leaves "studies" like surveys, which can be remarkably inaccurate, or perhaps simply making assumptions based on known physiology or common sense, two things we LDers already tend to defy regularly). This might indicate why the books draw so many different conclusions, BTW.

And, anecdotally, I am a night owl as well, feeling most comfortable going to sleep somewhere around 3am and getting up around 10. I've been doing this for years with no ill effects and fine dream recall... not to mention that I practice polyphasic sleep for one to two months per year, where, despite a sleep schedule that radically defies the "9pm" rule, my recall only improves and I usually feel fairly rested (I would do polyphasic sleep all the time, BTW, if my waking-life schedule and wife permitted it). But that's just me, of course!

I really do believe that we can get a good night's sleep at any time during the night. Whether you go to bed at 9pm or 3am is inconsequential, if you are getting a full night's sleep (also variable, BTW: I do fine these days with 5 or fewer hours' sleep, but younger people should get at least 7). The only exception to this is flipping the whole thing and sleeping during the day, which is not a good formula -- though this is more related to screwing with circadian rhythm than it does hours slept.

Finally, I totally agree with your advice to do some experimenting to find the sleep times and lengths that best suit your recall and LD'ing needs.

Hey there Laurelindo,

I believe that whenever we make changes in our sleep patterns, the immediate result is that your sleep tends to be lighter then first few days because our body isn't used to it. Its the same reason why people report dreaming more when they're on holiday or sleeping in a new bed/house. Our body is conditioned to have certain patterns of activity associated with our internal clock. Throw this upside down, and our sleep tends to be lighter (because the body is ready to be active during the time you're trying to sleep).

Lighter sleep generally results in higher consciousness (more recall, higher chance of lucidity).

The downside of this however, is that your body isn't getting as much rest as it would normally have with this lighter sleep, and so unless you sleep longer, it's going to start sleeping deeper again after a few days to catch up and recover. Eventually, after these ups and downs, it'll get conditioned on your new sleep pattern and it'll be back to normal.

Anyways, just my 2 cents.

-Redrivertears-

Good discussion. I suppose I kinda agree with all the above, with the caveat that it's all relative and depends on experimentation. I'll just highlight a few points:

1. I think there are more factors at play for sleep quality and LDing then just the daily ratio of hours asleep to wake. Thing like temperature, light, sound, and social cues. For that reason, I think a prudent first approach is to try a "normal" sleep schedule from about 10pm-6am. It might seem boring, but why fight millennia of evolution? On the other hand, personal circumstances, habits, and modernity may weight in heavier on a case-by-case basis. The schedule of a student, or someone with shift work, or someone conditioned to an unusual schedule might find a different optimal interval for sleep.

2. I liked Redrivertears point that the novelty of a new routine might influence LDing by making sleep lighter in the short-term. In the mid-term, this novelty might wear off. But if you establish a new schedule that benefits you holistically in dreaming, studying, living, etc, then it's worth the adjustment.

3. I don't want to get righteous, but in some cases, an odd sleep schedule might be an indicator of health concerns or bad habits. I'm not seeing that in any of the experience shared in this thread so far, but I think it's worth mentioning. I'm talking about stress, anxiety, caffeine, television, social media, and all those things that can consume our time in unproductive ways.