Thread: How do you sleep normally after LDing regularly?

This sounds less like something caused by regular lucid dreaming and more like a general sleeping problem. Most of what I've gotten from other people suggests that lucid dreaming is no more draining than regular dreaming... If anything, enjoying the experience is more restful than a nightmare, for example. Sleeping while lucid is still "normal" sleep - after all, many people naturally lucid dream every night, and they can still function just fine during the day. Without knowing anything more specific about your sleep patterns, there's not much to be said about the cause. Has your sleep specialist made any suggestions for improving the quality of your sleep? Also, how long do you normally sleep at night?

As for the false awakenings, the number of them is higher than I typically experience, but the content isn't that unusual. I've been other people in false awakenings before. This might simply be an expression of wanting to stay in your dreams (i.e. You tell yourself you don't want to get up yet, so you meet the need to wake up by "waking up" in another dream environment), but that's a matter reserved for dream interpretation. What do you think?

I would be very interested to speak with someone who is a regular LDer. I can function during the day but have been exhausted. I was told that I don't touch the stage 4 sleep and that I spend most my night in REM. They gave me sleeping pills which took my dreaming away completely. I have stopped taking them in hopes that I can find a balance through practice. I love to dream and would be happy if I only dreamed part of the night instead of almost all the night. Most people will bump into the different stages of sleep but once I hit dream state I will stay there unless I get woken up. That means that I only really have one dream per night and it lasts forever. I can change the dream as I see fit so it doesn't get boring but it does get tiresome.

Taken from a medical journal...

Stages of Sleep

Usually sleepers pass through five stages: 1, 2, 3, 4 and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. These stages progress cyclically from 1 through REM then begin again with stage 1. A complete sleep cycle takes an average of 90 to 110 minutes. The first sleep cycles each night have relatively short REM sleeps and long periods of deep sleep but later in the night, REM periods lengthen and deep sleep time decreases.

Stage 1 is light sleep where you drift in and out of sleep and can be awakened easily. In this stage, the eyes move slowly and muscle activity slows. During this stage, many people experience sudden muscle contractions preceded by a sensation of falling.

In stage 2, eye movement stops and brain waves become slower with only an occasional burst of rapid brain waves. When a person enters stage 3, extremely slow brain waves called delta waves are interspersed with smaller, faster waves. In stage 4, the brain produces delta waves almost exclusively. Stages 3 and 4 are referred to as deep sleep or delta sleep, and it is very difficult to wake someone from them. In deep sleep, there is no eye movement or muscle activity. This is when some children experience bedwetting, sleepwalking or night terrors. In 2008 the sleep profession in the US eliminated the use of stage 4. Stages 3 and 4 are now considered stage 3.

In the REM period, breathing becomes more rapid, irregular and shallow, eyes jerk rapidly and limb muscles are temporarily paralyzed. Brain waves during this stage increase to levels experienced when a person is awake. Also, heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, males develop erections and the body loses some of the ability to regulate its temperature. This is the time when most dreams occur, and, if awoken during REM sleep, a person can remember the dreams. Most people experience three to five intervals of REM sleep each night.

Infants spend almost 50% of their time in REM sleep. Adults spend nearly half of sleep time in stage 2, about 20% in REM and the other 30% is divided between the other three stages. Older adults spend progressively less time in REM sleep.

brain waves of different sleep stages

As sleep research is still a relatively young field, scientists did not discover REM sleep until 1953 when new machines were developed to monitor brain activity. Before this discovery it was believed that most brain activity ceased during sleep. Since then, scientists have also disproved the idea that deprivation of REM sleep can lead to insanity and have found that lack of REM sleep can alleviate clinical depression although they do not know why. Recent theories link REM sleep to learning and memory.
Stage Frequency (Hz) Amplitude (micro Volts) Waveform type
awake 15-50 <50
pre-sleep 8-12 50 alpha rhthym
1 4-8 50-100 theta
2 4-15 50-150 splindle waves
3 2-4 100-150 spindle waves and slow waves
4 0.5-2 100-200 slow waves and delta waves
REM 15-30 <50

Apparently I skip the stage 4 and stay in REM too long. I was told that stage 4 is where the rest for my brain comes from and because I don't touch that I am not getting the right type of sleep. The only thing I can think of is that LD's are related and stopping me from shutting my brain off completely. I need a way to stop the LD's.

I have a suggestion on another thread that I should try and "go to sleep" in my dream. I'm going to try this one tonight and see how it works.

Maybe - when you are dreaming and you are lucid and you want to find a place to sleep - summon a bed and go to sleep within your dream?