Amount of recalls

[Lillyth]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it and I would really like to know. Is it possible to remember 10 dreams in one night? Today I remembered 10 dreams and I've written them all down. Two of them aren't very detailed, but the others were really detailed and pretty lengthy. Now, of course I was very proud of that because I usually only remember 5 or 6 dreams at the most, so I posted that on facebook. One of my best friends (who is a natural lucid dreamer and knows rather a lot about dreaming in general) said that that's not possible, and that it were probably only little fragments. But really... 8 out of 10 of my recalls today are very detailed and lengthy, so those can't just be fragments...right? I'm really confused now and that's why I decided to post it here to ask what you guys think of it.

[Robot_Butler]

It depends on how you slept. It is not normal to have 10 full REM cycles in a night, which is probably what your friend is talking about. You can have multiple dreams in one REM cycle, dreams in NREM sleep, and even chains of dreams late in the morning. After recovering from a severe lack of sleep, I've had nights where I felt like I dreamed the entire time.

[Lillyth]

thank you for clearing that up for me : ) I slept about 11 hours and it was indeed after a couple of days with little to no sleep.

[zhineTech]

It depends on how you slept. It is not normal to have 10 full REM cycles in a night, which is probably what your friend is talking about. You can have multiple dreams in one REM cycle, dreams in NREM sleep, and even chains of dreams late in the morning. After recovering from a severe lack of sleep, I've had nights where I felt like I dreamed the entire time. +1 that is phenomenal recall btw, congrats! this will help you with lucidity. i, for one, don't think one should define "a dream" as a single continuous REM cycle. there are numerous "dream episodes" that can be broken up and divided by awakenings, plots, cycles, and other factors. but that puts forth the question of how one defines a "single unit of dreaming..." whats the difference between a shift in scene and an entirely new dream? if you have a dream, wake up, and then return to the same scenery, characters, and plot, then does that count as one or two dreams? i know when i go through my DJ i can usually tell where one dream stopped and a new one started, but there are times when i am not sure if the fragments are from one or many dreams.