Thread: dream recall- first 2-3 hours

Originally Posted by yuriythebest

right, I know it's probably due to the short REM cycles at the beginning but I do not usually recall anything the first 2-3 hours of sleep beyond maybe an emotion or an image or something that goes away very quickly. Is this normal or are you able to recall dreams from this period?

Never really tried, but, I've always assumed that you should be able to provided you woke up within a REM period. The first one should be around 90minutes in, so, wake up at 1h and 40minutes or so

I generally have very poor recall from my first few hours of sleep each night. The party usually starts after four hours or so. If I do a WBTB at five hours in I can usually remember several dreams before waking, and several more afterward.

Originally Posted by yuriythebest

right, I know it's probably due to the short REM cycles at the beginning but I do not usually recall anything the first 2-3 hours of sleep beyond maybe an emotion or an image or something that goes away very quickly. Is this normal or are you able to recall dreams from this period?

I don't think I can recall much more than you do. Maybe an image or thought, but as you said, it goes away very quickly.

Try setting an alarm about 2 hours into sleep. I think it's just the fact that one keeps on dreaming for so long, and sleeping for so long, that it's difficult to remember these dreams, and I've always kind of assumed that it's harder to really wake up after only two hours of sleep. When I set an alarm like this, I can often remember a very vivid dream.

Originally Posted by yuriythebest

right, I know it's probably due to the short REM cycles at the beginning but I do not usually recall anything the first 2-3 hours of sleep beyond maybe an emotion or an image or something that goes away very quickly. Is this normal or are you able to recall dreams from this period?

I'm sometimes able to recall dreams from the first couple of hours after falling asleep, but mostly vague stuff and not very detailed. About a week ago though, I actually looked at what time I woke up after falling asleep at midnight, the time was around 2am, but the interesting thing for me was that the dream was quite vivid and also quite a lengthy one at about 20 mins or so.

One thing to try if you've got a an hour or two spare in the evening is to take a nap and set your alarm for an hour and a half, then see if you have any recall of a dream. Then keep knocking off say 15 mins or thereabouts and see if you're still able to recall anything. The smallest amount of time I've been able to have a dream and recall it, is around 50 mins to an hour.