Counting dreams

I am often confused when people refer to dreams in the same night as separate experiences. I used to assume that a typical night involved something like one long dream with an incoherent storyline, and I assumed that gaps in memory often made it difficult to connect certain "scenes" (logically or chronologically) after waking up. By the way, I do not have great dream recall. I read something like "the average person has 3-5 dreams every night" on Wikipedia, and I've read stories where people say they have multiple lucid dreams in one night. So I was wondering what defines the "boundary" between multiple dreams, if it isn't waking up. I guess there are physiological signs like REM sleep, but Wikipedia only says that "most" dreams occur during REM sleep.

Well for example, I remember waking up several times during the night, and each time I wake up will count the previous dream as a dream of its own. Thats what I use to make a difference.

Good question 2bat16. I didn't start thinking about this until like a month or 2 ago. I dream journal multiple times a night. So lets say I dream journaled at 1:32 A M and went back to sleep. That was dream 1. Then I dream journaled at like 2:51 A M. That was dream two. Then I went back to sleep. And dream journaled at 4:01 A M. that was dream three.

Then I noticed that sometimes it was all one dream during that time. But other times they seemed separate to me. Sometimes they seemed like continuous scenes of the same dream. Other times they seemed like separate, shorter dreams.

Sometimes it is clearer. Like if I dream chain... Those are separate dreams. If I clearly appear back in my bed between them.

So usually what I just do now, is each time I draem journal I consider that a separate "*Round* of Dreams". That means it just was from the time I dream journaled last until now or whenever. It could be one long dream or 5 short mini dreams in that REM period, whether I woke between the dreams briefly or not.

So I would say (and I will do this too) just keep paying attention to how the dream/dream(s) feel. Did they feel like separate dreams? Or was it all one dream? It could vary from night to night.

I can have one long dream that jumps from scene to scene. Somehow it still feels like one long dream though.

Hope that helped. I think its a really interesting question. When does one dream start and the other ends.

I don't believe there is any kind of authoritative rule on what constitutes a “boundary” between dreams. If your recall ever develops to the point where you start remembering bits and pieces of your nondream sleep, or even consciously witnessing entire transitions between dreams without waking up (yes, it's possible), you'll probably realize just how blurry the line really is.

So, I think everyone just happens to come up with their own “rules”. Personally, if I'm not sure if two scenes were part of the same dream or not, I'll just journal them by my best guess as to whether they were (even if that sometimes comes down to just practically flipping a coin :P). Another common question is whether to consider separate parts of a DEILD separate dreams. Since there is technically a brief awakening (or close to it) between elements of a DEILD chain, some might argue that they are technically separate dreams. But if the content were very similar, as in I continue right where I left off, I'd be inclined to record it all as “one” dream because mentally I would think of it the whole thing as being in essence a single, cohesive episode.

In short, I say it's up to you. :)

The reason people have separate dreams in the same night is because our sleep cycles go in 90 minute intervals. We only really dream during the REM part at the end of that cycle and stop dreaming for a while in between. After sleeping for many hours the time between gets smaller and your dreams might start to run together. Still though, your mind can wander unexpectedly to a different setting and you forget what you were doing just a moment ago. This could also be grounds for labeling it a separate dream. As you get better at dream recall you will start to pick up on how your sleep cycle effects the rhythm of your dreams. Eventually you will even be able to remember multiple distinct dreams from earlier sleep cycles.

Like TravisE said, there is stuff to remember outside of the dream bits. I've never been good at staying conscious outside of REM so I rarely remember which is part of why I'm not great at WILD. :P