Thread: When do I hit REM?

It is generally difficult (in my experience) to gauge the later rem periods. You typically want to wake up around 4, 5 1/2 or 7 hours after you think you will fall asleep. If you want the later rem peoriods, aim for the 5 1/2 or 7 hours.
Hope this helps!

Each sleep cycle lasts around 90 minutes, when the "last" cycle is going to start depends on how long you sleep for. With each sleep cycle the percentage of the cycle that will be REM sleep increases, in other words the longer you've been asleep the longer the REM stage of the cycle will be.

If you plan on sleeping for 9 hours then the last sleep cycle will begin after 7 and a half hours of sleep, so you could set your alarm for 6:30am to wake you up at this time. However, a better solution in my opinion would be to wake up naturally from the dream, this way you can be sure that you are waking directly from the end of a dream. We wake up briefly at the end of each sleep cycle but usually return to sleep without noticing, so it's just a case of becoming aware of these awakenings. All that is required is to set your intention before going to sleep to wake up after 7 and a half hours, or 6 hours, or each sleep cycle, depending on your preference. In order to help with this I found it useful to set a safety net alarm which I would intend to wake up before it went off and disable it, it's important to allow for the possibility that it will take you longer to get to sleep and the possibility of longer than usual sleep cycles to ensure that the alarm does not go off before you reach the end of your sleep cycle.

The advantage of waking up naturally without using any kind of alarm is that you are not distracted by the alarm when trying to remember the dream you have just awoken from, and you ensure that you are awakening straight from the end of the dream, rather than being awoken during a dreamless stage of the sleep cycle. For DEILD not using an alarm also has the advantage that you can stay still in bed without having to move to disable the alarm, and then re-enter the dream.

Thanks to both of you for all your advices! I'm sure this will help me alot

No problem, I'd be interested to hear if this has positive effects on your efforts.