Thread: Need a noise free way to practice finding my REM cycle, and getting up at specific points at night.

I googled it because I would also like a silent alarm clock of some kind, but I only came across very expensive alarm clocks specially designed for deaf people. And most of them are designed to shake your bed which wouldn't really help you I guess x)

It's actually quite easy to wake up without the aid of an alarm clock. We wake up naturally at the end of each sleep cycle naturally, normally we go back to sleep without ever remembering this awakening, but with intention it is not difficult to notice these awakenings. REM occurs at the end of sleep cycles so this technique has the added advantage that you will awake from your dreams, making them easier to remember. I'm sure there are a lot of people here who can vouch for how easy it is to wake up without an alarm just by setting your intention and using auto-suggestion!

Been trying it for a week. Worked only on day 6. What exactly is the message that you suggest to yourself?

At the moment I'm using the affirmation, "I'm wake up after my next dream, play dead and count to five."

I'm using that because I want to experiment with Michael Raduga's techniques in the long term, but at the moment I'm just using it to up my recall a bit. I don't know if the counting to five bit makes a difference but it makes me more certain that I've done it properly and I reason that in the future I'll be able to "insert" affirmations/actions into the space where the count to five was. I think it's important to review your attempts in the morning. For example, last night I managed to reach the count of five without moving (or opening eyes) on two attempts, but on the next attempt I opened my eyes when I woke (but quickly realised, then closed them, and still did the playing dead and the counting to five).

I've got a cheap mobile phone - probably the cheapest in the shop (that's me!) - that has an option to switch on only when the alarm (vibrate) goes off. I can let you know what mobile I've got. I found a reasonably safe way to make it vibrate without waking my wife - I tape it to the sole of my foot. I reasoned this is the best place because it's rare for the sole of the foot to be actually against the bed; thus I'm the only one to hear the vibrate. (I also tape the end that vibrates fairly tight against my foot so it wakes me quickly).

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Been trying it for a week. Worked only on day 6. What exactly is the message that you suggest to yourself?

I didn't mention it in my post because jasonresno was looking for an alarm-free solution, but thinking about it this could actually be useful for him as well. I found it helpful to set a safety net alarm to wake me up if I failed, the intention to wake up and disable the alarm before it goes off puts some pressure on you to wake up, like how you might have experienced having an alarm clock not go off when you need to wake up for something important and you wake up anyway. In jason's case it would be a risk but I think it would make him even more likely to wake up because of the risk of the alarm going off. In my experience I've also found that the earlier the sleep cycle you are attempting to wake from the more difficult it is, so it might be best to begin with attempting to wake up after 7 and a half hours, and then remove an hour and a half each time until you are waking from earlier sleep cycles.

Since you asked, personally the message I use is "I will wake after (x hours of sleep) and recall my dream", but I don't think the message is particularly important. There isn't a magic phrase that will work without thinking about it, it's more about intention and practice.