How different parts of a sleep cycle feel when awake

A sleep cycle is a ~90 minute event over the course of the night. It consists of 3-4 distinct sleep stages. What I'm trying to describe is how some of them feel. I hope this information will help you understand your own sleep pattern. I got this information after taking out an entire sleep cycle for WBTB method and being unable to fall asleep later. I started to observe my thoughts



REM sleep is associated with dreaming. I found myself awake during the REM period and shortly thereafter. It was easy to recall dreams, and the brain naturally mulled over the dream content. Thoughts were active, but disjointed.

As I stayed in bed for longer, the active thoughts disappeared, and I was left in a very relaxed state, largely without thoughts. It was really comfortable, warm and sleepy. When I wake up in a state like that, I do not want to get out of bed for a very long time because it feels so good to stay in bed. I would expect that this is deep sleep

Tonight I was listening to an audiobook from my iPhone on my mattress. The voice was slow, and I was following the story pretty well, until I started to hear the words, but fail to make coherent sentences with them. The words were there, but I understood less and less of what the narrator was reading. On top of that, I was feeling sleepy. This is when I turned off the audio book and went to sleep. This is the light non-rem sleep that precedes and follows REM sleep.

I think this has good applications for all kinds of LD induction methods. If I wake up from REM, I may do DEILD, etc. But if you I'm in deep sleep, you are likely to just slip back into it.

I went to take a nap with an iPhone playing an audiobook again, and actually got a lucid dream out of that. The audiobook kept playing both in a dream and in the waking state. The transition was seemless, even though I still was missing parts of the story. The iPhone was next to me in a dream, and was the source of the sound. I tapped the power button to see which apps are installed, and there were none. just a malachite green screen with a 9 dot lock pattern or something similar.

PS. the audiobook(Clash of Kings) contained some R-rated scenes, which got me quite excited, resulting in a really cool sex dream too. I did not hear the audiobook during the sex dream, even though I know it kept playing.

This was the best example of an audio cue integrating into the content of a dream yet.