Thread: Can't find my REM time for DEILD/WBTB

Originally Posted by gab

If you have some smart phone, you can download an app that finds your REM. Check out the Lucid aids forum.

But you can go by this:

We go through sleep cycles, each one is about 90-110 min long. At the beginning of the sleep, NREM is about 80 min long and REM is about 10 (for 90 min total). As you sleep, NREM gets shorter and REM longer, and after about 8 hrs of sleep NREM is 10 min or less and REM is the rest of the time.

Thanks for the guidelines on the sleep cycle. I do realize that it is best if I do WBTB after ~6 hours of sleep, since the REM cycles are longer around then. My problem is, if I wake up for WBTB after ~6 hours, I have a really hard time falling back asleep. Do you have any tips for this, or any idea why I can't go back to sleep? All I do is get up, go to the bathroom, and then try to go back to bed. I have no idea why it is so hard for me.

Originally Posted by ber5897

Do you have any tips for this, or any idea why I can't go back to sleep? All I do is get up, go to the bathroom, and then try to go back to bed. I have no idea why it is so hard for me.

You've probably heard this before, but, can you describe a little more about what's going on? Like, are you 'thinking' of thing, maybe having anxiety about what happened yesterday, what's due tomorrow, or even anxiety about "will I be able to fall back asleep?". I find it best to let those thoughts *move* through me, not trying to fight them off, but instead maintaining a focus on something else - one thing. Either my breath, a vision of a beach with perfect waves, or something. But I keep the focus, and return to it. After a while those infectious thoughts will silence or at least be a much lower volume than my focus.

Originally Posted by web

You've probably heard this before, but, can you describe a little more about what's going on? Like, are you 'thinking' of thing, maybe having anxiety about what happened yesterday, what's due tomorrow, or even anxiety about "will I be able to fall back asleep?".

Well when I do WBTB, I usually try to WILD. Here is pretty much exactly what I try to do.

Since I have a hard time falling back asleep, when I wake up for WBTB, all I do is go to the bathroom, and then go back to bed and try to WILD. When I WILD I usually lay on my back. I do find it hard to clear my mind, and I do find it hard not to interact with my thoughts. I usually end up thinking about random things, and interacting with thoughts that come through my mind. I know this that you are supposed to try to avoid this when WILDing, so I have tried many different things to help, like you have said. I have tried focusing on my breath, and I have tried a few counting techniques, but my mind still ends up wandering. I find myself having no progress, so I end up just trying to go to sleep, instead of attempting to WILD.

Well last night, for the first time, I think I might have found my REM time. I woke up ~5 hours after I went to bed. I am pretty sure that I woke up during a dream, which is how I think that it was during REM sleep. So I got up, went to the bathroom, and went back to bed to try to WILD. This time I tried counting backwards from 100 to 0, because I heard that this works for a lot of people. I kept losing track of where I was, so I kept restarting. After a while, I felt a kind of intense numbness over my whole body, and a semi-loud ringing in my ears. I also think I had some hypnagogic images at that time. Once this started happening, I got kind of excited and started losing focus, and all of these sensations went away. Did I almost have a successful WILD? Are these sensations a good sign?

Anyways, that is pretty much exactly what I have been doing. Trying not to interact with my thoughts, and trying to focus on one thing, like counting. What do you think?