Thread: Is it possible to "tell" my brain to wake up after REM?

It really depends on the person, but I used to do it all the time. I should mention first, though, that I typically wake up 2-5 times a night on average anyway, which may be a huge part of my success when I used to do this.

When I was pretty new into lucid dreaming, I noticed the time I had my first WILD was after waking up 3:45 AM. As I said, waking up several times a night is normal for me, usually the time I wake up circa 3:45am (at least then) was the second or third time that night(that I was consciously aware of). Well, just about every day for the next week, I noticed I was waking up at 3:45am exactly, according to my clock. It was also when I was able to successfully induce a vivid, 30 minute lucid dream (the longest and most vivid I'd had at that point, and honestly ever, never really known an LD to go longer than 30 minutes), so I decided on it as a time to shoot for. So, trying out new forms of induction, I had an idea to do something extra while trying out MILD. On top of using a mantra about recognizing I was dreaming, I started using a mantra to tell myself to wake up at 3:45am. I've got good beginner's luck that dissolves very quickly, but some how here it just never ran out. Nearly every day from then on, I woke up most often between 3:15 and 4:05 am, sometimes as early as 2:30 am (I only tried induction if this was my second time waking up though, I always went back to sleep after the first time because I would be trying too early given how sleep cycles work). I found I could change the time with some degree of accuracy and effectiveness as well, but in general using the mantra may not have been doing much more than making sure I indeed consciously awoke rather than letting myself drift right back off to sleep after waking up like usual (which was way too easy to do, despite getting to sleep the first time being very difficult).

So, depending on how open and suggestible you are, you may be able to find success using a mantra to wake yourself up around the same time every night. My mantra would take between 2 to 5 minutes, and would include me repeating the phrase rapid fire for a period of time, then thinking it very deliberately with intent for a time, cycling that a bit, and also going back and forth between thinking it with words and otherwise just "feeling" or "understanding" the notion of my desire, again cycling between rapid fire and very deliberate thoughts with a lot of intent when doing that too.

About specifically wanting to wake up after REM periods: IIRC people naturally wake up about as often as I remember doing each night, only they remain unaware it ever happened. Following a REM period there is usually a brief period of wakefulness that's reflected in recording of brain activity during sleep. So, chances are that when you wake up, you're most likely at the end of a REM period anyway.