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

You can certainly train your brain to wake up at the same time. It can even happen without you wanting it. My son (22 months) wakes up every single morning between 6 - 6.30 am. I'm now in a situation that I always wake up around 6.

About waking up briefly after a REM period ends, see this thread.

Not sure what you mean with your last question. Depends on what you want to accomplish with it I guess? If you wake up in the middle of a REM cycle (while dreaming) you can try to DEILD your way into a LD. Or if you wake up after a dream ends you can write it down in your DJ, and use it as a learning experience (dreams signs or so).

Regarding the FILD, I think it's best to hook that up with a WBTB. It's going to require some experimenting on your end. Time your sleep (we all have sleep cycles that last about 1.5 hours, NREM + REM sleep)), and try to wake up in your last sleep cycle, when you've just started or are on the verge of your longest REM sleep.

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.

I don't think you generally have to worry about the REM timing too much when doing DEILD. Whenever you wake up on your own during sleep, it's very likely to be either during or at the end of REM sleep, as snoop says. Whenever you find yourself awake (or especially if you happen to find yourself still in a dream just as it begins to fade away), you might as well go for the DEILD/FILD attempt and see what happens. It's possible you might be too close to the end of a REM cycle and not succeed, but there will always be more opportunities to try. Also, since REM cycles generally become longer and closer together toward the latter hours of sleep, those last few hours are the best time to try it since you'll have the best chances of success.

If, on the other hand, you're having trouble waking up at all during sleep (as in, you always seem to sleep straight through the whole night and not remember any awakenings), then setting self-suggestions or intentions to wake up after each dream can help. There are also other methods people propose, such as drinking a lot of water or setting an alarm (though the latter can tend to wake you up too much and mess up your attempts). Personally, I never really had to do anything special; I found that as I became interested in and practiced writing down my dreams every time I woke up during sleep, I simply began to fall into a natural rhythm of awakening after most of my REM cycles.

If you want to wake after REM, then just drink a bunch of water at bed time, you'll wake, just remember to not actually run to the bathroom or you will forget your dream

but yes experienced wbtb dreamers wake after nearly every round of REM (I wake after all but the first cycle most nights)

I would attempt to set a time for yourself via a mantra or similar when you approximately end your rem cycle.
I do this for WBTB, set an alarm, and I wake up a minute before the alarm.

You can actually tell your "mind" anything, and have it implanted there via self-hypnosis. The "mind", of course, being your subconscious. If your subconscious has been imprinted with a certain notion, it begins signaling an impulse to your conscious mind, usually manifesting in the form of a habit or routine. The trick is bypassing your critical mind, which wants to analyze and either reject/accept the notion (i.e. waking up at a certain time) which is apt to eventually forget or marginalize the effort. But once you get it into the subconscious, which is neutral and makes no moral judgement or attempt to marginalize or talk itself out of something, it embeds itself into the very fiber of your thoughts and begins the transmission as truth to your conscious mind. And the conscious mind begins accepting as truth and obeying whatever the subconscious transmits to it: actually, it doesn't even recognize the fact that it is being programmed by the subconscious.

Hypnosis is the fastest way to implant an idea or concept into the subconscious. Other ways are repetitious mantras, affirmations, subliminals, etc. (which also work, albeit much slower and more laboriously). But hypnosis is the quickest and most powerful. Look into the power of self-hypnosis! It will change your life.

but i'm confused since i don't know when you should wake up for higher chance of LD.
after the REM or while in a REM sleep?

Originally Posted by Iriba

but i'm confused since i don't know when you should wake up for higher chance of LD.
after the REM or while in a REM sleep?

Doesn't really matter. You won't know for sure which one you have done when it happens, but just waking is enough. You will always be "closer" to REM than the beginning of the night, be it right on top or one more sleep cycle away. Closer is enough when dealing with dreams. The later your WBTBs, the closer due to the way REM cycles work, but I don't really fail to have an LD anymore if I wake up at 2 and 4 hours. Even if I don't have an LD then, it really helps the rest of the night. Eventually the goal is going to be to always notice the waking after each dream because you are "present" in each dream, even if you aren't lucid. You always remember the waking if you are present and making decisions in a dream. This is the dual awareness I always mention. You aren't trying to be aware of everything, you are trying to be more aware during dreams and more aware of the waking and dreaming state. One will help you to be more present and remember your dreams more, the other will help you realize what they are.