Thread: Question about sleep length

Whoops, just read about NILDs. That's what I was effectively doing, except instead of waiting for a couple of hours, I went straight back to sleep after setting my alarm clock. By doing this, will my dream recall become better enough to do this during the night?

REM sleep during the first few sleep cycles is very short, first two cycles are mostly NREM and dreams in the short REM periods will be much less vivid and most times you won't recall them, like when you wake up right after the first sleep cycle as you say. You can't expect to already have a good dream by that time. As the night progresses, periods of NREM sleep will shorten and REM will get longer, as can be seen very nicely on the graph on this page. After about four cycles your sleep will be almost continuous REM and dreams much longer and more vivid. When you wake up in the morning and go back to sleep you are most likely to have and remeber dreams, so it's no surprise you do, but you can't count that as just 10-20 minutes of sleep, the night still counts even if you wake up for quite a long time.

Personally, if I want to try WILD or boost dream recall I set my alarm somewhere before the last sleep cycle (eg. if I wake up at 6:30 that is 5:00).