How long do your lucid dreams last?

[Light Bearer]

I thought it might be interesting to find out how long most people's lucid dreams are. I know there are some people on DV that are really experienced and have long LD's and then there are people like myself who haven't had one that has lasted longer than a few minutes. Most of mine have lasted for just under 5 minutes. How about everyone else?

[jacobo]

please specify. real time or dream time? i know there are members on the board who have dreams that last weeks in dream time.

[Light Bearer]

I'm interested in approximately how long the dreams last in real time. I just wanted to know if lots of other people have short dreams like me versus ones that take up entire REM periods, etc.

[jacobo]

after 4 hours of sleep my dreams tend to get really long and really detailed, i've acctually had a dream that took me 7 pages of college rule notebook paper to write. i don't know if you could tell how long your rem lasted without someone watching you.

[ffx-dreamz]

About 3 hours, but it feels like about 10 seconds..

[KalmaH]

It varies a lot for me, and I agree with adidas, I think it would be hard to know unless someone watched you ar you video taped it.

[Light Bearer]

Yeah, I suppose you're right. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to know how long you're lucid for when it lasts for a short amount of time like mine do. I can see how a person would not really be able to keep track of time once they manage to stay lucid for longer periods. I guess what I was really trying to get at is whether experienced lucid dreamers are able to maintain lucidity for long periods of time, like as long as a dream would normally last. In other words, do experienced lucid dreamers learn to maintain lucidity for as long as a whole REM period without doing anything wrong that would cause them to wake up prematurely or lose lucidity? If a person remembers their dreams well and at what points they become lucid in those dreams, it seems like they would at least be able to determine if they spent most of their time lucid or not. By that method, a person could at least get a good idea what percentage the time they were lucid. I realize that REM periods last different amounts of time based on how long you've been sleeping for, but I imagine you can understand what I mean when I talk about maintaining lucidity for an entire REM period. It's not really so much a matter of specifically how long the dream lasts, but whether a person who is experienced enough might be able to be lucid most of the time he or she is dreaming, assuming that individual is motivated enough.