Thread: Longest LD Experience you can get

Someone has claimed to have a 100 year lucid. Can't remember where I read it. Either "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" or the Wikibook on LDs.

My longest has probably been 20 minutes.

Whoa, was I ever wrong! I had a lucid that lasted 2 and a half hours this morning. I was woken by a call from work and looked at the time before I fell back asleep. I WILDed on purpose and experienced SP before I started dreaming. And everything was fairly continuous: I can't recall every detail now but there are no major gaps and I can recall all the major transitions.

Is this actually possible? I can scarcely believe it.

I have no idea how people can judge how long they were in an LD for, seeing as they were asleep. Anyone want to clarify this?

I can say that my longest happened during a 135 minute sleeping period, and that I would say it seemed to last maybe 10-15 minutes. Of course, I thought dreams only lasted for seconds, and I'd think that the total amount of time that it takes me to think through and relive the dream is probably the same length of time as it took to occur, if you know what I mean.

Originally Posted by Shift

I have no idea how people can judge how long they were in an LD for, seeing as they were asleep. Anyone want to clarify this?

well if the dream seems to last a half an hour, and you wake up and your clock is a half an hour later than when you fell asleep, considering you fell asleep fairly quickly after looking at your clock, I think one might come to the conclusion that their lucid dream was in fact a half an hour long, wouldn't you say?

Originally Posted by lagunagirl

well if the dream seems to last a half an hour, and you wake up and your clock is a half an hour later than when you fell asleep, considering you fell asleep fairly quickly after looking at your clock, I think one might come to the conclusion that their lucid dream was in fact a half an hour long, wouldn't you say?

Well no, I would say that you spent some time trying to fall asleep, spent some time unconscious, then began dreaming for a short period of time right before waking up, and then looked at your clock. You can't tell how long a dream was just by looking at your clock. I believe that the majority of the time is spent just unconscious while sleeping, or in non-lucids that you don't even remember, and not to mention, you often wake up but don't remember it. So if you stirred in your sleep at 29 minutes, fell back asleep but didn't remember waking, and then had a lucid that seemed to last 5 minutes, but really only lasted one minute... then what?

Think about all the time you spend sleeping when you don't remember any dreams at all. I've slept for 8 hours straight and not had/recalled a single dream. If I had had a dream, and spent all 8 hours straight asleep, would you say that the dream lasted 8 hours?

Originally Posted by Shift

Think about all the time you spend sleeping when you don't remember any dreams at all. I've slept for 8 hours straight and not had/recalled a single dream. If I had had a dream, and spent all 8 hours straight asleep, would you say that the dream lasted 8 hours?

I see your point, but you can't really compare a night's rest to a nap since the majority, if not all, of a nap will be spent in REM.

I'm familiar with the theory of shadow memory and downloading from OBEs, but I believe that LDs do share the same method of recollection.

Originally Posted by AlexLou

I see your point, but you can't really compare a night's rest to a nap since the majority, if not all, of a nap will be spent in REM.

I'm just trying to point out how wrong it is to assume that's the length of a dream... sue me, I'm a science major I like my empirical evidence!

I just think with the majority of trouble that we have actually remembering our dreams, that there must be a more accurate way of judging the length. For example, the lucid I had today was during a 2.5 hour nap. So technically I was napping. The dream felt 5 minutes long. So how long was it really?

It seems most likely to me that a dream would last as long as it would take for you to think through it and relive it... since all it is is thoughts from your mind, wouldn't take a similar amount of time? I've always heard that dreams only last seconds, anyway.

And if people can consciously slow down or speed up time in their dreams, why couldn't this happen subconsciously? Maybe all dreams are really fast, but you don't notice. Like I said, I wish we could measure so we had some hard facts to go with.

It's like the concept of time dilation and astronauts. As oneironauts, why couldn't our dream time be under the influence of (apparently biological/neurological) time dilation, too?

Originally Posted by Shift

I have no idea how people can judge how long they were in an LD for, seeing as they were asleep. Anyone want to clarify this?

I can say that my longest happened during a 135 minute sleeping period, and that I would say it seemed to last maybe 10-15 minutes. Of course, I thought dreams only lasted for seconds, and I'd think that the total amount of time that it takes me to think through and relive the dream is probably the same length of time as it took to occur, if you know what I mean.

Well . . . when I know how long I've been lucid dreaming it's because I started with SP and was lucid immediately before I woke up (and had no major gaps in between). I also looked at my clock before and after. Still . . . there's no way to say for sure . . . I could have missed something.

But it did take me about an hour to write it down, and I was writing quickly and summing up repetitive parts.

Originally Posted by AlexLou

Well . . . when I know how long I've been lucid dreaming it's because I started with SP and was lucid immediately before I woke up (and had no major gaps in between). I also looked at my clock before and after. Still . . . there's no way to say for sure . . . I could have missed something.

But it did take me about an hour to write it down, and I was writing quickly and summing up repetitive parts.

That is a good point. The majority of my LDs are DILD, in which case I think you can't really judge the time passing. For people who can WILD and etc., the case is definitely different. I'm sure there are Polysomnographs and such that can measure this time spent, at least in REM. I don't know much about that sort of thing, though

Originally Posted by Shift

I have no idea how people can judge how long they were in an LD for, seeing as they were asleep. Anyone want to clarify this?

I can say that my longest happened during a 135 minute sleeping period, and that I would say it seemed to last maybe 10-15 minutes. Of course, I thought dreams only lasted for seconds, and I'd think that the total amount of time that it takes me to think through and relive the dream is probably the same length of time as it took to occur, if you know what I mean.

There was a study done about this. I think its in the Laberge book, exploring the world of dreaming. It found that time spent in a dream is pretty much the same as real world time. The dreams that feel like days just trick you into thinking that.

And from my 2 lucids, ive spent an amazing 25 seconds combined in them.

Originally Posted by chris31

There was a study done about this. I think its in the Laberge book, exploring the world of dreaming. It found that time spent in a dream is pretty much the same as real world time. The dreams that feel like days just trick you into thinking that.

That's interesting... I have the book, I'll have to reread it and look up the original study.

But my question is... is it only the dreams that feel like days that are tricking you? What causes that, and why can't/don't some of the dreams that last seconds trick you into thinking they've lasted minutes or hours, too? I'll look it up in the book, though. Maybe Laberge explains it well.

All dreams could trick you into thinking it was longer i think. Maybe things like your dream scene changing to new places could trick you into thinking it was a long journey. I cant realy think of anything else though lol. Maybe the sun going down quickly.
Its also in the movie Waking Life, they talk about it in one scene. A lady ses she wakes up and looks at the clock, goes back to sleep has a wonderful long dream, wake up again and its only 1 minute past. Then they go on to discuss that a bit.

Originally Posted by chris31

All dreams could trick you into thinking it was longer i think. Maybe things like your dream scene changing to new places could trick you into thinking it was a long journey. I cant realy think of anything else though lol. Maybe the sun going down quickly.
Its also in the movie Waking Life, they talk about it in one scene. A lady ses she wakes up and looks at the clock, goes back to sleep has a wonderful long dream, wake up again and its only 1 minute past. Then they go on to discuss that a bit.

That's a good point, about the traveling seeming to take time. That is what I'm talking about. It can happen in seconds, but you interpret it as taking much longer.
I hardly think we can use examples in a movie though. That's insane, I wonder if it was based on a "true" story. It takes me more than a minute just to fall asleep! Was she narcoleptic or something?