Body Clock?

[5triker]

I was reading something the other day on the internet about the body having its own very accurate 'clock mechanism'. When reading this i felt a little hesitant at first about believing it, until they used the example of somebody waking up a minute of so before their alarm is supposed to go off. Now this happened to me a lot when setting my alarm for school, but i thought it was just routine. Oddly though, when i thought i didn't need an alarm because i woke up naturally at the right time (1 minute before the alarm went off!) i kept sleeping in without it, or the thought of it going off, lol. I thought all this was just coincidence mixed with routine as it only happened about 2/3rds of the time. However in the last 2 nights I've set my alarm for 6:00am and 5:00am, respectively, to try some WILDing. (Remember this is the end of the Summer and I've slept into 11:00am every day for the past 2 months!) The first morning however i first woke up at 5:57am with no apparent reason to do so, apart from my alarm about to go off! I thought that this might just be coincidence again. So to be sure i decided to change the alarm time to 5:00am for the next morning. And when the next morning came and i first woke up at 4:59am lol! This i thought was rather cool but unusual. I think i'll try a few more random times like 5:24am, ect... to be doubly sure! I'll post my results here! I just wanted to know, has anybody else had this experience? And, does anyone have any logical information on it? (The document i originally read was a little too abstract). NB: I'll add that i'm a sleeper who generally never wakes up in the early morning/night randomly, its usually 1 long sleep without complications.

[Luminous]

I'm like that as well! And I know of more people like that. Though I'm a light sleeper and I wake up several times during the night.

[DuB]

Here's a little information as well as a brief summary of a study on this phenomenon. http://psychologytoday.com/articles/...01-000014.html

[mlehmann121]

i experience something very similar but i can never tell myself to do it without setting my alarm clock i dont understand it. For example for school i set my alarm clock for 615 and about 3 of the 5 days in the week i wake up just before it goes off, but saturday ill tell myself before i go to bed that i want to wake up at 6 and ill sleep in to 11... Very interesting i would like to hear more about it if you can find more info

[09baseball92]

Yeahhh, sometimes I wake up right before my dad comes in to wake me up for school. But my best example comes from a bunch of years ago, when the Mets were playing their Opening Day game in Japan. The game was scheduled for something like 4 A.M. (in eastern time, that is), and I naturally woke up at a virtually perfect time to put on the radio and listen to the game. It's pretty cool how your body can do that on its own.

[Keitorin]

I've had some experience with this too! It used to happen (a long time ago) when I was in school, the whole waking up before the alarm thing. Even after I started homeschooling instead, I kept waking up at exactly the time I did for public school. I think because I expected it to happen, that helped. As far back as I remember, just a moment before my mom comes in my room (which happens very rarely), I'll wake up. It's really weird feeling - one minute I'm sleeping, the next I'm wide awake and mom is coming in ask or tell me something (she usually tells me sorry for waking me up XP). I'd say I'm a pretty deep sleeper otherwise. I've even slept through mom clanging dishes in the dishwasher, which can be loud and annoying at any time of the day. Although, this could be because of bad sleeping habits where I could sleep through a hurricane due to my exhausted collapse. Anyway, the most recent evidence of this is how I automatically wake up after dreams ever since I decided to start recalling my dreams/delve into LDing. When I first started and was more inspired (and did my best to get up and write down my dreams immediately), I did this pretty often at any time (11 pm, 4am, 8am, etc). Now, I tend to wake later in the morning when it's light out, and only once: when I don't intend to get up and :the second time, when I get up for the day.

[5triker]

Thanks for the feed back people! Here's a little information as well as a brief summary of a study on this phenomenon. http://psychologytoday.com/articles/...01-000014.html Thanks for this, its a nice easy read ! It even briefly explains how to strengthen the technique. i experience something very similar but i can never tell myself to do it without setting my alarm clock i dont understand it. For example for school i set my alarm clock for 615 and about 3 of the 5 days in the week i wake up just before it goes off, but saturday ill tell myself before i go to bed that i want to wake up at 6 and ill sleep in to 11... Very interesting i would like to hear more about it if you can find more info Did you read DuB's link? Prehaps its the anticipation that you'll have to get up early, anyway, during the week. Which could mean slightly higher 'stress' levels, like the way they talk about in the link. Yeahhh, sometimes I wake up right before my dad comes in to wake me up for school. But my best example comes from a bunch of years ago, when the Mets were playing their Opening Day game in Japan. The game was scheduled for something like 4 A.M. (in eastern time, that is), and I naturally woke up at a virtually perfect time to put on the radio and listen to the game. It's pretty cool how your body can do that on its own. Yea, the link explains that this is due to the anticipation/stress levels being increased and releasing a certain hormone when the time is right . I've had some experience with this too! It used to happen (a long time ago) when I was in school, the whole waking up before the alarm thing. Even after I started homeschooling instead, I kept waking up at exactly the time I did for public school. I think because I expected it to happen, that helped. As far back as I remember, just a moment before my mom comes in my room (which happens very rarely), I'll wake up. It's really weird feeling - one minute I'm sleeping, the next I'm wide awake and mom is coming in ask or tell me something (she usually tells me sorry for waking me up XP). I'd say I'm a pretty deep sleeper otherwise. I've even slept through mom clanging dishes in the dishwasher, which can be loud and annoying at any time of the day. Although, this could be because of bad sleeping habits where I could sleep through a hurricane due to my exhausted collapse. Anyway, the most recent evidence of this is how I automatically wake up after dreams ever since I decided to start recalling my dreams/delve into LDing. When I first started and was more inspired (and did my best to get up and write down my dreams immediately), I did this pretty often at any time (11 pm, 4am, 8am, etc). Now, I tend to wake later in the morning when it's light out, and only once: when I don't intend to get up and :the second time, when I get up for the day. Yea, the general rule of thumb is; if you can remember a dream as soon as you wake up, ie you just woke up in the middle/end of a dream, it means you've just suddenly woken up from a deep sleep ^^. This has happened to me often in these situations. That dream recall mechanism sounds really handy though !

[5triker]

Hmm ... I just tried setting my alarm for a more random time (5:24am), but i didn't wake up before it , dam! Body Clock=2 Coincidence=1 (Obviously not counting all the times before school when i woke up before the alarm. That could just be a mixture of routine and the 'body clock'.)

[Everlong]

Amazing how that happens... My body obviously doesn't like the sound of an alarm clock waking it up, so it wakes about a minute before the alarm does go off. Even when I set it to 1 in the morning to watch a soccer game, I wake up at about 12:55. But, think about this... for the body clock to function properly, the brain needs to know the time.

[5triker]

But, think about this... for the body clock to function properly, the brain needs to know the time I think this document http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/377146.stm explains the whole body clock idea quite well, but doesn't mention why you are able to wake up at specific and set times.

[ray]

i have always done this and i am a very light sleeper. when in school i have always woken up about two minutes before my alarm goes off at five thirty. i also wake up right before my mom gets home at twelve thirtyish and before my dad comes in in the morning to say good-bye when he leaves at four-thirty to five o' clock.in the summer i wake up at almost the exact same time every morning too at ten forty five or so.i can also tell myself a time when i go to bed and i will wake up sometime around there.yup my clock is a bit active.

[TJam]

Actually, I've had a little talent for this as long as I can remember. An example was when I was going to college. Every morning for two years I woke up at 6:30 AM. The funny things is, only about 2 months of that was because of an alarm clock. After that time, I started waking up slightly before the alarm went off, like 5 minutes or so. I also have the ability to wake myself up very early in the morning(3-5am). I have no idea how or why it works, but I simply say I want to wake up sometime in the early morning and most of the time it happens.

[5triker]

When you wake up at the same time for 2 months routine probably starts to kick in, hence you start waking up just before your alarm. However the ability to wake yourself up early morning without the need of an alarm sounds pretty cool! I can only do it with an alarm .

[WolfeDreamer531]

Yeah, Ive noticed this when I was in school and when I was on schedule with my WBTBs. When I would use my alarm to get up at a certain time for about a week, I would eventually begin waking seconds before the alarm clock would go off! The thing I hated was trying to get out of that cycle though. For the longest, I couldnt get a full, uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep without waking up at that time. Now, for some reason, Im waking up several times a night usually a 5am, 7am, and 8am. Sometimes I awake as early as 4am like this morning. I go to bed on average around 12am so I dont have a clue as to whats going on.

[Maroon_Sweater]

Internal clocks are the reasons that some people can but babies in a room without a clock, yet they still go to sleep at exactly the same time for their afternoon nap. It's pretty cool.

[Robot_Butler]

Strange, I just mentioned this in a post one second before seeing this thread. My internal clock is very accurrate, but I need to tell myself specifically when I want to wake up. I know it is not coincidence, because I can change the wake up time from night to night. Also, I can not see the clock next to my bed, so I know I'm not just subconsciously keeping an eye on the time.

[Dizko]

Strange, I just mentioned this in a post one second before seeing this thread. My internal clock is very accurrate, but I need to tell myself specifically when I want to wake up. I know it is not coincidence, because I can change the wake up time from night to night. Also, I can not see the clock next to my bed, so I know I'm not just subconsciously keeping an eye on the time. Yea i seem to be able to wake myself up pretty accurately just by telling myself too. I often say 'After the first dream i have, i want to wake up' . then i know i will wake up about 2 hours later.

[EchoSun13]

That's prett interesting too, then the recall is better and you can jout it down in a journal.

[Howard]

Hmm.. I'm going to try this tonight. Hopefully it will work. I need my recall up :p

[5triker]

I've never tried it for DR, i might do it sometime soon though .