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My own LDs so far have been about 5 minutes or so. But I have heard unconfirmed tales of people in effect "stopping time" and experiencing hours, days even of a lucid dream, while they are still only occupying one REM cycle (so about 90 minutes, tops).
So how long are yours?
Mine range from I'd say... 5-30 min. Usually a good one is 10-20 maybe but I can't tell for sure. People claiming the dreams lasting that long are usually tricked by the fact that day long style dreams are broken into pieces. Each piece has an entire scene or event that seems to take place and thus the person interprets it as taking a long time and knows they had like 20 of these scenes (even though in reality they were short) so they assume the dream must have taken long periods of time.
Anyways, you should check this out it basically explains it quickly.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/...ream/id/232464
Mine are always so short. Now, I'm not an expert on ataining them, I usually lose the dream in less than a minute, although on rare ocassions they last longer.
my best was around an hour. my worst was less than 5 seconds. (in real time)
My longest dreams have lasted for years. Of course, like Lusense already explained, it is only a trick. False memories combined with movie-like scene changes make the dream seem like it has lasted for longer than it really has.
In real time, I would say my longest lucid dream is probably around 60-90 minutes. You can get some super long ones with REM rebound and good timing.
Thanks for the replies! So, if you say you've had a dream that lasted years, you are basically just describing a movie you created and starred in which actually lasted 60-90 minutes, but in which the plot spanned years? Seems odd - seeing as you're just as rational in an LD as you are in real life, surely you can tell the difference.
Unless people leave movie theaters and say: "Wow, that sure was a fun couple of years :)
No, it is different. The main thing that gets me are false memories. They seem just as real as normal memories. I will have memories of my entire back story, what I did yesterday, ect. It is as if the memories just appear when I need them.
Think of it like going to the theatre to see Spiderman2. The movie lasts only 90 minutes or so. If you saw spiderman1, you will have all the memories from it to add to that 90 minutes. If you have ever read the Spiderman comic books, or seen his saturday morning cartoons, you will have those memories, too. That same type of history of memories will be in place, only they feel liike real memories, not cartoons.
This is how your brain works while awake, too. You are only ever experiencing the current moment. You might have short term memory of a day or two. The rest of your perception of time is just memories from the years and years you've lived.
In this way, you can have years and years of memories in a dream. Try it next time you're lucid. See if you can remember what the dream-you did yesterday, or how you got to where you are.