How long to stay up for in WBTB

**Yungen** · 09-17-2010 05:47 PM

I have used WBTB but that yielded only one LD.
I'm going to try it again tonight. How long should I stay up for? Because the time I had that LD I stayed up for 45 minutes and had one, but the next night I couldn't get back to sleep

I get up at 4:30 am and go to sleep at 5:15.
Which do you use?

**Brunor2** · 09-17-2010 06:15 PM

Maximum of 10 minutes. I did only once, enough time to go to the bathroom and drink something.

**Robot_Butler** · 09-17-2010 06:20 PM

I have the most success when I stay up for 30-60 minutes, and do a little light reading in low lighting. I do a ton of short 5-10 minute attempts, but they are not as consistently successful.

**f1freek** · 09-18-2010 03:34 PM

I just did WBTB successfully last night and I stayed up for probably around 40-50 min, mostly looking at dreamviews. It took me a little bit to get back to sleep but I just took the time to try MILD and then WILD which eventually worked and I entered right into a LD. I would say to experiment a bit. You don't want to stay up so long that you are wide awake but not so little that you're practicably asleep. Anyway that's just what worked for me, you might be completely different.

**Frozenwolf** · 09-18-2010 05:27 PM

It works differently for everyone. I think you just need to experiment until you find the right amount of time that works for you.

**Serenity** · 09-19-2010 12:37 PM

Definitely experiment! I started out with 10-15 minutes... like Robot_Butler, they didn't consistantly produce a lot of LD's. I upped it to 30 and got slightly better results. A full 60 gives me the best results, but I find it difficult to get back to sleep after those ones.

There;s something to be said for quality of time spent

No matter how long you're awake, hit up your dream journal, think about your goals (or just think about how cool it would be to realize you're dreaming), do some reality checks.

**Raspberry** · 09-19-2010 02:07 PM

I usually stay up for about 15-20 minutes because I become awake quite easily. If I do this I almost always DILD. I'm attempting WILD now though but keep falling asleep, so I'm upping how long I spend awake

Just find out what works well for you.

**louie54** · 09-19-2010 07:35 PM

For me, it sort of depends. I usually stay up for 30 minutes and sometimes I'll read some of my favorite dream journal entrees and do a bunch of reality checks like every minute. I've had some pretty descent lucids from doing that a lot. I say keep up the experimenting because I definitely feel that WBTB is one of the most effective methods.

**sisyphus** · 09-19-2010 09:25 PM

I also have trouble falling asleep if I'm more than 10-15 minutes. But lately I'm pushing myself to go longer, like 30-60 minutes. Instead of tweaking the time, I'm more focused on developing meditation and relaxation techniques to help me fall back to sleep. This practice has the added benefit of helping me fall asleep at the beginning of the night or for an afternoon nap, so I'm getting more bang for my buck in terms of effort.