Thread: What caused me to wake from sleep?

At about 4am this morning, I woke up hungry and thirsty. I got up to grab some juice, and went out on the porch where it was dark but breezy and quite nice, testing my state the whole time. When I fell asleep after 15-20 minutes I had two LDs back to back - kind of an unintentional WBTB i guess (I usually only have about one or two LDs a month.)

My question is, what made me wake up, able to get out of bed and walk around with such energy? Usually if/when I wake from sleep I'm too lazy to get up- even though I've been very successful with WBTB, sleepy me would usually rather just nod back off than get up for a while. Especially If I use an alarm(although that goes off regardless of whatever my current sleep stage..). But last night I seemed wide awake and motivated, even though It was only 4.

I had been sleeping for about 6 hours (10pm-4am). I had about 5 drinks before bed (I don't drink often, but the alcohol may be what made me thirsty and woke me up). If you know of any good ways to naturally (i.e. without an alarm) GET yourself up after 5-6 hours of sleep, please share! As always, I'm open to any suggestion and info, or if you have other similar stories please share them!

How long have you been practicing dream recall? Over the first few months of keeping a dream journal, I gradually became better at waking naturally in the middle of the night to write down my dreams and do WBTB. It's a combination of motivation and habit that develops over time. Could be that you're experiencing this natural progress. The alcohol was probably a factor too in this instance, but generally isn't a good way to promote LDing.

For WBTB, I think it's good to have a specific plan and prepare for it. For example: I will get up, drink a glass of milk, read a book for 10 minutes, visualize the LD task I want to accomplish 3 times, then back to bad. Know which glass in the cupboard you will take. Have the book out ready on the chair where you will read. Have the LD task picked out the evening before. Make it as easy as possible on yourself. Then tweak your plan over time for the activities you want to do. Last of all, you know that you'll go back to sleep so you don't need to worry about losing sleep or feeling tired.

Maybe you were excited about the prospect of lucid dreaming? It is normal to wake a few times throughout the night. We usually immediately fall back to sleep without noticing. If you had WBTB on your mind, you could have recognized this as an appropriate time to get up and walk around a little. As people get older, we tend to notice these awakenings more.