Transition to REM state

[SkaLord]

Hi! My question may sound noob but I wanted to know how, during a WILD, you are supposed to hit the REM stage without going through non REM sleep first. I can imagine this happening if you WBTB because you already went through the other stages but how is this supposed to work for example during a nap? How can you trick your brain in order to skip the other sleep stages? I don't know if I've been clear enough but I hope someone can give me an answer

[BlackRain]

Hello SkaLord, I will try an answer this, but its a little late and my mind is failing me, so here we go. When you WILD you DO NOT skip the first 4 or so stages of sleep, We sleep for a few hours before we WILD so that the first sleep stages take less time to cycle through and thus we are in R.E.M quicker and for longer. As you may know a sleep cycle takes roughly 90minutes and at the beginning of the night the stages before R.E.M may take 80 minutes with only 10minutes of R.E.M. However after a few hours the first stages before R.E.M may only take 5-10 minutes and we have 80minutes of R.E.M sleep. The Reality of this in my opinion is that you can not "Trick" your mind in going straight to R.E.M And the truth about getting to R.E.M in a quick nap just is'nt going to happen unless you are a polyphasic sleeper. I do not know of anyone who has LD'ed by doing a WILD first thing when they go to sleep. We have to respect the nature of our brain, as much as we like to think we are in control, we are not, When the brain needs sleep it will get it, and the sleep stages are there for a reason, they can not be mearly skipped, due to lack of interest in them, they are all vital to our wellbeing. Sorry if this sounds negative, others may have a different opinion, this is only mine.

[SkaLord]

I see what you mean, thanks for the answer. However, when you wake up after 4 or 5 hours of sleep you went through stages 1,2,3 and 4 of non REM sleep and maybe 2 cycles of REM sleep. If you wouldn't wake up, you would be in REM faster than in the beginning of the night, that's true because as you said in later hours of sleep REM appears more often and for a longer time. But the thing is you wake up, which means changing your whole physiological activity. Aren't you interrupting the sleep cycles by doing that? Wouldn't you need like 60 to 70 minutes to get into REM again, just as in the beginning of the night? Maybe it works because when you WBTB you stay in a drowsy state of mind and do not completely wake up? I'm aware of the fact that I'm probably wrong because people experienced in WILD'ing always find it easier to WILD after some hours of sleep. I just wanted to know how it is possible to enter REM directly if you wake up in the middle of the night and especially if you just try to WILD during a nap. Bye!

[BlackRain]

This is a gray area for me aswell, Because waking up in the middle of the night does not reset the sleep cycle, when you go back to sleep it still continues as if you had slept the whole time, or at least that I am aware of happening, so the question we would be needing to be ask is,,, how long Do you have to be awake for before the sleep cycles reset? This may be a question for another, Its a little difficult to explain, But I would not expect to wake up...enjoy half of your day and then Nap straight into WILD.

[SkaLord]

Thank you very much for your explanation. I'll look for some information concerning this topic, maybe there is some research that tells how much time you need to be awake to reset the sleep cycles. Bye!