Thread: Length Of Lucid Dreaming

Quite normal indeed. And yes, striving to have lucid dreams is very productive because we spend about 25% of our short lives asleep—LDs are a perfect way of lessening that wasteful percentage.

Originally Posted by rustboy

Lucid dreams can last as long as your REM periods last (fist period is maybe 10 minutes and then second one 30 minutes an so on). After 8 hours of sleep you might even have a hour long LD.

Originally Posted by wendylove

This is rubbish, their no scientific evidence saying we only dream during REM periods. You can have LD for a long time at any stage of dreaming, however it depends on how good you are, practice and waking up before memory gets wiped. I had a two hour ld in the mourning, however I got help from Gothlark. Gothlark claimed he has had longer LD's then this.

And what, pray tell, in rustboy's post is rubbish? Exactly where does he say that dreaming occurs ONLY during REM periods? No where. While it's true that there's no "proof" that dreams can occur only during REM (which obviously is not the case, what with hypnagogic dreamlettes and the such) there is plenty of proof that dreams DO occur every REM period.

So rustboy's assessment that LDs can last as long as an REM period is absolutely correct. If they last longer, fine. And he's also correct in that the REM periods increase in duration - up to a certain maximum - as the night's sleep goes on. The REM periods increase while the time between them decreases.

Originally Posted by baby faced assassin

So are lds like short stories compared to full on feature length movies? I suppose until i have one or lots of em i wont know but when you wake up from a ld does it feel like you actually spent alot of time in your dreams or does it feel like you were there for a flash and then gone? Also how do you know how long you have actually been lding in actual time, im trying to get my head around this

Well, according to the Guru of lucid dreaming and LD research, Stephen LaBerge, dream time very closely mirrors "real time". People often have the feeling that they experience long spans of time in a dream but, it's believed that the apparent duration extension actually is a function of "scene changes".

It's like when you watch a TV show or movie. The movie may cover a span of 10 years but it only actually lasts for 90 minutes or so. The cutting between scenes gives the perceptual illusion of experiencing longer time frames.