Thread: When is the most effective time to awake during the night and recall your dreams?

Honestly, you don't need to wake up in the middle of the night. Just have pen and paper next to your bed for the morning. When you wake up, just don't move and try to let the dreams come back to you. Write down anything you can, even if its just a feeling or a small piece of a fragment of a thought. If you keep doing that, along with eight hours of sleep each night, (going to bed and waking up at the same time) You WILL remember your dreams within a week or two. Your mind and body just needs to get regulated to remember your dreams.

now, IF you do still want to get up in the middle of the night, I suggest you drink ALOT of water before you go to bed. Your body naturally gets closer to the waking state as you end your REM cycle. If you have to pee, your body will wake you up.

the best time to wake up is during REM, you go into REM every 90 minutes, so wake up after a multiple of 1 and a half hours. but a minimum of 3 hours. so go for 3 hours, 4.5 hours or 6 hours and so on, but not too late, about a maximum of 7.5 hours.

Originally Posted by slash112

the best time to wake up is during REM, you go into REM every 90 minutes, so wake up after a multiple of 1 and a half hours. but a minimum of 3 hours. so go for 3 hours, 4.5 hours or 6 hours and so on, but not too late, about a maximum of 7.5 hours.

So basically I set my alarm for 3 hours after I go to bed?

Originally Posted by Barbizzle

Honestly, you don't need to wake up in the middle of the night. Just have pen and paper next to your bed for the morning. When you wake up, just don't move and try to let the dreams come back to you. Write down anything you can, even if its just a feeling or a small piece of a fragment of a thought. If you keep doing that, along with eight hours of sleep each night, (going to bed and waking up at the same time) You WILL remember your dreams within a week or two. Your mind and body just needs to get regulated to remember your dreams.

Ditto. In all honesty, I find waking up in the middle of the night counterproductive. REM periods increase in vividness as the night goes on. Why mess that up? The weekends are a good example of how well you can remember you dreams when you wake up in the morning instead of setting a time in the middle of the night. Most likely when you wake up after sleeping through the night way into the morning on the weekend, a dream will just be ending.

I hope that makes sense. I felt like I was just rambling.

Originally Posted by Snowy Egypt

Ditto. In all honesty, I find waking up in the middle of the night counterproductive. REM periods increase in vividness as the night goes on. Why mess that up? The weekends are a good example of how well you can remember you dreams when you wake up in the morning instead of setting a time in the middle of the night. Most likely when you wake up after sleeping through the night way into the morning on the weekend, a dream will just be ending.

I hope that makes sense. I felt like I was just rambling.

Yeah but when I wake up I never tend to remember anything anyway so should I at least try to do the REM thing?

You can if you wish, but you will find better long term results if you train your mind to remember your dreams from waking up at a normal time.

I agree 100% with what has been said above, except that I now often wake up automatically after dreams. The difference of how many dreams I remember in the morning depends on how many times I chose to go back to sleep. Here is how I do it: Each time I get up, I either hit the hay again (usually don't even remember these, though sometimes I just can't be bothered) or I collect my dream in my head. I sit still for about 2 minutes and think about the order of the events, but I don't write anything down. I then pass out about 2 min after I woke up, and rinse and repeat. In the morning I find that my memory of each specific dream is better after having at least thought through each one at night.

Just my 2 cents.

As to me generally I don't have any problems with recalling dreams even when wake up in non REM. Sometimes more details comes to me during the day and I catch myself saying - Wow! then suddenly I can see the whole history of the dream.
Obviously the best time to remember is to wake up while REM but at the same time it is very unwanted end by any LDreamer.
The problem is everybody has different REM pattern and it is affected also by many other factors. Recently I made a research with my REM Dreamer. I went to bed at 2.36 and slept 8 hours. It turned out that I had REM 2,5,6 hours after 30 min each. Only 3 times! I am usually I have more as REM Dreamer usually plays more signals.
For people like Bing with recall problem for short quick result I would advise Alpha GPC or Galantamine + Choline combo. As the first peaks after longer time - 3hours - its better for this task. They make your dreams incredibly vivid thus more likely to recall. The main purpuse is to have LD. You can read more on this forum from folks much more advanced then me.
For the long term try to be independent from supplements so yes - meditation and relaxation. Generally to learn to stay for long time without any thought. To understand the mechanism maybe read smth about Dream Yoga.
I am in the middle of some experiment related to REM. Read on
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=65037