How long can a dream last?

[ElmoEatsEmos]

I heard stories of people who've had YEAR long dreams (as in, they are in the dream for years. In reality, they are only dreaming for a couple of hours). Is that possible? How can I prolong my dreams?

[youssarian]

In reality, I don't know how long a dream would last. I suppose they could be on the order of several minutes. As to how long they feel, I've heard stories of one DV member having a 3-month-dream (something he never wants to do again!) while another person recorded a dream that was 105 years in length. I think the two best ways are having a series of dreams that pick up where the last left off, and in-dream "memories" of when you last did something in that dream. If you want to prolong a dream's length in reality, do things to stabalize it like rubbing your hands, spinning and shouting "Clairity!" in the dream.

[Maria92]

Most dreams last a few minutes, REM periods last about an hour at most, and dreams can be stretched to an hour long at best, usually. What you can do is alter your perception of dream time to make the dreams seem longer. The guy who claims to have spent 105 years in a dream: two things: one, how do you measure that accurately? Two, I seriously doubt the dude had three meals a day, carried out extended conversations, spent long times in traffic, went to the bathroom on a regular basis, dealt with relationships, went to work, watched TV, "killed time," and the like. Most likely, he skipped to the most important bits of the dream, and had his brain go back and fill in the details later.

[sol]

be sweet to know the record for longest dream (both actual and percevied). Would be hard to measure but lovely to know.

[snumbers]

I think its about 60 minutes real time, but in a dream you could change the dream length so 1 minute in real life is 1 hour dream time.

[angelofhex]

I have been in dreams before for about a week. And yes it wasn't as slow time passing IRL but it definitely did feel to last a long time. I had day and night cycles within my dream. Just as previously stated time was accelerated within the dream and I have no way of knowing how long that was in day time. I have had dreams that last only a minute or two IRL but an hour or more in a dreamstate. So I don't believe time IRL is relevant completely to time in a dream. Second and on a slight side note. I was knocked unconscious in a sparring competition when I ate my opponents foot by accident. But, I was out for about 30 seconds and when I came back I literally was like where the hell am I? because I had been dreaming in my unconcious state about past memories and relived roughly a year of my life back when my first dog was alive. That was a really wierd experience for me.