Well for example, I remember waking up several times during the night, and each time I wake up will count the previous dream as a dream of its own. Thats what I use to make a difference. |
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I am often confused when people refer to dreams in the same night as separate experiences. I used to assume that a typical night involved something like one long dream with an incoherent storyline, and I assumed that gaps in memory often made it difficult to connect certain "scenes" (logically or chronologically) after waking up. By the way, I do not have great dream recall. I read something like "the average person has 3-5 dreams every night" on Wikipedia, and I've read stories where people say they have multiple lucid dreams in one night. So I was wondering what defines the "boundary" between multiple dreams, if it isn't waking up. I guess there are physiological signs like REM sleep, but Wikipedia only says that "most" dreams occur during REM sleep. |
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Well for example, I remember waking up several times during the night, and each time I wake up will count the previous dream as a dream of its own. Thats what I use to make a difference. |
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Good question 2bat16. I didn't start thinking about this until like a month or 2 ago. I dream journal multiple times a night. So lets say I dream journaled at 1:32 A M and went back to sleep. That was dream 1. Then I dream journaled at like 2:51 A M. That was dream two. Then I went back to sleep. And dream journaled at 4:01 A M. that was dream three. |
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I don't believe there is any kind of authoritative rule on what constitutes a “boundary” between dreams. If your recall ever develops to the point where you start remembering bits and pieces of your nondream sleep, or even consciously witnessing entire transitions between dreams without waking up (yes, it's possible), you'll probably realize just how blurry the line really is. |
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The reason people have separate dreams in the same night is because our sleep cycles go in 90 minute intervals. We only really dream during the REM part at the end of that cycle and stop dreaming for a while in between. After sleeping for many hours the time between gets smaller and your dreams might start to run together. Still though, your mind can wander unexpectedly to a different setting and you forget what you were doing just a moment ago. This could also be grounds for labeling it a separate dream. As you get better at dream recall you will start to pick up on how your sleep cycle effects the rhythm of your dreams. Eventually you will even be able to remember multiple distinct dreams from earlier sleep cycles. |
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