What goes on before you enter the REM stage WILD-style?

Hi.

I'm trying to figure out something about WILDs and maybe someone can help me out. What I can't understand is what goes on before you can 'wake up' on the other side - inside of a dream, in the REM stage. If I understand it correctly, before entering the REM period of your sleep, you go through some dreamless stages. Now, when entering a dream 'WILD-style' (or maybe it's just not REM?) I just lay there and wait for some strange things to start happening: noises, images, vibrations etc. They appear at sleep cycle onset, right? Since I seem to get to the other side shorty after those phenomena come around, what happens to the stages of sleep between the onset and the REM stage? From what I understand, the onset imagery should fade and a few dreamless stages should kick in, before moving on to REM. Shouldn't I have to wait through them? Is there an error in my thinking? I know that the dreamless stages get shorter and shorter as the night goes on but I'd always wake up after 4 or 5 hours and I don't think that's enough for them to shrink considerably, is it?

Cheers.

Bump, this is something I would like to know. I think he is asking about NREM and how long it takes to navigate that. Also I read that if you are interrupted in REM sleep, the next time you go to sleep you will continue. Is it possible to wake urself up during REM and wait till like an afternoon nap to attempt a WILD?how?

I think I used the wrong term for NREM, calling it dreamless. Although REM is the stage of sleep in which we experience most of our dreams, and they are the most vivid ones, too, it's been proved that we can dream in pretty much each stage of sleep - REM or NREM. I've read that the dreams we have in the NREM stage are very real-world-like, almost mundane. That would explain why when attempting a WILD, I always 'wake up' in my bed, and not regain consciousness on some other planet or somewhere else fantastic, but simply in my room. Like I wrote, that would explain why I get to enter a dream shortly after the onset of the cycle. I think that could also explain why those dreams are difficult to stay in (because they're not REM dreams). I find it difficult to get my s**t together after having entered them. Of course, that could just as easily be due to lack of experience.

As to your question, I asked a related one some time ago. I wanted to know if the mind makes note of the sleep cycle and the stage of that cycle it left off with when you woke up (preferably much earlier than you would naturally, like in the middle of the night), and if it (the mind) could pick up exactly where it stopped if you decided to go back to sleep say 2 hour later, or it would forget and start over, or maybe figure out roughly which cycle (less or more REM in it) it should start with based on the state of brain chemicals.
It bugged me but no-one really gave me a satisfying answer.

Remember that in my case the gap between waking up at some point in the cycle, and going back to sleep again was about 2 hours, and you are asking about a gap which is 7-8 hours long. You are talking about naps, and they may be different than night sleep. Maybe if you get SOME rem sleep during the night, but NOT ENOUGH, the mind will compensate for it during the afternoon nap and even start it with REM, too. We'd really have to get an answer on this from someone with reliable data.

Cheers.

Hi.
It's been a lot of time since I posted this question, but I haven't figured it out myself, so I thought I'd give it a little bump. Who knows, maybe this time I'll learn something.
As briefly as possible, my question is: what stage of sleep do you enter while WILDing (when your body finally falls asleep)? Do you go straight into REM, and if so, why? Is there something special about going into the dream consciously, which allows you to enter REM right away?
Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Radek

Hi.
It's been a lot of time since I posted this question, but I haven't figured it out myself, so I thought I'd give it a little bump. Who knows, maybe this time I'll learn something.
As briefly as possible, my question is: what stage of sleep do you enter while WILDing (when your body finally falls asleep)? Do you go straight into REM, and if so, why? Is there something special about going into the dream consciously, which allows you to enter REM right away?
Thanks.

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according to mainstream research, if you wake up, then go back to sleep at a later time, your brain will put you into the stage of sleep you would be in if you had been asleep the entire time you were awake. So, if you wake up 30 minutes before REM, then fall asleep 30 minutes from now, you will fall asleep into REM. The only "Onset" is some pretty weird visuals, as you describe, but ther will be no NREM sleep, since you skipped past it while you were awake.

That is very interesting, thanks for a reply. Do you happen to have any links to some articles or papers about it?

What if I wake up when REM is far off and then go back to bed? Will I enter NREM consciously? Can you stay in it? Or is REM the only option? Could I wait through NREM to enter REM? I have a feeling that I enter NREM quite often and then it seems like there's a lapse in consciousness out of which I'm woken by hypnagogia like vibrations, feeling that my body is being pumped with air, or that my chest is being crushed - of course sometimes I just fall asleep and wake up like an hour later. On the other hand, sometimes I seem not to have that lapse of consciousness - getting to the threshold of a dream feels uninterrupted.

Thanks.

After a WBTB, it seams that even if you go back to bed exactly at the time you would have entered in REM sleep if you didn't wake up, you wont enter directly in REM.
It's more like the whole process (sage 1,2, maybe3, 2 REM) restarts from his beginning, but maybe faster.
That's why it is not as easy as it seams.

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Originally Posted by Kaan

After a WBTB, it seams that even if you go back to bed exactly at the time you would have entered in REM sleep if you didn't wake up, you wont enter directly in REM.

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The funny thing is that, like you say, even if you go back to sleep at the time you would have entered REM if you hadn't woken up, you will almost certainly overshoot the REM phase because it's still going to take you like 40 minutes (at least in my case) to actually 'go under' - the 40 minutes the REM phase would have lasted ;)

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It's more like the whole process (sage 1,2, maybe3, 2 REM) restarts from his beginning, but maybe faster.

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I'm willing to accept that as the most logical explanation. As long as there is no sleep deficit, there is no reason for your mind to try and bring back what it had just missed after you interrupted your sleep (as long as, what is important, you got up and waited instead of going back to sleep); if you go back to sleep right away, then I guess your brain remembers the chemistry state it was in just a few minutes ago, and can pick up where it left off.

But what about the stages of sleep you need to go through before you enter REM? Is it possible that, if you linger for just enough time, your mind fast forwards you through those stages, and wakes you up when REM kicks in (just like it seems to do to me sometimes?). But what about people who have reported being conscious in NREM stages? They weren't fast forwarded? Why?

I would kill to have a non invasive (and affordable) device that perfectly tracks all of my sleep stages so that I could have the answer this kind of questions.
So far, I didn't find any studies that reports the effects of different types of WBTB to the sleep pattern, but I hop someone will find it and post it here.

In my case, it seams that I naturally wake up after a REM stage is ended, and whatever the duration of my WBTB, when I try to WILD, sometimes I guess I can stay conscious (by repeating a mantra for example) during the stage 1 and 2, with some moments I lost my focus and bring it back, but there is always a moment where I definitely lost consciousness, and nothing more happens (most of the case I eventually wake up from a non Lucid Dream, or I just can't find sleep).

That's why I do a lot of experiments with my Rem-Dreamer to wake me up at the beginning of a REM, rather than after it's end.
But even if I am awoken from a REM stage, which happens sometimes when the device works like I wanted to, 2 things generally happens:
-Either I try some kind of DEILD (or express WILD), but find myself unable to focus more that few seconds, and finally loose consciousness.
-Or I wake up and do a WBTB for a WILD attempt (I should try it more often), but when I get back to bed, it seams that I have to cross again the stages 1,2 and maybe 3, then 2 and at last REM, but I have been lost at the stage 3 if not earlier.

I guess it is supposed to be more easy if you try it with at least 6h of good sleep (which I have to work on, cause my WBTB are often earlier) cause you have good chances to avoid any Delta sleep (stage 3), and will only have to deal with stage 1 and 2.

I think it is possible to stay partially conscious during the stage 1 and 2 by training regularly.

Something that I presume can help with turning fast into REM after a WBTB is REM rebound, and to have a REM rebound you have to miss a REM stage, but what you do when you wake up after a micro awakening (so after a REM end) to practice a WBTB is firstly missing some N-REM sleep, so if your WBTB lasts between 20 to 40 min, the sleep debt you have is a N-REM sleep debt, so it is logical that when you return to bed, the fist kind of sleep that you will have is the N-REM sleep that you missed.

I guess the ideal would be to wake up at the exact moment a REM is on the point to begin, and to return to bed at the virtual moment the REM sleep was supposed to end, cause if you manage to do that, you will have an only-REM-sleep debt, and who knows? maybe that you will be find a REM sleep without waiting too long.

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Originally Posted by Kaan

I would kill to have a non invasive (and affordable) device that perfectly tracks all of my sleep stages so that I could have the answer this kind

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You could do a hypnogram test, which would show you when the sleep stages began and ended, but last time I checked it cost about 400 EUR, so there goes affordable...

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when I try to WILD, sometimes I guess I can stay conscious (by repeating a mantra for example) during the stage 1 and 2, with some moments I lost my focus and bring it back, but there is always a moment where I definitely lost consciousness

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OK, I need to ask about something. Do you experience anything special before making it to NREM stages 1 and 2? Like hypnagogia? And then more of them when you are about to begin REM? Do vibrations, sounds, crushing sensations (hypnagogia in general) etc. tell one that one is about to enter REM, or that one is about to start the sequence of stages? Because for me it is waiting, waiting, waiting, then hypnagogia (or not - it depends) and then I either am on the other side or I don't make it for some reason. I really wouldn't know if I entered any other stage than what I suppose is REM (maybe it's not it?).

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I guess it is supposed to be more easy if you try it with at least 6h of good sleep (which I have to work on, cause my WBTB are often earlier) cause you have good chances to avoid any Delta sleep (stage 3), and will only have to deal with stage 1 and 2.

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To be honest, I used to WILD after 4 hours of sleep and I don't see a big difference now that I do it after 6 hours. Seriously, I think I often drift off and then get woken by hypnagogia, which allows me to continue just short of the ending line.

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Originally Posted by Radek

You could do a hypnogram test, which would show you when the sleep stages began and ended, but last time I checked it cost about 400 EUR, so there goes affordable...

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What I'd like to have is something that belongs to me so that I can do a lot of research on my own sleep, for example: what happens when I do this or when I do that, long WBTB, short WBTB, and so on.

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OK, I need to ask about something. Do you experience anything special before making it to NREM stages 1 and 2? Like hypnagogia? And then more of them when you are about to begin REM? Do vibrations, sounds, crushing sensations (hypnagogia in general) etc. tell one that one is about to enter REM, or that one is about to start the sequence of stages? Because for me it is waiting, waiting, waiting, then hypnagogia (or not - it depends) and then I either am on the other side or I don't make it for some reason. I really wouldn't know if I entered any other stage than what I suppose is REM (maybe it's not it?).

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Nothing much special.
At the beginning I have got some random hypnagogic thoughts and short random hypnagogic dreams/images, then I come back to the surface, I can feel my body getting numb, sometimes I feel some strange kinesthesic hallucinations, like if a cat or a dog jump on my bed, cause I feel my bed moving a bit, but it is rare, or some weird external noises, like big bugs ramping, but its even more rare.
sometimes my heart start to beat stronger and faster like if I was scared but nothing special can explain this reaction, except maybe a different feeling, let's say a feeling that something is happening, but I don't go further.

What makes noticeable changes is when I use some supplements : Galantamine + choline + A-GPC.
then, when I try to follow the WILD technique described on the Yuschak's book about Lucid supplements, I am a lot more likely to acces to the WILD transition without loosing my consciousness.
It's like these supplements non only help in noticing the arrival of the REM sleep, but also help in staying conscious during most of the N-REM stages, even if it takes between 40 min to 40 min to kick in.
I even had got an OBE by using these supplements.

None the less, what I want to do is being able to WILD without supplements, and without the only help of luck.
I have been able to WILD several times in my life, without supplements, but luck was involved, it was by accident : I was conscious few second just before a rem sleep opened itself and I saw the WILD process happening.

So I am like you, I try to find how to know if a REM is about to come or if nothing will come, when I am crossing the 2 first sleep stages of N-REM.

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To be honest, I used to WILD after 4 hours of sleep and I don't see a big difference now that I do it after 6 hours. Seriously, I think I often drift off and then get woken by hypnagogia, which allows me to continue just short of the ending line.

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don't you notice, when you allow yourself to sleep until the late morning, that the 2 or 3 last hours contain very much dreams, and that each time you have some micro awakenings during these lasts hours, you get very fast asleep and very fast in a dream?
Do you perform a WBTB when this happens?

I don't but I think I should give it some tries.

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the first I have got some random hypnagogic thoughts and short random hypnagogic dreams/images, then I come back to the surface, I can feel my body getting numb, sometimes I feel some strange kinesthesic hallucinations, like if a cat or a dog jump on my bed, cause I feel my bed moving a bit, but it is rare.
sometimes my heart start to beat stronger and faster like if I was scared but nothing special can explain this reaction, except maybe a different feeling, let's say a feeling that something is happening, but I don't go further.

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OK, first things first: You wait, get imagery, go back, and then you don't proceed? Why is that? And how do you know you were close to NREM stages, and not REM?

As for that heart sensation, I sometimes feel like it's going to explode, and it's difficult for me to keep still ;) I can't say I like that kind of things; I like vibrations, sounds (I never get images), but the chest crushing sensation, exploding heart, and feeling like I'm suffocating aren't things I look forward to when I WILD, but in all fairness, they're just uncomfortable, not painful or anything. They also mean I'm close to my goal (but sometimes they're not there and I can still make it through, so they're like a side effect or something)

When I WILD, two things happen to me (if I don't fall asleep): I get some sensations (vibrations, chest crushing etc.) and after waiting them out I can get up from my dream bed (or from the floor - it's happened) or I get the sensations and after waiting them out I'm just back and nothing happens. I've always considered the second scenario a failure, because it just feels I'm wide awake and not in some dreamless stage. A few days ago, afraid of the same thing happening, when the sensations hit me, I stared at some little points in the darkness, not paying ANY attention to the sensations. Needless to say I woke up in a dream, so I guess it pays not to concentrate on them, but to acknowledge them and keep doing what you were doing.

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don't you notice, when you allow yourself to sleep until the late morning, that the 2 or 3 last hours contain very much dreams, and that each time you have some micro awakenings during these lasts hours, you get very fast asleep and very fast in a dream?
Do you perform a WBTB when this happens?

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I don't either, and yes, I should ;) I don't know, I always try WILDing after getting up from bed and returning to it, never right after I wake up - I just feel I would fall back asleep fast.

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Galantamine + choline + A-GPC.

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As for supplementation, I've never used it, but I think it's not a bad thing, and can help. Still, just like you, I want the process to be natural and without any support. But that just me.

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Originally Posted by Radek

OK, first things first: You wait, get imagery, go back, and then you don't proceed? Why is that? And how do you know you were close to NREM stages, and not REM?

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well, by definition I'm in N-REM stages from the sleep onset (stage 1) to the deep slow sleep (now called stage 3, in the past it was called stages 3 and 4), but what I don't know is if I only pass through the stage 1 and 2 (so with the sequence 1,2, REM) or if I go for a little while through the stage 3 (sequence 1,2,3,2,REM).
I don't know if I loose consciousness somewhere at the end of the stage 2 (in the first scenario) or when I enter in the stage 3 (second scenario).
Most of the cases, after having lied a while on my back, struggling against itches and envy of moving, I finish by being bored and allow me to roll on my side.
Then I continue repeating my mantra, but staying focus is much more difficult in this position, and I quickly fall asleep, and that's all.

As an example, this is what happened this night:

I managed to sleep from 00h00 to 5h45 without getting out of the bed, which is close to what I wanted to do : a WBTB after 6h of sleep.
So this is a good point.

I stayed awake for about 25 min on another room, looking at TV (it's bad, I know, I should have been just meditating or something, but at this moment the Idea of meditating sounds very boring to me, my brain is hungry, it needs some informational food, I have to work on this tendency).

Then I returned to my bed, put my Rem-Dreamer on so that it won't track my Eye Movements before one hour.
I lie on my back and start to relax, repeating my mantra "to stay concentrated" each time I inhale.
I focus on my body and my mind switchings, I feel my body becoming loud and numb, as if it was paralyzed but I know it is not, I try non the less to imagine I really can't move it as it help me to relax.
This night, at this moment I also tried to notice when some of my head muscles (jaws, muscles around my mouths, and so on) are contracted, because I unconsciously contract them which prevents me from being 100% relaxed, so I tried to relax them each time I noticed these muscles where contracted.
Each time I was doing that I was hearing the internal sounds of my body, a little bit like if I was under the water of a swimming pool, cause as I always wear ear plugs to sleep, when I relax my jaws and mouth muscles, my ears seam more connected to my body's internal sounds.
So when I noticed this phenomenon I started to also focus on this sound, which I found helpful to stay focused.
After a while I felt something moving close to my right shoulder, that must be a kinesthetic hallucination.
this last point is maybe a clue that indicates that the REM stage is close, but not necessary.
I have read somewhere that such hallucinations are linked to the stage 2, and elsewhere I read it was linked to the stage 1.
The fact is that, when I am on the sleep onset phase, if I try to hear random voices, most of the case I do hear random voices saying short random sentences, and the "sound" become more and more real.
I didn't do that this night but this is the proof that real like hallucinations are possible during the sleep onset (stage 1 or 2).
So I don't know if this thing moving near my shoulder was a clue that I was close to REM or if it was just related to the stage 2 of N-REM.
Then I started to be very bored to stay on my back, so I rolled to my side and as usual I continued to focus on my mantra but quickly felt asleep without noticing it.
The rest of my night, my Rem-Dreamer went off several times, but I never was able to manage to DEILD.
then I slept from 8 am to 10 am with a bunch of dreams, witch is why I think this last 2 hours of sleep are more likely to be suitable for WBTB+WILD attempt, but without an alarm, I find it impossible to wake up in the middle of this friendly window.

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As for that heart sensation, I sometimes feel like it's going to explode, and it's difficult for me to keep still ;) I can't say I like that kind of things; I like vibrations, sounds (I never get images), but the chest crushing sensation, exploding heart, and feeling like I'm suffocating aren't things I look forward to when I WILD, but in all fairness, they're just uncomfortable, not painful or anything. They also mean I'm close to my goal (but sometimes they're not there and I can still make it through, so they're like a side effect or something)

When I WILD, two things happen to me (if I don't fall asleep): I get some sensations (vibrations, chest crushing etc.) and after waiting them out I can get up from my dream bed (or from the floor - it's happened) or I get the sensations and after waiting them out I'm just back and nothing happens. I've always considered the second scenario a failure, because it just feels I'm wide awake and not in some dreamless stage. A few days ago, afraid of the same thing happening, when the sensations hit me, I stared at some little points in the darkness, not paying ANY attention to the sensations. Needless to say I woke up in a dream, so I guess it pays not to concentrate on them, but to acknowledge them and keep doing what you were doing.

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This happens rarely to me, when I WILD, let's say "by luck", or "accidentally", I just see my imagined scenes becoming real in few seconds, and I am in the LD (no matter if these imagined scene where visual, tactile or kinesthetic).
Most of the case, when my heart begins to accelerate and my body begins to feel weirds stuffs, I feel so stressed that it must end the REM sleep onset.
Nonetheless, once, when took Galantamine, I started to feel these tremendous sensations and Eventually felt my body separating from my sleeping body, with the accelerating heart, but I managed to ignore it, to stay calm, and I finally my first OBE.
During all my other Galantamine associated succes, about one hour+ after having took the pills, I start focusing on imagining myself doing physical stuffs, like walking, or practicing bicycle, and few second after, I am doing it for real in the dream, fully lucid.
basically, when I am on Galantamine, I easily live what happened to me "by luck" several times, when I didn't plane to WILD before it was happening. Galantamine seams to bring the physiological and mental conditions to make the WILD more likely to happen.
Probably because it is a pro-REM molecule.

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I don't either, and yes, I should ;) I don't know, I always try WILDing after getting up from bed and returning to it, never right after I wake up - I just feel I would fall back asleep fast.

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I think that a short WBTB will be necessary at this time as you really fall asleep fast during this period.

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As for supplementation, I've never used it, but I think it's not a bad thing, and can help. Still, just like you, I want the process to be natural and without any support. But that just me.

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It is not a bad thing when you know exactly how it works, how to take it and what it does.
None the less, even if I have got more than 20 successful WILDs with G, contrary to what I initially thought, It doesn't really help me to learn "how to WILD", it's like learning bicycle with the two side wheels, indeed you really start to learn when the side wheels have been removed.

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well, by definition I'm in N-REM stages from the sleep onset (stage 1) to the deep slow sleep (now called stage 3, in the past it was called stages 3 and 4), but what I don't know is if I only pass through the stage 1 and 2 (so with the sequence 1,2, REM) or if I go for a little while through the stage 3 (sequence 1,2,3,2,REM).
I don't know if I loose consciousness somewhere at the end of the stage 2 (in the first scenario) or when I enter in the stage 3 (second scenario).

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I don't know. As I explained, I simply wait for things to start happening and then I'm either inside of a dream or not; I can tell because when I've successfully entered a dream I feel like I'm under water - I can't mistake it for anything. If, on the other hand, I feel normal, I assume I have failed to cross over and need to try again (but I've tried to not pay any attention to the exit (OBE nomenclature) symptoms, and it worked, so I think I won't fail this often anymore). I've never once experienced a successful exit after which I still lingered in some dreamless state. Maybe in my failed attempts (when I got past the various sensations and nothing seemed to have happened) what I did was go into some NREM stage? But, I don't think so. It felt like I just went back to square one.

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I stayed awake for about 25 min on another room, looking at TV (it's bad, I know, I should have been just meditating or something

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I don't see how meditation could sober me up. I sit in front of a computer and read things, watch things and stuff. I've read a guy who is a beast at LDs (he calls them OBEs) watched some TV (actually, he flipped through channels fast) to sober himself up).

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After a while I felt something moving close to my right shoulder, that must be a kinesthetic hallucination.
this last point is maybe a clue that indicates that the REM stage is close, but not necessary.

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You mean like there's someone else in the room? At least on two occasions I've sensed something or someone sitting by my right shoulder and I could feel its breath on my face. I think it was right before I could get up in a dream, but I'm not sure.

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Nonetheless, once, when took Galantamine, I started to feel these tremendous sensations and Eventually felt my body separating from my sleeping body

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I've always wanted to have an OBE (at first I strictly called what I was doing OBE - now I'm a little more sceptical), but I always kind of get up from bed in a dream, which isn't that exciting ;) so I might just try some of those supplements some day.