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.