My REM Timing

I've managed to get myself to wake up after a lot of my dreams during the night and for the past week or so I've been writing down the times at which I have woken up (so, times at which my dreams have ended).

I noticed an interesting pattern, first of all my sleep patterns themselves are quite erratic, my bed time likes to shift or I sleep in, but the interesting thing is that the time differences between each dream does not change much even when my bed time shifts by +/- an hour or I sleep in.

So data time!

Bed times between 10:00 and 01:00.

Wake up times vary drastically but I noticed that after 9 hours of sleep dreams basically stop, this might just be me but after about 8 hours of sleep, if I decide to "oversleep" I only have 1 more dream to go during that time and after that my brain stops giving me REM and basically kicks me out of bed.

And finally my REM cycle pattern:

First dream (that I wake up from) is after ~3:10 hours:minutes of sleep and after that it's every hour! So 3:10, 4:10, 5:10, 7:10, 8:10. At these times I am either in the middle of or at the end of a dream. Although the times themselves are from different days, so Day1 might be 3:10, 5:10, Day2 might be 3:10, 7:10, Day3 - 3:10, 5:10, 7:10 but the "hourly" pattern doesn't seem to change, it seems that I just sometimes skip a dream or two before waking up again. You might notice 6:10 is missing, for some odd reason I've never woken up after this amount of time, but I think it's safe to assume 6:10 is probably the same as the rest.

So there you go, this could just be me but I'm sharing in the hopes that it might help somebody plan their WBTB times better. =]


Good luck. =]

The sleep cycle is always stated as being about 90 minutes average, so if you're waking with a 2 hour interval or a 4 hour interval that's actually probably not far off what is meant by the average of 90 minutes.
For you it looks like it might be more like a 2 hour interval? You mention 3:10, 5:10 one night and 3:10, 5:10, 7:10 the next.
I have found my REM cycles to come at about the 1.5 hours intervals, but they can be a bit all over the place. I'm using the Zeo headband as well as noting my waking times to judge this.
Somtimes I seem to have a very short REM episode, then a long one.
It sounds like your sleep cycles are probably more reguar than mine, so it could work for you to wake after a dream and then set an alarm for about 1.5 hours later - one than self cancels so it can just wake you at the beginning of the next REM cycle, then try to DEILD (stay very still when the alarm sounds and try to fall back into the dream).