Do you have to wake up from a previous REM cycle to do a WILD, or can you just try to enter one when you first go to bed at night?
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Do you have to wake up from a previous REM cycle to do a WILD, or can you just try to enter one when you first go to bed at night?
You can try to enter when you first go to bed if you want, but generally those are harder to achieve, so it is always recomended to do it after waking up from a previous REM cycle.
It takes about 90 minutes on average for someone to get into REM sleep and start dreaming, and your first REM sleep is really short, and then you have to wait again to go back into REM, granted it doesn't take as long as the first 90 minutes. The point of waking up is so that you don't have to wait very long to drift quickly into REM. Why concentrate for a long time when you can just sleep through your first cycles? Also REM gets longer and longer as your body runs through the cycles of sleep, so the longer you sleep the longer your possible lucid will be.
So should I wait around 5 hours after going to bed to wake up? (via alarm clock)
Between 4.5 and 7 hours is a good range of time to use for planning a WBTB for the purpose of WILDs. :)