Thread: The effect of amounts of light in your bedroom.

I noticed that I had some nice allmost lucid dreams 2 times after I came home drunk. However, I didn't really believe it was just the alcohol.

So this night I left my curtains a bit open . Normally I sleep in an allmost completely dark room. Becouse the 2 times I was drunk I didn't close any curtains, and woke up with the sun in my face so to say.

And It worked. It might have been a placebo effect, but I had my first Real LD this night =D The LD happend around 8am, so indeed there was some light my my room allready.

I do actually think that light somehow wakes your concious a bit when sleeping. Afterall you can see light though your eyelids, and it makes sense. People are ment to wake up when the sun is shining ^___^

What are your experiences? I for sure will sleep with the curtains a bit open from now on. =)

Now that I think about it, U often Have LDs when the shades are open too... I always have them closed normally. I am so going to keep them open once it starts to be light again in the morning.

That sounds pretty cool! I wish that there was a window in my room thought. I live in the basement.... So I really cant test this out. And I don't like sleeping on the couch upstairs! But thats intersting how it triggers having an LD. You think its the gradual increase of light thats causing it?

I like to have it pitch black when I go to sleep, and even with my curtains closed I can still see a little light from the moon and from lights on people mailboxes, and it just kills me. I have been considering buying some sort of sleep mask.

But in addition, I only got the curtains recently, and I havent had many lucids since I had getten them, wonder if there is any correlation.

I am a very light sleeper anyway. When it is daylight I simply cannot sleep!
However I do like candle light or my lava lamp to provide a very soft low light as opposed to complete darkness.

light deffinately wakes the conciousness...

a few nights ago i didnt feel too well and i fell sleep on my bed at like 9 PM with the light on, i woke later totally refreshed and feeling awake thinking it was morning and looked at th clock to find it was 3 am anyway it was the light that did this because its happened before, generally if i leave the light on accidentally i wake up more redfreshed it seems

also i seem to have alot of LDs when its light outside too, even after only 6 hrs of sleep as long as its bright outside

So there might be some truth in it =)

I did had 3 dreams this night! Maybe becouse I woke up at 7 becouse of the light, and again at 9 and at 11. (I forgot 2 of the dreams btw lol).

In my last dream I allso allmost got lucid I think. I though about dreaming but I didn't do a RC =(

Still, I am going to keep on sleeping with some light source ^___^

Are you saying Natural Light only?

because if I think back, I had all My LD's when there was a small light in my room.

I have found that most of the times when I become lucid the environment I am in is night. Or a few times I ghave looked out the windows, and there was absolutely nothing. Pitch black. Like on a computer game if you go outside the map(only in games its usually white), and I was like, I guess I will have to make my own landscape.

Originally posted by samf
Are you saying Natural Light only?

because if I think back, I had all My LD's when there was a small light in my room.

Nah any form of light. But sunlight is convinient becouse you have the longest REM-period and you (I at least) remember most dreams at about the end of your sleep.

Originally posted by Neruo
So there might be some truth in it =)
I did had 3 dreams this night! Maybe becouse I woke up at 7 becouse of the light, and again at 9 and at 11. (I forgot 2 of the dreams btw lol).

In my last dream I allso allmost got lucid I think. I though about dreaming but I didn't do a RC =( *
Still, I am going to keep on sleeping with some light source ^___^

I think because your REM periods become longer throughout the night is the reason you are capable of more lucid dreams.
The same goes for naps. Most everyone praises napps and how they are a great way to achieve Lucidity.
Again I think the main reason is because your conscious has the rest it had required and is now readily able to be provoked into consciousness while in a sleep state.
But come to think of it, quite possibly your mind puts two & two together. Although your eyes are shut, I would think that your subconscious is aware of light. Thus provoking itself that way.
Or quite possibly it could be in tune with our circadian clock.
Who the hell knows now!?!? More questions than answers....as usual.

I gotta have my room completely pitch black...no only do i have shades i put blankets up to block the light....i turn everything that has a light off...it annoys me to have light

the amount of light has never been a factor in how many LDs I've had. I DO find it harder to get to sleep when it's brighter, but that's about it.

It's to do with your circuladian (?) rhythms which are based on light/dark.
Melatonin is a big player here, which affects your sleep and dreams.

Generally when people nap during the day, they have a whole slew of dreams. Why? Because your circuladian rhythms tell you it's daytime and not your usual time for sleeping. So deeper sleep phases are cut short, making more time to dream, and making it easier to recall them.

When night time comes, your melatonin levels spike, which cause you to become drowsy. Of course, barring lots of alcohol, coffee, exercise, stress, etc, which quickly eradicate the effects.

I speak from experience on this, as I've been sleeping polyphasically for 41 days. This basically means I don't sleep, but rather nap for 20-25 minutes every 4 hours.
The most difficult time to get used to is the night hours, particularly the early morning. Your body tells you to sleep, regardless of whether you need it. You get used to it eventually

In Short:
Sleeping in lighter conditions causes more REM and less delta sleep, due to circuladian rhythms. However if you are a light sleeper, you might find the bright environment to be distracting.

PS: Another thing that seem to help, is to sleep on your back. And if it's a warm night, without covers. Naked is even better
And once again, light sleepers may find this difficult to fall asleep with.

So far, the only lucids I've had were at sunrise, my bedroom curtains are quite thin so the room is well lit. I think I might try getting thicker curtains because HI is easier to see in total darkness(for me at least). I'l try leaving the curtains open too and see if it makes a difference.

I like to sit in total darkness, so I think the thicker curtains may work better for me, but only time will tell.

Originally posted by Placebo
circuladian (?) rhythms

That would be "circadian" rhythms.

Originally posted by TygrHawk


That would be \"circadian\" rhythms.

right

Hmmm I don't know so sure know... Maybe light in your bedroom just wakes you up, or a bit, so you will have the same effect like setting your watch and then going back to sleep again.

Ah Well. ^___^

For those of you who like the room to gradually become brighter as the sun rises, but miss this in the winter, you can buy alarm clocks (at least in Britain so presumeably elsewhere too) where instead of an audible alarm or radio, a light gradually comes on very slowly over a 15 minute period. It can also be set to go dimmer in the evening over an equally long time. I have not had experience of one but is supposed to mimic the dawn sun rising and to gently lift you from sleep to wake without being shocked into it with conventional alarm clocks. I would love to have one of these myself but the retail around the £60 which seems a tad steep judging how cheap electronics are these days.

Perhaps some of you could create a kit yourself and build something similar? Or maybe they are much cheaper in other parts of the world.

Either way, I have fairly thin curtains, with venetian blinds behind to keep out most of the light (streetlamps and passing cars) and the room faces north so isn't filled with glaring sunshine even in summer.

There are a few cool things that come to mind with this topic (i'm a science major, and kinda a sci fi geek, so please bear with me while i geek out on you for just a sec...):
*H.G. Wells short story - "The Platner Story"
*Brion Gysin - the inventor of the first Dream Machine. Very interesting.
*the popular series, personal favorite of mine, The Twilight Zone
*Don Juan Matus' teachings about "seeing", and the minds eye, and your real eyes, and how dusk and dawn are particularly helpful in allowling your minds eye perception to explore.

The perception of our world mainly revolves around the things recieved by our eyes. our eyes receive light. that's all they receive. right right. So, twilight, or rather, the diffusion of light does in fact play a trick on the eyes, even when they're closed, and thus a trick on the mind.
*note* In complete darkness you're essentially deprived of your visual sense, and when your mind is deprived of sensory input it essentiall goes into it's own little corner and mentually masterbates. It has to generate it's own perceptions to interpret, thus its own stimulus, and really that's the difference between complete virtual reality, and partial virtual reality which is a sweet mixture of both self generated images and ideas, PLUS the addition of outside stimulus. I think this particular mixing perceptions is fantastic because during the rest of our waking/sleeping life we typically get to use only one or the other, and the dominance of one sense over the other almost completely masks out the presence of the other. You know, filtering, it's what our brains do to make sure we get the goods when we're processing information. But twilight...is unique. to say the least.
Some light falling on your eyelids allows the reception of at least a few visual elements - motion mostly, differences between ligtness and darkness, and of course you can see your eyelids! (check out the Brion Gysin's Dream Machine, it's awsome, and it illustrates the principle.)

Personally I think it might also be related to he fact that there are two periods of this kind of ambient lighting everyday, early morning, and early night. These periods don't last long, less than an hour together, but they come with regularity and subtle shift daily. As the days change and seasons change etc. our twilights change.
Cool, yeah?

Geek!

Yeah, sorry...I get over excited sometimes. Try to play it cool. But cool turns out to be nothing, and I get left with a bunch of things left unsaid. But sorry though...
-geeeeked

Lol, never apologise for something like that. I was just pulling your leg
PS: Sorry for taking the thread off topic. Let's get it back?

Oh yay!
Yes, back to the topic. Twilight, partial light. Veeeery condusive to dreaming.

The way I see it is that if your room has a lot of light, esp natural light, then it will sleep in a pattern a bit closer to a nap. This results in far more dreaming, in theory anyway.
This is because you're accustomed to monophasic (night time singular sleep) Anything outside of your night sleep ends up being largely used as 'extra' - ie dreams.
If you sleep in the dark, your mind goes 'Hey, time to pass out into deep sleep. The predators are around so nows a good time to catch a wink in my den'

Falling quickly into a dream rather than going through too much deep sleep is very advantageous for lucidity. It's much easier to keep some consciousness alive for a small while than for a long while (obviously). For most, deep sleep means death to consciousness.