Hi guys. Last night I experimented a bit with some of the suggestions and tools mentioned in the live streams lately and had some interesting results. I ran the sleep cycle tracker video, and it seems that my sleep cycles matched up pretty closely (though since it takes me a while to fall asleep, I had to restart the video from the beginning every so often until I was asleep). Nearly all of my natural awakenings were pretty close to either a “REM” or “awake” stage, with the possible exception of a slight bit of messiness toward the last few hours.
Also, at some point during the last cycles when I felt like I might be close to sleep and REM, I toyed around with the 20 Steps idea and got myself into a nice little “test” lucid dream. Actually, I tried it twice. The first time, I almost made it, as the mental imagery became lifelike for just an instant, but then I accidentally snapped back awake or into NREM sleep. A short while later, I tried again and very quickly hit the dream state. I don't think I had completed even one trip. At this point, I had no problem with my usual reality check (though technically I already knew I was dreaming, as this was essentially a very quick WILD), and I clearly remembered to do the things in the dream I had been planning and rehearsing during my waking-life reality checks. It was a short dream, and I didn't get to accomplish anything spectacular, but it wasn't a bad attempt after being out of regular practice for quite a while. Judging from the sleep tracker, it's likely I had just hit the end of REM there, and indeed I couldn't get back to sleep for another hour after that (a problem I have occasionally for whatever reason).
That particular night I think it was at least 6 or 7 times, mainly after or during all the REM periods, it appeared. That's a little more than I usually wake up, which is probably typically about 2 to 4 times—though it's also possible that I actually wake up just as often on average and simply fall back asleep so quickly I don't really notice.
That sounds great, how many times did you wake up to check the tracker and see where you were on the graph? I need to work a little more with it to figure out how closely I'm tracking to the 'norm'.