In this article, I wanna talk about the best way of lucid dreaming if you stay up late usually. By staying up late you obviously push back your circadian rhythm and make it harder to fall asleep and get the restorative sleep every night.
But I’m sure you already knew this and in fact many video gamers and students stay up very late regularly.
This is probably because they have deadlines or they need to study or maybe they just want to stay a few extra hours and finish that video game. But all hope is not lost you can actually lucid dream very effectively and regularly even if you stay up very late at night.
Lucid dreaming at 3AM
I made a short video about whether or not lucid dreaming is EASIER at 3AM. This might help if you’re considering lucid dreaming in the early hours of the morning. If not, read the REST of this article!
A common email that I get from people, is that they want to lucid dream but they don’t go to bed until 3 am in the morning.
This makes it very hard to do traditional techniques like the wake back to bed, because you’ve only got to sleep about one or two hours ago. The first thing you should consider is whether you actually are a night owl or not.
There are many different sleep chronotypes and forms but it’s important to be aware of which type you actually are. Consider what time you normally go to bed on an average day even on the weekends. Most people go to bed between 11 and 12 in the evening but many people also to stay up until two or three or even later in the morning.
You really need to be honest with yourself if you want to lucid dream and the best way of being honest about this is just to work out what time you actually go to sleep at night.
The next thing?
Can you change your sleep pattern?
The next thing you wanna consider is whether you can actually change your sleep routines.
You may be surprised to hear that if you regularly go to bed late in the morning you’re gonna find it a lot harder to lucid dream the matter which technique you use.
Kinda sucks, right?
So if you are able to change what time you go to bed, this will be very beneficial for you not only for lucid dreaming but also for health mental energy and how you feel. You’ll feel tired and rundown if you constantly go to bed late but I’m sure you already knew that.
I won’t mention too much more about this, but if you think you can change what time you go to bed it will be massively beneficial to go to bed at a sensible hour.
This might not be the case of your shift work or a student or if you have tight deadlines to meet.
How to lucid dream if you stay up late
By following certain techniques and building certain habits you are still able to become lucid even if you go to bed late at night. One of these ways is to understand your circadian rhythm and how it works on your body.
I will get onto the circadian rhythm in a minute but first I wanna consider a couple of basic things.
Firstly make sure you actually know how to lucid dream.
This is very important for beginners that you actually understand the techniques and how they work.
I would suggest reading the following articles if you haven’t read them already.
- How to do reality checks for lucid dreaming
- How to lucid dream tonight
- How to fall asleep faster
- How to write your dreams down
Once you’ve read those articles and you understand how it works, then you’re ready to progress and try the circadian rhythm techniques and technology that I want to explain in this article.
Your circadian rhythm is important
Your circadian rhythm is basically how are you naturally fall asleep and wake up every morning. It’s based around the sun when is sunset and when the Sun rises.
The sun rises in the morning and causes the body to produce the hormone called serotonin.
This hormone starts to be produced when the Sun first rises, but it also Starts to be produced a few hours before you wake up naturally. Serotonin is what helps you wake up and give you the energy to actually go about your day.
The problem is that most people stay up late and therefore don’t actually break up when the Sun rises.
This means it’s harder to wake up, because the Sun is already risen and you’ve already slept in.
Yeah, exactly.
So it’s very important to be aware of the circadian rhythm and how it actually works. The most important part of this is actually the nighttime routine. At night time when the Sun goes down the darkness causes your body to produce a hormone called melatonin.
Melatonin is such a powerful sleep supplement, that it’s actually sold separately and is known to be one of the most effective Sleep supplements. I’m not sure if you can get it online and the legal status of melatonin varies from country to country.
But the point I’m trying to make is this your circadian rhythm naturally allows your body to produce melatonin at night. This melatonin then makes you feel tired which helps you fall asleep almost immediately.
And it’s VERY effective.
What happens is when you keep your body in mind awake after the sun has gone down you stop your body produces melatonin. A very powerful way of avoiding this is just to not look at screens or your phone for a few hours before you go to bed.
This is easier said than done but there are many ways you can get around this actually.
Using technology to improve your sleep habits
For example, download a program called flux for your computer which will turn away the blue light and make it more natural and red lights based. This is one way technology can help you sleep better.
Your phone can actually turn off blue light automatically in the evening with something called night mode.
Most smartphones these days have night mode automatically built into the system and it’s a very powerful way of stopping your eyes from being exposed to blue late in the evening. So there are a few ways to use technology to hack that pattern.
The first one would be to use a sunrise alarm clock.
The sun is supposed to rise in the morning and that light is supposed to enter your retinas or touch your skin and cause your body to produce serotonin. For situations where this isn’t possible for example if you live in Scandinavia and the sun rises at varying times throughout the year you can use a sunrise alarm clock.
Sunrise alarm clocks are devices that naturally and gradually increases light in your room over a period of about half an hour. This is the simulate the rising sun and it can be a very effective way of waking up naturally without a blaring alarm.
So that’s one way to use technology to hack your circadian rhythm if you don’t get enough natural sunlight during the day. Another way would be to make sure that you automatically have night mode being turned on on your phone and on your computer in the evening.
This is going to avoid exposure to blue light which is going to cause you to sleep WORSE over the long term.
There are some more natural ways that you can lucid dream even if you go to bed late. The first one will be to focus on technique that doesn’t involve waking up at certain times. For example, the dream initiated lucid dream is a very powerful technique for those of you who don’t want to do things like wake up early and then go back to sleep.
There are also other natural lucid dreaming induction techniques like the mnemonic induced lucid dream which can help you naturally have lucid dreams even if you don’t wake up at certain times.
Using sleep supplements to lucid dream
And the last way is to actually use supplements.
Supplements can be used for a wide range of things but in particular, for this situation, you can use supplements to help your body and mind to fall asleep and have lucid dreams just like normal.
The most obvious example is to use the supplement melatonin.
Melatonin is known as the hormone of darkness and it’s what helps your body feel tired in the evenings. If you can’t naturally produce enough melatonin you won’t be able to fall asleep fast enough to lucid dream.
You can buy melatonin in various forms online including a sleep spray or one that you spray into your mouth. I’ve personally tried melatonin sleep spray and I found it very effective and you actually have more vivid dreams that way. I did also write a very long article about how to have more vivid dreams which you might find interesting.
A quick reminder it’s important to be aware that although these techniques can help you lucid dream, it’s not actually the best way of doing this. The best way of learning how to lucid dream is to learn the techniques properly and make sure you get a healthy night’s sleep at the right times.
Of course, this isn’t always possible especially if you work nightshift or study but you should always aim for that in the long term. Sleep is not any good for lucid dreaming but also very important to get right from a young age.
There have been many studies that show you have massively increased risks of various diseases if you stay up later than you said in the evenings.
Nightshift workers, in particular, are at risk of all sorts of conditions and complications that other people would not be a risk of. So if you can go to bed at a normal time, it’s massively beneficial to you and also for lucid dreaming.
