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Comment by axaxs | Hacker News Reader

Data point, unsure if helpful. I sleep plenty but wake up at least once per night. My most vivid dreams always occur in my last sleep, usually after 6am. I can literally live a lifetime in my dreams between 6 and 9am. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but because my dreams are less than stellar, I usually dread going back to bed.

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I often feel these waves of ... something ... flush and course through my head when I drift off and am still semi-conscious. I know it happens when I begin to nap, I think too it may happen early in the morning, just before waking. It feels almost chemical.

I have had the same feeling too during a power nap. It feels like a reboot to me. Perceptually when I wake up I panic thinking it must have been hours then I look at the watch and only 10 minutes have passed.

Yes, that. I can wake up at 8, accidentally fall asleep, and feel like hours or days have passed and panic, but it's just 8:15. Dreams are so mysterious it's weird, in our age of science.

Aren’t those the ripples of theta waves that start to emerge as alpha waves drop while you transition through hypnagogia?

On the other end, as you transition out of sleep to wakefulness, you pass through hypnopompia.

I experience the feeling of these waves also when I meditate.

As another anecdote, on mornings when I can sleep in, I wake up momentarily before my final doze (another 30m-1hr). That wake always interrupts my most vivid dreams of the night (whose events feel like several hours of real life, but unsure about its real length).

Then, as I fall back asleep, I'm either wishing for/against that dream topic to continue. Most of the time not getting what I want.

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