Warming Up | Module 1 | Lesson 3 | Part 1

Sleep Cycles for Performance

Imagine you’re starting a new diet with the aim to either bulk up or lose weight.

You wouldn’t just throw any old item from the supermarket shelf into your shopping basket, would you?

Most people with a clear objective in mind would take the time to research what types of food and recipes would help them reach their desired goals.

Imagine you’re starting a new diet with the aim to either bulk up or lose weight. You wouldn’t just throw any old item from the supermarket shelf into your shopping basket, would you? Most people with a clear objective in mind would take the time to research what types of food and recipes would help them reach their desired goals.

In a similar way, think back to when you decided to join a gym or start training in your sport. I’m sure you didn’t simply show up and begin doing whatever you felt like on your first day.

You might have watched YouTube videos, read some books or followed the advice from personal trainers, coaches or your favourite online influencers.

The same principle applies to Lucivity Fitness – this isn’t a journey you’d want to start without a thorough understanding of what it entails.

The key to successfully unlocking your fitness potential through lucid dreaming lies in truly understanding your sleep cycles and having a firm grasp of how your brain and mind work when they’re in a state of unconsciousness.

Just as you’d want to understand the significance of reps and sets in your workout, or the role of protein in your diet, you’d want to familiarise yourself with your sleep patterns, different stages of sleep and the transitions between these stages.

By knowing this in detail, you’ll awaken a heightened sense of awareness for your sleep, how important it is for your rest and repair and what the optimal time to have lucid dreams could be for you and your lifestyle.

So, let’s explore what happens when we fall asleep by looking at the sleep stages that make up our nightly sleep cycles.

Sleep Stages and Cycles

In 1848, French scholar and physician Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury named the phenomenon that occurs as your brain is teetering on the edge of falling asleep. He named it the hypnagogic state.

A similar event takes place as your brain begins to wake up called the hypnopompic state, first coined by Frederic Myers around the same time as Maury. We’ll explore these odd sounding names and states quite a lot during this course, as they are more important than they first appear!

As you sleep, your brain undergoes four distinct sleep stages that equal a single sleep cycle.

Typically, a healthy person experiences four to six sleep cycles per night, with each cycle lasting between 90 and 110 minutes. These cycles are divided into two main categories known as Non-rapid eye movement stages 1, 2 and 3 (NREM 1, 2 and 3) and Rapid eye movement (REM).

That’s a lot of strange words and terms being thrown at you in only a couple of paragraphs, right? It goes to show that an awful lot is happening in your brain when you’re getting your much needed sleep though.

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WARMING UP

Module 1: Standing at The Start Line

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Module 2: On The Starting Blocks

LUCID ACTIVITY

Module 3: Putting on Your Game Face

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Module 4: Going The Distance

COOLING DOWN

Module 5: Crossing The Finish Line

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