How can someone fall immediately into REM sleep if technically it’s not until the 4th stage of sleep?
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Sleep stages are general patterns, they aren’t rigid and don’t have a required progression from one step to another.
Many have taken a short nap and experienced waking up from a dream without nearly the time to go through a complete “cycle”. Likewise, environmental factors (level of fatigue, medicines, or habits) can affect how your individual sleep cycles progress.
Your body needs REM sleep, so the most obvious way to “force” your body to enter it directly would be to never allow yourself to sleep in chunks long enough to normally enter REM. It would be hell on you while adjusting, but your body will eventually learn to take REM early or immediately once you fall asleep.
There is actually a practice surrounding this technique called “polyphasic sleep” where practitioners sleep only in 30 minute chunks more regularly throughout the day. Some can make that work for months to years on end without apparent^† negative health effects aside from the initial sleep deprivation necessary to force the body’s adjustment when starting out.
† To my knowledge this has not actually been studied and it cannot be said that there aren’t some subtle or longer term consequences.
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