Breathing and lucid dreaming stability

I’ve been wondering this for a while, but seeing as I haven’t been able to remember to try this enough in my LD’s (and when I do it’s not that conclusive…), I’m posting to see what other people have to say.

IWL one thing that helps to calm down is taking deep breaths. Does this work in LD’s too? To help calm down and relax, avoiding premature awakenings? I wonder if focusing on your breathing might make you wake up instead… like if you change your breathing pattern in SP, that usually makes you get out of it in a few seconds.

So does anyone have any experience with breathing in a LD?

Do any of these help you stay in the dream or does it make things worse?

  • taking slow deep breaths
  • trying to take “normal” breaths
  • trying to forget about your breathing completely and let the SC handle it
  • … take quick random breaths?

Also, any difference in breathing through the nose or mouth?

I haven’t tried too much breathing patterns in LD’s, in my most recent one I tried stabilizing the dream by simply focusing on a single point, to sort of keep myself grounded in the dream. It worked once, the second time I woke up :meh:

I’ll try this next time I’m lucid, see how well it works :content:

I like to experimenting with normal and everyday things from WL in dreams but to be honest I’m not successful as much as I want to be…

I’ve never tried breathing techniques and I never actually pay attention on breathing at all. But for example I tried to stop in a dream. Like stop and do nothing but something was pulling me forward like some force of determination. I tried to visit my house and some places that I have visit in WL but not successful yet. I tried to summon some friends but not much luck as well.

So in my case doing everyday things in dreams is a little bit harder then becoming an animal, flying, using telekinesis, growing wings, breathing underwater and such amazing and unreal and unrelated things to physical world…

I guess we need to come more freely to those things with no expectations from WL. I mean we don’t know how does it feel to fly, at lest not from WL and I guess we can approach to that more freely like we have an idea how that must feel and it’s not that hard to do that in a dream, but when we bring expectations from solid and “real” waking reality we are instantly limited on how and why this experience should look like this or that…

Well I guess the secret is in freeing our mind…

I havent tried it, but I dont think that trying to change your breathing patterns in a LD would work. You see, even when you are asleep, your dream breathing is still connected to your real breathing. This fact is proven in the nose plugging RC. Even though your nose is plugged in the dream, you can still breathe because your real nose is not plugged. So, your breathing is one thing that does not change even in a dream.

One of the main ways to get out of SP is by changing your breathing. This is because slowing down or speeding up your breaths tells your body that you are awake. When you are asleep, your breathing gets slow and deep. If you alter that, you`ll wake up. So if we connect this fact and the fact that breathing is the same both in your real body and the dream, we can infer that changing your breathing would probably wake you up and end the LD. I personally wouldn’t waste a LD on it.

only thing i’ve done breathing in LD is the “hold your nose shut, try exhale through it”-thing.

works as a RC aswell but doing it while lucid increases lucidity.

Thanks for the replies :smile:

I happened to breathe through my mouth calmly in a low lucid this morning and things did feel pretty stable. I also did a new RC, I covered my open mouth with my hand and tried to breathe in through it. Variation of the nose RC, no idea where that idea came from :razz: