Getting back into LD'ing... Have no idea what to do...

Hi all,
The past couple days, I’ve decided to get back into LD’ing.
But, my issue is, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what do to, and I need some help.

Here’s me:
I can fall asleep kinda fast, but not too fast, especially not recently.

When I do fall asleep, I’m OUT. I sleep HARD. And when I say I sleep HARD, I mean worryingly hard.

I don’t often remember dreams. I don’t even often remember fragments. I’d like to believe that that’s because of sleeping too hard, but I’m not sure that’s the case here.

As you can see by my profile, I’ve had 8 successfully stabilized LD’s, but these were very short and nothing was done in them.
2 of these were chained, and the rest were spontaneous skepticism leading to an RC

I once kept a dream journal for a little over a year. 13 things were recorded, 1 of which was a full dream, which was actually the first entry; by the way, yes, I did write down that I didn’t remember dreams the many days that that happened. Basically, the DJ did nothing for me.

I’m normally a pretty confident person, but have–admittedly–let my confidence in LD’ing slip a little bit.

I wake up naturally, I don’t use alarms, which I would sleep through anyway. Also, I wake up naturally usually at the same time, and go to bet at the same time.

When I do truly wake up, I can’t really go back to sleep. When I say “truly wake up” I mean bringing myself to a certain state of consciousness, if you will. This basically kills WBTB for me. Do note: 98% of the time I naturally wake up, I’ve “truly” woken up.

So what do I do, guys?

Welcome back!

You say that you don’t fall asleep as easily recently. Did the lucidity disappear at the same time? If something is affecting your sleep quality, it is also likely to affect lucidity.

Did you try recording dreams directly after waking up? It can sometimes take a while yto “translate” a dream into a format that the brain can remember.

I have no idea why the past couple weeks I haven’t been able to fall asleep as quickly. The quality isn’t bad, it’s just that maybe it took 15 mins. to go to sleep before, now it might take 25 mins. Lucidity disappeared before this started happening. It’s not that big of a deal anyway.

With the DJ: I probably wrote in it maybe 10 mins after waking up. I know some say this is a bad idea, and you should do it directly after, but I wasn’t losing my memory of the dream.

I have the exact same problem, Ticonderoga! My sleep schedule has been shot for the past two years at least - It takes me 20-35 minutes to fall asleep and when I do, I fall hard and immediately into a deep sleep, already making WILD very difficult. Not only that, but I wake up after only about 3-4 hours of sleep and usually can’t fall back asleep because my circadian rhythm got so used to sleeping through most of the morning.

However, what I would first recommend to you is meditation. I know, I know, it sounds kind of ridiculous, but I think you that if you give it a shot, it might help you more. The purpose of meditating is to start building skills practicing mindfulness and active awareness of your surroundings. I say that you should try it for at least 5 minutes a day at first for about a week, then move up to ten (Whatever your schedule allows, of course). I usually do mine at night, when my folks head to bed and the house is very quiet - you don’t have to play any white noise, I usually don’t, but when I do the quality is much better (I can link you to some of my faves).

In terms of improving memory from the get go, I totally understand where you’re coming from in terms of dream journaling. Keeping a DJ is very difficult for me because I need to start doing my daily routine as soon as I get out of bed because I have a pretty rigid schedule, but also I can struggle to remember ANYTHING from my dreams many days. To help, and there’s a lot of debate about this, but I use vitamins and supplements to increase serotonin:

• Vitamin B16 - You want to take this I’d say around dinner time or about two-three hours before you go to bed, this should help with memory.

• 5-HTP - This one I’m a bit more finicky with because you are recommended to take it three times a day and with food too (I’ve tried taking it without food and it makes me extremely nauseous and weak). This increases serotonin and is said to increase dream vividness.

Supplements are totally up to you, especially since they aren’t very well regulated (Especially in the USA). If you want a more natural solution, I know rosemary is said to increase memory, so I would try brewing that in some of your tea if you like tea.

Hopefully that helps with your memory problems, I’m still trying to figure out the sleep problems myself, haha!