Newbie Advice - Helpful Hints For The Aspiring Lucid Dreamer

:blush: Sorry about my above mistake. My message came up as a quote

I’m going to ask all the vets here real quick, if I am in fact doing anything wrong with my lucidity attempts…
I’ve been trying 3-4 months, aye?
I do -some- RCs throughout the day - usually just when it strikes me, not on an hourly basis or anything. At night I do MILD, staying still with steady breathing and repeating in my mind “I am going to do a reality check in my dreams, and I am going to become lucid” or something to that effect. Only once or twice have I seen/heard what I think is Hypnagogic Imagery, and that didn’t last more than 10 seconds or so once, and maybe 5 minutes or so another. I’ve had about one dream a night recalled, until recently, where it’s been about flatline what with my alarm clock and less sleep. I read a LOT of stuff about LDing, and now I’m starting to look into meditation, tried the 61-point relaxation while I was going to sleep but it did nothing. :sad:

Any, eh, advice? Be it something specific or “Just keep trying”, it’d be nice to hear.
Thanks. :happy:

wakebacktobedwakebacktobedwakebacktobedwakebacktobed

AND

keeptryingkeeptryingkeeptryingkeeptryingkeeptrying

Good luck.

Unfortunately, I’ve had little time for WBTB lately…Maybe I can get in enough sleep that I can afford to in the next couple weeks and actually make it a habit, but until then it’s only about once a week, -maybe-.
Boo. :sad:

not to be the “low” one here…but i have NO patience at all. I dont think ill be able to sleep for 6 hours then stay away for one hour and stuff like that…im one of those people who have to do something easily or i wont do it at all…but i really want to LD more…but i dont know what to do :confused:

1 hour? I can stay awake 10 mins only. If any longer, I can’t fall asleep. I get some results with this. Don’t do for an hour, that’s crazy, despite whatever the heck stephen laberge says. 30 mins is fine. of course that’s just me if you can fall asleep after an hour of wake then you’ll get much better results.

Well, make sure you have something to do while you’re awake; you could read your dream journal, come on the forum, read a book…

Of course, this is all depending on how long you can/wish to stay awake. A lot of times just getting up to go to the bathroom and then going back to sleep works for people.

I think the point of WBTB is to just be awake when you return to bed. So just waking up and going back to sleep won’t do it… (I tried to pull that off once :wink: )

My second recent attempt at WBTB didnt work… I hear so many people around here saying it is soooooooo effective… maybe not for me… I had a LD last week, but did not on either of my WBTB days.
It all seems so random… I can do RC’s, MILD, NovaDreamer, WBTB all fanatically and have no success and then forget about it for 2 weeks and have a LD.
But what I want is to be able to have some degree of control in inducing them when I want them, so I’m still hoping to find something(s) that work a little bit.
Peace,
Sruthan

when you realize that you are dreaming…spin around and rub your hand together…plus you have to stay calm…dont freak yourself out

Some people say “i have had no succes on WBTB, so it might not work for me”. I wonder, what have they tried? WBTB 1 or 2 or maybe 3 times? It doesnt always work that fast. It is a method that will be greatly rewarding once mastered, but it can take a month maybe of continuous effort before you can become lucid on a regular basis with it. I have been trying now like 2 weeks and it works like 33% of the time for me, and it seems to be going better all the time. Also, you need to test what the best amount of waking time is for you. If you dont fall asleep fast, dont stay up for more then 15 minutes or so. You should try different times and see what the effects are. For me it seems that 25 minutes on average is best. There are some people though that have best results on staying up for 1 hour or longer, so infection0, Laberge does know what he is talking about.

Hm…I’d start trying this but anything over about 2-3 minutes during the night is just really bad for my sleep. Actually, just waking up is REALLY bad for it. Because of this I can only really do MILD when I go to sleep initially, not really if I wake up. However, I can WBTB, and actually get back to sleep if I wake up at my normal wake up time (about 7:10 am) and then go back to sleep. However, If I wake during the middle of the night, I just get screwed and don’t fall back asleep easily. Unfortunately, this means I can’t do it during the week, because, well, I need to get up.

It’s very frustrating not being able to try so many powerful methods because of my sleeping style.

I try to remember to do reality checks, only problem is that my dream self acts nothing like my awake self.

All I can do is reality check, MILD before bed and hope. :grrr:

It’s very annoying not getting anywhere.

Yeah… just make sure you don’t stay up too long; I find it kind of hard to get back to sleep after staying up more than 30 minutes.

i usually dont need an alarm clock, i just tell myself i wan’t to wake up at X time, and i usually do, like MILD it depends on how much you WANT to wake up at the time that tells if you will.
When i started to journal my dreams 2 nights ago, i imiatly had 3-4 dreams, i can just recall the 2 last ones, the 3:rd i jsut remember it had something to do with a shower room, normaly i just remember 1 dream. so it was a success :smile: anyways i decided i’d wake up sometime during the night and stay up for an hour, and i woke up at 6-7am.
so try that.

That happened to me right after becoming lucid in my first and thus far, only, lucid dream. You may want to try (although i didnt think to while in the dream) these methods to increase lucidity:
rub your hands together
focus on an object in the distance
spin in circles
i believe theres another one, but i cant think of it. I dont know how to calm yourself when lucid, i guess you just have to get used to it.

I’ve been doing LD or 3 years now (I discovered ld4all.com 2 months ago) and I don’t have to use any methods on this site. I just go to sleep and sometimes I realize and sometimes I don’t. The most funny thing is that I only need to realize my first dream each night. Then I always realize other dreams. So if I’m succesful with the first dream I ussualy have 4-5 LDs a night (and I’m quite happy about it :smile: ).

Wow! a natural. How did you get started off and what was your first interest in lucid dreaming?

It all started out when I became a fan of Star Wars :smile:. I was reading this book every day before going to sleep. I had many dreams about using the force and stuff like that. I can remember one dream. I think it was about a girl that wanted to be impressed and I, of course :wink:, started to use the force to move objects and fly (and crash). But the dream didn’t last very long. I think about 5 minutes.

Of course, at that time, I didn’t know that was LD. I also didn’t really control my dreams (like weather, teleportation…) because I didn’t know I can. I just went with my dream. And I also couldn’t explore my dreams, because they were too short. The only method to “extend” my dreams was to look up in the sky.

And now, my question :smile:. I always have trouble with flying. I take off normaly. I also fly normaly. But when it comes to landing I just can’t. I ussualy crash and instatly wake up.

Cookie Monster: The very efective method I use is to put your hand into the wall. It’s a very interesting sensation and helps to increase lucidity. At least to me :smile:.

I had that problem about a year ago. I could lift off and fly around without any problems, but like yourself, upon landing I would usually crash into something and lose a great deal of stability, often causing me to wake up. I become determined to counter this, and so I set up a series of experiments to find the best way to land. The least successful of which involved falling to the ground with my eyes closed. Here’s a tip: Don’t do that.

I did find a few that worked more often than not, though. One such technique was coming to a stop mid-flight, and then slowly drifting down to the ground. The problem then was actually stopping myself in the air without using (read: flying into) a tree or tall structure. Eventually I discovered that the easiest way to stop mid-flight was to start flying straight up. Doing this would allow me to slow to a graceful halt, then begin a calm and controlled decent back to the ground - feet first.

Admittedly though, crashing at high speed is a pretty fun way to end the dream if you want to wake up. :smile:

Hi I’m new and very interested in lucid dreaming. Ever since I was little tiny I’ve always wanted to fly, I even wished that I could fly when I blew out my birthday candles and then went a jumped off the bottom step to see if it worked, and this seems like a great way to achieve that dream and many other neat things as well!
Anyway, I’ve read the whole topic and all I’ve seen are problems with getting lucid. Does anyone else have a problem remembering the dreams in the first place? I haven’t tried everything yet but I was wondering if any of you had any suggestions. I haven’t remembered a dream naturally (without any method) in about a year! Also, this may seem weird but do dreamcatchers really work? I think mine (it’s really just for decoration) may be the reason I can’t remember anything. I’ve had it up and I’ve only had one dream I remembered in two years! :help: