I thought it would be interesting to see a cross-section of how exactly people go about having lucid dreams. If you use a lot of different techniques, post about the one you most commonly use.
Here goes for me:
It’s about 6 o’ clock in the morning, and I’ve just had a dream that I’m starting to wake up from. But for some reason, I become conscious before I’m fully awake. My eyes are closed and I’m lying on my back. Through a nearby window, I can hear a car passing by.
Before I can wake up, I start concentrating on remaining very still. My body begins to have a static-feeling all over, like your foot does before it falls asleep. I concentrate on that static feeling and try to get it to intensify.
I start to imagine that my body is moving, without trying to move it. I gently roll out of my bed and put my feet on the floor–but I’m in a dream, not real life. I still can’t see anything and it’s pitch dark. I stand up, staying still in the middle of my room. I rub my hands on the legs of my jeans (even though I don’t sleep wearing jeans ).
A few moments pass and I begin to see again. I can see around my room, and it’s starting to get lighter. Wanting to get to a brighter, different place, I walk toward the nearest wall and pass through it. As I walk, everything is dark again, but I know I will soon walk into a dream that rapidly materializes in front of me. It is light, and it is stable. I stare at the new world around me, and it is vivid.
It’s tough to say what an average experience is for me, but this is most often how it goes…
Sometime during the night, usually not too close to when I decide to wake up, I’m in a dream. It’s pretty vivid. I go about probably less than half of the dream non-lucid. It’s a normal dream. Suddenly a “spark” of consciousness hits me, and it is then when I doubt whether what I am experiencing is WL. It’s usually nothing too out of the ordinary that makes me doubt the dream. I really never think to do a RC, it’s just this sudden wave of consciousness I sometimes experience.
Anyways, from this point, I typically just walk or run away looking for some DC’s to annoy. If not this, I like to defy death, like by jumping into a canyon or out of a building. Flying is always on the agenda…
This is the way most of my LD’s have started for as long as I can remember. It’s not systematic or planned at all, and that has proved to be a major drawback as I am now working on getting my LD’s back… the spark of consciousness very rarely hits me anymore. Anyone out there who can naturally experience lucid dreams, beware! I suggest you develop a personal method, and find out why you have been able to get lucid in the past.
Anyways, thats my average lucid moment… plus some additional rantings.
All of my WILDs have enolved me doing the same thing Monitor. I try to make myself in a dream when I wake up in the morning. I let myself slip away and then I get out of bed in a LD. Other than that I realize I am dreaming through a reality check(normally looking at a clock or doing the nose RC)
I do a RC every time I wake up from a vivid dream. I count the fingers on my hand using my other hand (feeling how many fingers there are). Quite often I wake up having 14 fingers or more on one hand…
Except from that, I keep a very questioning state of mind, doing not so few RCs through out the day. This also gives me quite a lot of lucid moments…
You know… I have tried a few things… using RCs, WBTB… when I become lucid in a dream its always because I just randomly realize I am dreaming. Most of the time I am not practicing any induction techniques at all. One time it happened because I realized that some writing was changing but most of the time I just sort of come to the conclusion that I’m dreaming. I am far from a natural LDer though. I think just being aware of dreams and dreaming is doing it for me. If I put some sustained effort into RCs or something I bet I could have a lot more.
hey,
yeah… i havent really used anything myself… Things in my dreams well i will talk about this month…
I had this dream then i became lucid… wooke up… had the same dream… became lucid…
ok the other one… i was jumping high like flying and this is something that i know happend in dreams… always use to have these dreams when i was younger…
I usually become lucid on accident. There has not been any particular thing that initiated lucidity yet. Every time, I just sudenly reallize I’m dreaming.
Usually I just lurk around here and read everything but here goes…
I have this thing where recently I can almost always LD when I nap. It’s harder at night and when it does happen it’s usually just me noticing a dreamsign by accident. When I’m napping though the LD starts right when I fall asleep, I’m conscious, then I’m in the dream. I think it has to do with sleeping lightly when napping but I’m not sure. I’m pretty excited to keep experimenting though…let me know if anyone else has noticed this. Thanks!
I have an odd technique that has been working quite well recently inducing a decent amount of LDs. I do tons of RCs throughout the day and if possible I attempt Lucid Living throughout the day too. When I go to bed those nights, I put lots of effort into attempting various LD induction techniques, but usually just MILD. I do this for several days and then when it starts become fluent and automatic, I make no effort to do them for an entire day, yet my mind automatically does them anyway. It turns out that even when I go to sleep that night, I automatically attempt to do MILD without having to concentrate on it since its a usual routine. Even if it doesn’t work upon falling asleep, once I am awake in my dream world, the RCs kick in.
I came up with this because I realized I frequently dream about activities if I haven’t done them within a day or two. For example, if I haven’t played guitar in a few days I would probably dream about that or if I beat a game and no longer play it, then that shows up too. My mind seems to always remind me of things in my dreams.
This is why I like to wake up a few times during the morning. Usually, when I return to sleep I’ll go straight back into the same dream I previous woke from (or a similar/related one). In this case, I often think “This is just like a dream I had last night… wait…”
1.Go to bed around 9:00 with the intention to remember my dream.
2. Wake up roughly 3 hours later and do MILD.
3. Have 1 or more Lucid dreams
4. After any other awakenings do WILD
I haven’t had that many, but in the ones I’ve had, I either seem to begin them Lucid, or just suddenly become aware that I’m dreaming for no reason at all, I usually do a few RC’s to just make sure, but I have never RC’d in a non-LD. It’s weird.
Usually I lay down close my eyes and fall asleep then I start a lucid dream.
If not directly into a lucid dream later on I will become lucid and continue dreaming. Then I wake up and go on with the day.
mine usually just comes to me, out of no where, sometimes with a weird rushing sensation in my body or sometimes not, usually its when i just become lucid and i am touching something. I’ve also had ones that are slow realisation lucid dreams where i relaise it slowly until the point where i think i have been lucid the whole dream but figure out later that i wasn’t.
i have done this a few times, where i wake up and when i do i tilt my head back in bed to a slight down angle. Then i wake up in a dream somwhere. It’s like more blood is going to my head and does something.