You've probably heard this before, but...

I’m relatively new to the entire “lucid-dreaming” scene, relatively being a month or so. This is a field that greatly interests me. The only two lucid-dreams I can ever remember having were from when I was nine or ten years old, each period of lucidity in the dreams lasted approximately 3 seconds, and ironically, both of them stemmed from nightmares.

I’ve got a daily routine set up, and according to what I’ve been reading here and other places, I think I’m probably on the road to lucidity. However, I would feel much more confident if I can put my routine up for revision by the frequenters of this forum, and would greatly apreciate any constructive criticism/advice you would be so kind to give me.

Here goes:

Step 1) Throughout the day, I do a RC whenever I flip a light-switch as well as whenever I see text (just did one right now, as a matter of fact)
Step 2) Before I go to sleep, I visit this site to better educate myself on the subject as well as fill my head with the topic at hand
Step 3) When I get in bed, I tell myself I’m going to wake up in a few hours (which works!) as well as telling myself I will have a dream and remember it
Step 4) After I close my eyes, I monitor my breathing pattern and between each breath, I tell myself I am dreaming
Step 5) I wake up, and record whatever I can remember in my dream diary

There are also a few concerns/curiosities that I have:

  1. As I go to sleep, my head becomes filled with outside thoughts. I don’t actively think them, they just play in my head. Many times I will “hear” what is going on too. If it is of any significance, these pre-sleep thoughts generally concern my job
  2. I am unable to write in my dream diary as much as I would like because I am sharing a room with my younger brother. He is a very light sleeper, so that is my first problem. My other problem is that since I am on a top bunk, I have to use a flashlight to be able to see what I’m writing down, and I get the feeling that I am not acting fast enough
  3. Whenever I begin to see hypnotic imagery, adrenaline begins to keep me awake. However, If I have the sensation of spinning or moving, that will not go away
    4)Seeing how I cannot leave my bed to write because it would wake my brother, I have to write in a very uncomfortable position
  4. Generally in my dreams, I am just along for a ride. For instance, last night’s dream was a very strange one indeed (I found myself in a Wal-Mart battling people in futuristic, robotic suits!). No matter how odd the cues may be, I cannot seem to notice them

I thank you for your time and I earnestly await your responses! Hopefully I will be lucid soon enough!

Hello Daedalus

I think I may give you some tips:

  1. That thoughts are a sign that you’re very close to sleep. You can try to control then (but not too actively) to incubate a dream (and try VILD, you can find about it somewhere on the forum).
    2 & 4) The most important thing is to remember a dream, not to write it. I may help if you try to describe in in words (with all details) after waking up - it allows you to “catch it” and not let it go. It’ll be easier to remember (even after next REM stages) and you can write it down later.
  2. Find a repeating theme in you dreams (a dreamsign) and do RC every time you notice it IRL. It’s usually very hard to notice something strange, but the dreamsigns method works good.

Good luck, happy dreaming :smile:

Yes, i agree and also to help with rememebering the dreams before you go back to sleep, for especially big long dreams you can take a few important objects or themes and just concentrate on remembering them well, maybe for a coulple of minutes concentrate on them and the dream. That way you will be able to remember these objects a bit easier than a whole dream, the objects will stimulate remembering more of the dream both before the second time you go to sleep and after, and it might make you dream about those things the second time you sleep and possibly even continue the dream lucidly or not, which would then make more dreams easier to remember.

alternatively, if you have a mobile phone with a backlight and you have a spot where you can easily reach it, you could use that to type a few words about the dreams.

Thanks everybody. I really appreciate the input. I came SO close last night. I noticed the text on something was messed-up, but I didn’t do a RC in my dream. Hardly matters though since I got woken up about 10 seconds later.

One last question. Is it possible to slow down the flow of time in a lucid dream? According to a lucid dreaming FAQ that I read, and found a link to here at:

Just wanted to know if anybody here had this sort of experience. Thanks again.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in it, I haven’t heard of people regularly doing that sort of thing here.

Yeah, I thought it was somewhat hard to believe. I’ll just focus on taking baby-steps now.

I’ve noticed a few things that have been reocurring in my dreams (school, for starters). I’m leaning towards the text-aspect now. I probably did about (no kidding) two-hundred RCs today, trying to make it a habit. Same thing goes for clocks too.