Hello. I had a few lucid dreams when I was a kid. They were really long, about 5-10 minutes. I became lucid without any tricks and I didn’t know that there are methods to become lucid on purpose and that lucidity is so common phenomenon. It had passed about ten years till I found a page about lucid dreaming and started to practice the methods.
Since I started the practice I’ve had about 3 lucid dreams and they have all lasted just about 5-10 seconds!
In my first LD I was talking with my old friend when I realized that I haven’t seen him in many months, so I did a reality check (put my finger through the table) and that’s when I became lucid. I quickly stood up from the chair and tried to fly. I jumped about 3 times in the air but didn’t manage to fly, then I woke up.
In my second LD I was cooking something with my microwave, when I noticed something weird with the timer, the I punced the timer and it cracked. I became lucid, but woke up.
So why does this happen? Do I rush too much? Or try too much? Are there any methods to stay in dream? I’ve heard about this “spin around your axis” - method, but it didn’t work with me.
I don’t think you’re trying too much… It’s probably because your brain is not adapted yet to this new state of mind. The more experienced you become, the more your dreams will stabilize themselves. Also, the initial rush of adrenalin upon becoming lucid might cause you to wake up. This too will be getting better in time, but you can also improve it a bit by repeating to yourself to stay calm. So have patience
Apart from spinning, there are several other techniques to stay in the dream. Some might not work for you, so you have to experiment a little to find out which techniques fits you best.
Rub your hands together. Apparently this helps with a lot of people.
Touch a dream object, so not to loose contact with the dream.
Don’t stand at the same place for too long. But again, this might not make a difference to some people.
Focus on a dream object or the dream environment itself, until the dream restabilizes itself.
These techniques might not work in the beginning. I don’t know. All you have to do is to keep practicing and experimenting with them. Perhaps the spinning technique might help after all. In time, you’ll have a better idea of the efficient techniques in your case.
I’ve had the same problems. only had two LDs so far, of which in the first didn’t get time to do anything except realising I was dreaming, and in the second realising, do a reality-check, and getting so extremely excited that I jumped 5 feet into the air several times, before waking up…
I’ll try your advice when I turn lucid again, though hope it helps… the second time, it was of course the fact that I got so excited. I suppose I will have to control my feelins better.
I’d say it will probably get better with experience. I LDed last week for the first time. I didn’t get excited or anything, but it lasted about as long as yours.
i still have huge problems staying lucid without waking up (and look how many i’ve had, 57 or 59 or something as of now this month)
the thing is, often times, you have been dreaming too long and your body wants to wake up… if you fight the dream and try to screw with it and make it deviate from its course, you can find yourself abrutply woken up.
I’m not sure how to counter this, sometimes you can just be still and peaceful and meditative utnil you find yourself in a new lucid environment with a movable body, as basically it’s like you just consciously pass through NREM and wait for the mind to decide to let you dream again.
In the mornings its trickiest, you can wake up easily yet re-enter easily, I’m not sure what dictates how long you can dream, I nkow that simply being lucid is enough to ruin a dream even if you aren’t excited at all… so i think it’s more to do with bad timing.
The single best thing you can do for yourself is be lucid at the beginning of a dream cycle, if you can do that it can be the hardest thing to do to actually wake yourself up… so…
Just a little advice I guess… if you can stay in a dream try not moving once you re-enter and seeing what happens to yourself… sometimes stablization works, sometimes your mind seems to reject it… it entirely depends.
Thank you everyone for your tips. I’ve tried also touching a dream object but only woke up hugging my pillow That hand-rubbing technique sounds good, I’ll try that as soon as I’ll become lucid.
I’m not sure about that experience thing, because when I had LDs as a kid, they lasted longer than now. And I surely didn’t have any experience about lucidity.
I think that the adrenaline-boost you mentioned could be the reason for my awakening,because I remember being really excited and wanted to do everything at the same time: fly, go trough the walls, break the law, etc.
And about dream cycle holy reality mentioned: My LDs didn’t end to darkness=NREM. I woke up. And usually there isn’t awakening after REM, only NREM. So I don’t think that I woke up because the REM-phase ended.
This can be true for some people but, it is not true of everyone. To be honest I am completely baffled by your problems with LD ing. I will not have anywhere near the monthly count of 80 + LD s you will have by the end of may, if your current trend continues. I do not have trouble staying in my dreams and often have very long ones. The more LD’s I had the longer and better they got. That seems to be true with others on this forum as well.
I have not found this to be true for me at all. At least not now. In the beginning if I did too much to fast I would wake. As I got more experienced the better my dream control got. What do you do to change the dream?
keep your emotions at a minimum when becoming lucid, see them as dream generated, distance yourself from them
do not focus on something with your eyes for too long, it would stop REM
spin around, feel the dream, feel the sensations, keep doing RC’s in your dream over and over, just to get used to it
as a beginner i would just do that as LD activities. Like a competition “who can get the longest LD?”. after that, nothing is really a problem anymore, i believe…
i’ve had about 10 LDs last one was this night, it lasted about a min, the last 3 ones was 1 sec.
i guess i have to try out rubbing my hands and those things to keep it going…
when i realize im Lucid, it just feels like the whole world shakes for a sec, then stabalizes, in dreams im allways unemotional, i never get scared or anything, when i get lucid, im like: …nice, about time
Although I’ve managed to stay lucid for a few minutes I never seem to remember to try things like that. It’s annoying, coz I’m dying to but it always takes so much effort just staying lucid.
if I WILD at night (rare) or in the morning, my dreams aren’t going to last long no matter what… if I just go with the flow and have 1-3 lucid dreams during NORMAL SLEEP they last forever.
Forcing a LD upon yourself can sometimes make things very tricky, REM serves a purpose, and once that purpose is done, your mind doesn’t want to go back to it, I mean, I think it even can deplete seratonin and whatnot (which is only produced during nREM) hence if you’ve been dreaming all the danged night and you try and WILD at 9 in the morning like I did today, even though your body is telling you to get up… it can be pretty hard to stay lucid… not that it can be hard to stay asleep though, just, FAs like crazy, constantly shifting out of dream back into body, awake, back into paralysis, OBEing… just no consistency or control.
Like your mind doesn’t want you going off on some long fantasy it wants you to get up… or you subconsciously know you’ve had enough sleep so it wants you to get up, like when you have tons of FAs right before your alarm goes off because you know you need to be getting up to go to school soon.
It could be that I’m just tuning in to the last peg of my REM cycles and am unconscious during the beginnings of them though, becuase for my “WILD” s so far I lose consciousness until I eventually notice that I’m seeing dream scenes.
WILD =/= dream re-entry, dream re-entry is natural and usually doesn’t present too many problems.
WILD = i’m not tired but I’m going to make myself start falling asleep and enter a dream anyway.
that’s how I portray it, because it’s HARD TO DO then, whereas it’s flawless if you wake from a dream (which I always do) and re-enter.
my dreams are usually so long that they never reach a conclusion though in the first place, despite re-entering 2 or more times.
I guess me sleeping in my sleep is a way of prolonging dreams and bridging the gap between nothingness and dream though… so… who knows.
I’m far from normal.
here’s what happened today from my dream diary.
[color=green]well anyways, it’s only 9… my staying up late listening to Dredg and SP had thrown off my sleep till 12 cycle…
I tossed and turned and didn’t even approach sleep, so I was like dammit man, you need to show your mind whos boss…
So I saw this little whitish grey thing that looks kind of like this guys avatar on another forum… and there was this thought that came with it, so I repeated that stuff, then another thought+image came so I repeated that stuff, and the mental feedback was going insane, I did this a few times and could barely focus, and much later I realized I was half dreaming…
So I saw these dream scenes and I would run into them and touch things and try to stay dreaming, at first I was at wal-mart by some security camera… I remember seeing a castle once I think, at any rate, I got to the point where I was stomping around yelling “STAY IN DREAM, STAY IN DREAM!” which made me lose much air, because I was probably trying to say that in real life…
I woke up… and then I drifted off into paralysis. Which was cool… it’s not like normal paralysis this time, it’s like mega evil heavy paralysis, I was lying on my stomach in an odd angle, and I felt my chest and legs go first, then my head started rolling to an impossible angle, and I was like “whoa, man, this isn’t good for my neck, I hope I don’t die” and then… MY BODY ROLLED OVER… that’s right, that crafty body of mine rolled over… feeling your body roll over on it’s own… well… words can’t exactly describe it…
(this could have been a dream I suppose, but I don’t think so)
so anyway, I like, drifted in and out of more dreams but couldn’t stay in, because I constantly felt my body anywhere I went, and heard my fan… and then I decided to “get up” and I did… I felt like a zombie, I couldn’t see anything, my body felt all heavy, and I was stumbling around my room… so this made me wonder whether I was sleep walking or not, I somehow sat down in my chair, while not seeing it, and then I got “sucked” back to my body, the chair picked up speed and slammed into my bed… and I was like “whoa, this is weird… I guess I’ll see if I’m in my chair when I wake up”
well I “woke up” (false awakening) and i was in my chair, but then I transitioned back into my bed, and figured none of that ever happened, it was just an odd OBE… more dream scenes… then I start getting it on with myself… I see myself, in front of myself, and this random leg dissecting the two of us, and when I touch “myself” I feel myself touch myself, but I also feel myself touch “myself” in the respective adjacent place on my body… this was mega weird…
So I start to get it on with myself but I ‘wake up’ and well
eventually I finally really woke up and my chair was in it’s proper place…
it was all very interesting[/color]
now I’d say all these pointless but interesting activities lasted a good hour, and that is not factoring in the time it took to fall asleep, and yes I did at least REALLY wake up once or twice but could re-enter… so theoretically I could have had an hour long LD if I had done things “right” but my mind didn’t seem to want that, and it made things chaotic, confusing, and jumbled… the whole “i’m in an LD… now I’m not… now I am… LET ME STAY… wow, weird paralysis” thing seemed to last 15 minutes.
edit part III: I might propose though, that maybe I did a lot of stuff and had memory processing problems, I do remember in one of the mini dreams, I had clear false dream memories, such as, I knew why I was where I was, I knew what it was I was doing there, my environment made sense, even though it only lasted a few moments…
well what if that was a full dream, and I was just like, just now, tuning into it, but it was really taking place the whole time? Some people say we are ALWAYS dreaming and just fail to tune into it during the day due to a very necessary filter we have going… it could be that that was a full dream, just that I was never consciously part of it for more than a brief moment, or that, I just had too much information in my head to remember the dream, so, it seemed short.
I dont’ like that though, I like thinking I was just entering a dream that was maybe previously unawarely running somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind
Whispa: I don’t remember to do them either. And it’s not that clear as it seems to be from my text, when I do them. I mean, I’m not like “damdidam, let’s have a reality check, everything is so clear and nice”, I’m more like “urrgh… reality check, yes, that’s a good thing” , like I had drunk 10 barrels of beer. And after RC everyhing suddenly becomes clear and I’m not drunk anymore. Doesn’t work in real life though.
So if I do about 20 RC 's when I’m awake, I might do one in my dream, if I’m lucky and then I’m not drunk anymore.
Leo:
“I mean, I’m not like “damdidam, let’s have a reality check, everything is so clear and nice”, I’m more like “urrgh… reality check, yes, that’s a good thing” , like I had drunk 10 barrels of beer. And after RC everyhing suddenly becomes clear and I’m not drunk anymore. Doesn’t work in real life though.
So if I do about 20 RC 's when I’m awake, I might do one in my dream, if I’m lucky and then I’m not drunk anymore.”
I agree, one of the key benefits of doing periodic RC’s during the day, is that it develops your subconscious and makes you more critical as (mystic?) suggested. These can be a cursed frustration if you arent doing them properly, however.
Trust me i would know, an example being one time i was doing RC’s everytime i looked at my pocket watch…in an ND a DC came up to me at a school, she asked me for the time…i fumbled around for my watch and then could not really tell the time, sat there dumbfounded (my RC conditioning failing, becuase i was doing the RC as usual, but in the wrong way). Heck, its funny cuz you know how DC’s represent subconscious? She asked me for the time again, lol, which still failed.
Its cuz i was doing RC, but not actually consciously considering the possibility that i may be dreaming. I was really just looking at my LD environment, and looking for stuff that supports it not being an LD . Not finding much, conveniently ignoring the dream feeling, i did not become lucid. Now i seriously consider possibility, actually convince myself that i can be dreaming, in which state of mind i see if dream feeling is present.
What it takes is the reconditioning of the societal conditioning that whatever reality we find ourselves in, is real. I mean, who would like to do a bunch of work only to find it not real, for naught? Thus we sub-egoically look in the wrong place, conveniently. What we dont know is, that once you become lucid, all the work you did before loses all importance (though it may have sub-c meaning, thats another topic entirely).
As far as stability (LD length) goes, i think it differs person to person. Personally, what doesnt work for me is trying too hard and holding onto the dream desperately as it fades. However, i think with all people, focusing on the concept of stability itself does not work. What works is focusing on your dream environment, acknowledging it. Once youve done that, it becomes like clay in your hand to mold, though just how to go about this comes mostly with practice. Personally, im not too good with clay, not yet anyway, so i wouldnt be able to convey any technique in that area…anyone else care to shed some light on this?
