Thread: Trying Gravity RC for several weeks

Good luck man, and I read that it took a few months for Azul to start getting results. The Gravity RC, to me, is really an altered perspective of awareness. But of course you've already read up on that Im sure so you know what I mean. I will say though, it took me a month of practicing self awareness to start seeing results, so I can imagine since the Gravity RC is a type of awareness it should pull similar time.

It does nothing in several weeks. Even for the king, it took him several months to get a lucid from it.

Welcome to DV, Zangetsu! Great to have you here.

I will definitely join you for this experiment! I have been intending to try incorporating Hukif's Gravity RC into my LD practices for some time now.
I'm not sure whether he has posted his tutorial on DV, and I can't link to the source I have.
With Hukif's permission, I would be happy to copy and format his tutorial for posting on DV.
I'll PM him with a link to this thread, I know he is always happy when people try his RC themselves.

The above advice is important, I think this is something we'll need to commit to trying for a decent period of time before writing it off as something that doesn't work for us. I've got all the time in the world, since I plan to be a lifetime lucid dreamer. So as far as I'm concerned, bring on the Gravity RCs!

Originally Posted by Sensei

It does nothing in several weeks. Even for the king, it took him several months to get a lucid from it.

...and that's after 8 years of intense LD-training, while having dreams so vivid and realistic he couldn't otherwise tell them apart from waking. So if you have that as your starting point, yeah, maybe it'll only take 1-3 months...

I tried 3-4 months of ADA/RC-location, and just started having some solid location awareness beginning to appear in dreams, but it never really panned out and I stopped it as my main day work to focus more on general mindfulness/vigilance. Location may be just too vague and external, compared to gravity which is a physical body feeling, for ADA/RC to work. Or, it may just take longer.

Depending on how this next (my 2nd) year goes, I may switch to ADA/RC gravity for a year next year or maybe 6 months from now. That's the sort of long-term planning one should think of in this hobby

I don't have any illusions that I'll be daily LDing any time soon, but I'm still setting my goal at several weeks for the first result. Honestly if my goal was several months I'd probably get bored and quit. So maybe if I fall short I'll still keep at it with this goal.

Also something strange occurred last night. I had 4-5 LDs in one night! While most of them were mediocre, this is still weird for me, as I've only been getting 1 LD every week to 2 weeks lately. Also strange, none of them were WILD or DEILD. It started out with a DILD in which I realized that a date on a piece of equipment kept changing every time I looked at it. After that dream I had quite a few false awakenings, but the whole time I was really skeptical that I was awake and I would keep reality checking to find out that I was dreaming. I hadn't even really done any LD practices last night either. I got up for the bathroom this morning and went right back to bed, trying to focus on gravity hoping it would carry over to my dream. Don't think it worked, but it's been quite some time since I had such a chain of LDs without DEILDing.

Originally Posted by ~ Dreamer ~

Welcome to DV, Zangetsu! Great to have you here.

I will definitely join you for this experiment! I have been intending to try incorporating Hukif's Gravity RC into my LD practices for some time now.
I'm not sure whether he has posted his tutorial on DV, and I can't link to the source I have.
With Hukif's permission, I would be happy to copy and format his tutorial for posting on DV.
I'll PM him with a link to this thread, I know he is always happy when people try his RC themselves.

The above advice is important, I think this is something we'll need to commit to trying for a decent period of time before writing it off as something that doesn't work for us. I've got all the time in the world, since I plan to be a lifetime lucid dreamer. So as far as I'm concerned, bring on the Gravity RCs!

Thanks for the welcome! Glad to have someone trying this with me.

I was reading on another site (which I found by googling Gravity RC) that Azul saw results after a month or so of practice. He said the practice was frustrating, but that the benefits now far surpassed the early frustration. Maybe it is possible for you to see results in 4-6 weeks as well? I've been paying more attention to the weight if my body now as well, though its by no means constant awareness. Maybe I will shoot for that 30% area hukif recommends elsewhere on the web

Originally Posted by ThreeCat

I was reading on another site (which I found by googling Gravity RC) that Azul saw results after a month or so of practice. He said the practice was frustrating, but that the benefits now far surpassed the early frustration. Maybe it is possible for you to see results in 4-6 weeks as well? I've been paying more attention to the weight if my body now as well, though its by no means constant awareness. Maybe I will shoot for that 30% area hukif recommends elsewhere on the web

Yeah I think around 2 months is how long Hukif says it took him to get the first result. In mere mortal time that's approximately 2 years . Bearing that in mind, if I told myself it would take x amount of time before seeing results, my subconscious would get lazy and take me up on the offer. So I'm just gonna go to bed every night expecting the Gravity RC to work for me in the following dreams. I'll try to combine with WBTB occasionally and see what happens.

Originally Posted by ThreeCat

I was reading on another site (which I found by googling Gravity RC) that Azul saw results after a month or so of practice. He said the practice was frustrating, but that the benefits now far surpassed the early frustration. Maybe it is possible for you to see results in 4-6 weeks as well? I've been paying more attention to the weight if my body now as well, though its by no means constant awareness. Maybe I will shoot for that 30% area hukif recommends elsewhere on the web

Its definitely possible man. I've been practicing self awareness for 2 months and am already almost becoming lucid in half of my REM dreams. I guess it depends on the person and the amount of effort they put into it.

Nice! good luck with it and feel free to ask anything you may have doubts about. I'm not exactly the best writer out there, so I know just how confusing it can be to understand the thing.

Originally Posted by Hukif

Nice! good luck with it and feel free to ask anything you may have doubts about. I'm not exactly the best writer out there, so I know just how confusing it can be to understand the thing.

Well in that case...

The only thing I can really think to hone in on is the normal force the ground exerts on my feet/body as I'm walking/sitting/laying. I have no clue where or how to look for gravity in the rest of my body when I'm not touching something...

I have plenty of experiences with weird gravity in my dreams however. I often get slowed/weighted down by SP (yeah that's right I said SP ), and I also have had many OBE exits in which case my body felt light as a feather. Should I focus more on how dream gravity is weird or try to hone in on how waking gravity is normal? And I've tried the holding an item in one hand thing but I don't get much feedback from it...

Thanks for helping out, Hukif!

Good luck with this, I will say having prior LD knowledge and experiences will help out a bit. Don't get caught up with whether you're doing it "right or wrong" just do what feels natural to you. After while you'll find that you'll start to develop your own variation of Gravity RC. Since it's a different aspect of awareness it will take some to be learned, if you will. Side note: DO NOT USE LOGIC WHEN YOU RC!

Originally Posted by Azul

Good luck with this, I will say having prior LD knowledge and experiences will help out a bit. Don't get caught up with whether you're doing it "right or wrong" just do what feels natural to you. After while you'll find that you'll start to develop your own variation of Gravity RC. Since it's a different aspect of awareness it will take some to be learned, if you will. Side note: DO NOT USE LOGIC WHEN YOU RC!

Thanks for the advice! So this RC is more of an observation of your weight and the actual reality checking part is inherent to the process, right? I guess when you observe a strange gravity that should automatically clue you in that you're dreaming without having to think about it? I like the way that works! My least favorite part of traditional RCs is that you have to take the time to question everything in your head, so not thinking is fine with me .

Had an interesting "close encounter" last night. Did basic WBTB around 7:30 (college ftw!) and went back to bed. Set my intention to get lucid from questioning gravity in a dream. Had a string of dreams, and seemed to wake up after each one. This kept my task at the forefront of my mind I guess. Finally ended up in a dream where someone gave me a new board game, so naturally I started shaking it to see what's inside. For some reason, I thought about doing the Gravity RC to make sure everything is legit. I focused on how the board game felt in my hand while shaking it, but it felt perfectly real, even down to the individual vibrations made when each little game piece hits the box...Said no way this could be a dream, and kept on dreaming.

Guess I should've focused on my body instead of what I was holding. I'm sure my dream body would've been less convincing. Anyway I'm super excited that I questioned a dream with Gravity RC. Of course that's with WBTB involved but I'll take what I can get .

Just a quick aside:

Originally Posted by Zangetsu

...My least favorite part of traditional RCs is that you have to take the time to question everything in your head, so not thinking is fine with me

In a "traditional" RC there is no need to question everything, and very little (if any) thinking involved. All you should be doing is checking a single physical object, like a clock or the back of your hand, and then rechecking it to see if it is the same as is was. The only question you ought to be asking yourself is "Is this a dream?" and if you are taking more than a few seconds to do your RC, then you are taking way too much time.

I'm not sure where all the complications about RC's came from -- probably from people feeling a need to make them more important, I suppose. Shame they (those complications) got so popular, as they've made state testing difficult and perhaps caused them to miss the point altogether.

As long as I'm here: Hukif's gravity RC is very much a traditional one, though with a most excellent twist.

... just sayin'

Originally Posted by Zangetsu

Well in that case...

The only thing I can really think to hone in on is the normal force the ground exerts on my feet/body as I'm walking/sitting/laying. I have no clue where or how to look for gravity in the rest of my body when I'm not touching something...

I have plenty of experiences with weird gravity in my dreams however. I often get slowed/weighted down by SP (yeah that's right I said SP ), and I also have had many OBE exits in which case my body felt light as a feather. Should I focus more on how dream gravity is weird or try to hone in on how waking gravity is normal? And I've tried the holding an item in one hand thing but I don't get much feedback from it...

Thanks for helping out, Hukif!

As humans we use two things the most, our eyes and our hands so have you tried using your hands as a starting point for these no-touching times? But I would say more on how waking gravity is normal; the rest comes through instinct since it is "abnormal".

Also, maybe you need a heavier object? lol
But yeah, that is just to get the basic idea of what makes something "normal/abnormal" rather than a way to practice the RC.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Just a quick aside:
In a "traditional" RC there is no need to question everything, and very little (if any) thinking involved. All you should be doing is checking a single physical object, like a clock or the back of your hand, and then rechecking it to see if it is the same as is was. The only question you ought to be asking yourself is "Is this a dream?" and if you are taking more than a few seconds to do your RC, then you are taking way too much time.

I'm not sure where all the complications about RC's came from -- probably from people feeling a need to make them more important, I suppose. Shame they (those complications) got so popular, as they've made state testing difficult and perhaps caused them to miss the point altogether.

As long as I'm here: Hukif's gravity RC is very much a traditional one, though with a most excellent twist.

... just sayin'

Very well put! I am of the opinion that "if a RC is life taxing, you are doing it wrong" but... yeah. I think it just went crazy after someone proposed making questions during a RC, and then people wanted to make the practice of questioning better and just added dead weight to it?

I think it was also after ADA that people started to correlate the all-day-awareness with gravity RC, I was at the time, unhappy with calling gravity RC an awareness excercise and now its just sunk on me that its normal.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I'm not sure where all the complications about RC's came from -- probably from people feeling a need to make them more important, I suppose. Shame they (those complications) got so popular, as they've made state testing difficult and perhaps caused them to miss the point altogether.

I know where they came from for me at least - from ETWOLD and Tholey's modified reflection-intention technique, where you do the RC, imagine everything is a dream and carrying out your goals. It did yield quick results for me, but was taxing my WL activities too much and killed my motivation (which led to my first drop off LDing), and also made me wonder about the nature of the LDs it produced as I felt I was dream incubating everything.
On the other hand the Gravity RC is probably one of the less taxing RCs around, although it is quite difficult to wrap your head around, and much more to practice it all day as Hukif does.

^^ I think there's nothing wrong with reflection/intention. In fact, I regard it very highly. It is closely related to the main day work of the Tibetan dream yogis, and the habits of natural/very frequent lucid dreamers who have a need to constantly evaluate their state (e.g., to determine if they're safe from nightmares). In fact, you could say that it currently forms my main day work, and I do it all throughout the day. My LD progress of late has skyrocketed, in large part I believe to my focus on mindfulness and all-through-the-day awareness ("ADA" has too much baggage as a short-hand, everyone takes it only to mean King Yoshi's precise approach). I think blaming reflection/intention for killing motivation should be a claim made cautiously. Maybe it truly is not for you based on your life particulars. But let me say that all-day type awareness activities take time to get used to. I started mine in November 2013 with ADA/RC-location, and have mostly kept it up since then -- while the target of my attention has shifted over time, I've maintained the day-long focus of maintaining a sense of my state.

I encourage you to take another look at it, and find a target/emphasis that works for you. Gravity as Hukif does it is ADA/RC: you must keep a sense of "is this gravity waking or dreaming?" constantly in your mind.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

...Gravity as Hukif does it is ADA/RC: you must keep a sense of "is this gravity waking or dreaming?" constantly in your mind.

Actually I think I'm finally starting to understand what Hukif and Azul mean about not thinking with this RC. The goal is to constantly monitor your gravity, and that's all that's needed. You just keep a sense of "this is what my current gravity feels like" in your head all day. If something weird happens to your gravity, you will notice, and then you can begin to question reality and possibly perform other RCs if the change isn't drastic enough. I believe Hukif has actually said before (in another thread) that he doesn't really question "am I waking or dreaming according to my gravity?". He just knows that "normal gravity = waking" and "weird gravity = dream".

Btw when I said "questioning everything" earlier that was referring to asking "Is this a dream?". I don't like having to muster enough energy (and care) to actually be able to answer that question, and if you don't put much thought in it some of the reality checks will fail anyway (not things like digital clock but I don't want to constantly be looking at one of those either). Hukif's RC seems to be RCing in its most barebones form, and that's definitely the type of technique I would gravitate to (PUN! ). And I realize RC's aren't supposed to use much energy but I'm still pretty lazy so...yeah.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

^^ I think there's nothing wrong with reflection/intention. In fact, I regard it very highly. It is closely related to the main day work of the Tibetan dream yogis, and the habits of natural/very frequent lucid dreamers who have a need to constantly evaluate their state (e.g., to determine if they're safe from nightmares). In fact, you could say that it currently forms my main day work, and I do it all throughout the day. My LD progress of late has skyrocketed, in large part I believe to my focus on mindfulness and all-through-the-day awareness ("ADA" has too much baggage as a short-hand, everyone takes it only to mean King Yoshi's precise approach). I think blaming reflection/intention for killing motivation should be a claim made cautiously. Maybe it truly is not for you based on your life particulars. But let me say that all-day type awareness activities take time to get used to. I started mine in November 2013 with ADA/RC-location, and have mostly kept it up since then -- while the target of my attention has shifted over time, I've maintained the day-long focus of maintaining a sense of my state.

I encourage you to take another look at it, and find a target/emphasis that works for you. Gravity as Hukif does it is ADA/RC: you must keep a sense of "is this gravity waking or dreaming?" constantly in your mind.

Sorry, probably I didn't express myself accurately enough.
First of all, I was trying to share my personal experience (in line with what Sageous said, that RCing should not require too much thinking) not trying to say reflection-intention is bad for everyone.
What I wanted to point out that killed MY motivation was that, following LaBerge's reflection-intention, I used to do one or two RCs (the "reflection" part), then spend some time in order to imagine I was dreaming, then more time in order to imagine I was doing my goals and resolving myself to become lucid (the "intention" part). Doing that, for me, was taking too much time, energy and attention from other important things in my life, and I couldn't keep up with it.
That's why I think Hukif's technique is so clever, as you can RC in almost any circumstances.

Like I stated before, DO NOT use logic with this RC. Trust me I screwed myself when I did this, just get accustomed to waking like Gravity and you should be fine in the long run.

That's whole point of this RC, it's awareness is such a type that you don't have to question reality, Gravity pretty much tells you if you're dreaming or not.

RCs will actually require energy in the beginning, although they shouldn't like you said but since you're trying to make it a new habit it can drain you a bit. ADA is really good for that.

Originally Posted by Azul

Like I stated before, DO NOT use logic with this RC. Trust me I screwed myself when I did this, just get accustomed to waking like Gravity and you should be fine in the long run.

That's whole point of this RC, it's awareness is such a type that you don't have to question reality, Gravity pretty much tells you if you're dreaming or not.

RCs will actually require energy in the beginning, although they shouldn't like you said but since you're trying to make it a new habit it can drain you a bit. ADA is really good for that.

I think I've been falling for the same trap. It's hard to passively observe gravity without feeling like there is something I have to look for, but I'm starting to have a better grasp of the idea (at least I think so ). Oh I've been using timers like you suggested, and they've been pretty taxing on my awareness. Started with minute timers, but think I'll swap to 2 minutes now and try to taper off. How long were your timers, Azul?

Originally Posted by Zangetsu

I think I've been falling for the same trap. It's hard to passively observe gravity without feeling like there is something I have to look for, but I'm starting to have a better grasp of the idea (at least I think so ). Oh I've been using timers like you suggested, and they've been pretty taxing on my awareness. Started with minute timers, but think I'll swap to 2 minutes now and try to taper off. How long were your timers, Azul?

It will take some practice nonetheless so worries.

Oh I don't use a timer, I did think about it at first but I decided it wasn't....natural lol. I'd say set your alarm on intervals of 30mins to every hour.

Originally Posted by Azul

It will take some practice nonetheless so worries.

Oh I don't use a timer, I did think about it at first but I decided it wasn't....natural lol. I'd say set your alarm on intervals of 30mins to every hour.

Ohhhhh ok. The timer is definitely interesting (and definitely unnatural). I tend to dread things when they count down like alarms. Sort of a mild version of water torture I guess . Good thing is that dread seems to keep my mind thinking about RCing. Bad thing is I can tell that too much of it will kill my motivation, so I'll have to practice moderation with it I guess.

It's fine to train yourself at first but try not to rely on it as much. Build up that awareness naturally and you'll be a lot more happy.

Now I'm quite curious to see how you'll progress in the early stages with the assistance of that alarm hmmm....

I guess I left out the fact that I only have been using the timer for an hour each day. Don't think I could handle much more than that.

So I take it you're still getting daily LDs with this? How much effort does it take for you now to focus on the RC, or is it completely internalized now? Sorry for all the questions, just trying to take in all the data I can find on this .