Thread: Prolonging Dreams

You need to calm yourself down. That is the only way I've ever been able to prolong dreams (and I still have trouble with it). A couple years ago, I'd get really upset when my dream was ending. I tried tons of things, hand tricks, movement, spinning, etc. Nothing worked.

You really just have to center yourself. It takes a pretty strange sort of leap of faith, but you can do it!

You need to calm yourself down. That is the only way I've ever been able to prolong dreams (and I still have trouble with it). A couple years ago, I'd get really upset when my dream was ending. I tried tons of things, hand tricks, movement, spinning, etc. Nothing worked.

You really just have to center yourself. It takes a pretty strange sort of leap of faith, but you can do it![/b]

You might be right, I do kinda get upset (not that much, just kinda disappointed) when my dream is ending, but I don't see how I can stop being disappointed? Is being disappointed when the dream ends really stopping them from lasting?

Thanks for the advice though, i'll keep it in mind next lucid dream and see if it works.

Well, it could be a contributing factor. I'll never forget the first lucid dream where I maintained a freakish level of control (to this day, my most vivid, powerful lucid dream). Before any control took place, I put myself into a complete tranquility. I was at peace with my dream state.

This allowed me to get in the zone, just as you would when writing, or painting, or anything else. Once the calm happens, and you start to control your dream - it's like riding a bicycle.

Sorry for the late reply, for some reason I didn't notice a reply in this message...

Anyway, lately I've been kinda calm in my dreams, i've had a pretty long one (around say 5 minutes long maybe?) which happened when I was pretty calm and enjoying myself.

I've had further trouble keeping my dream going though, I still feel like I have little control over when the dream ends (it's like when the dream ends, that's it, usually I don't seem to be able to stop it).

It seems to be becoming really normal for me now to lucid dream, I had one last night and I didn't bother to control the dream when I realised I was lucid dreaming, I'm not sure why (luckily I had another one later in the night which I did kinda control). Hopefully my lucid dreams will get longer due to them becoming more natural?

It's just kinda disappointing to me that I still can't keep the lucid dreams going, even though I seem to be having them kinda often now.

Yeah, the best advice I can give is this: keep a dream journal, and keep dreaming. The more you LD, the better you'll get at it. Because really, you're going to need to experiment for yourself and figure out what works and what doesn't. I'm still doing that every night, and I'm still getting better.

Good luck, and keep me posted!

Pick an object in the dream and stare at it, then relax. It might change into another object, but you probably won't wake up if you keep staring at whatever it is.

Originally posted by arne saknussemm
Pick an object in the dream and stare at it, then relax. It might change into another object, but you probably won't wake up if you keep staring at whatever it is.

Thanks for the advice! I'll try it next lucid dream.

What I do is stimulate another sense besides sight. I usually rub my hands on my chest or rub my palms together. The rubbing sensation usually snaps me back into the dream, but it won't work when there are loud noises waking you up (learned that the hard way). The basic idea is to do something that makes your brain keep you in the dream. Staring at your hands, the ground, rubbing, spinning, maybe singing?

Originally posted by speedbasssux
What I do is stimulate another sense besides sight. I usually rub my hands on my chest or rub my palms together. The rubbing sensation usually snaps me back into the dream, but it won't work when there are loud noises waking you up (learned that the hard way). The basic idea is to do something that makes your brain keep you in the dream. Staring at your hands, the ground, rubbing, spinning, maybe singing?

Thats a good idea, i'll try that next lucid dream, sounds like it should work. I'm currently in a lucid dream drought or something (no lucid dream for over a week... )

Thanks for the advice, stimulating other senses might go really well as long as my dream doesn't fade out too last.

I found a way that allows me to keep the dream going for a long time, I call it "dream reentry". There's a tutorial on it in the tutorial section.

Here's what I do (short version) :
As I wake up from a LD, I keep calm and relax. I dont move or do any thinking. I concentrate on the last clear image of the faded dream that I remember and just stare at it in my mind's eye. Within some time (from seconds to a couple minutes) the image becomes more and more real, until I finally find myself in the dreamscape I was thinking about. At first there's a whitish haze over all objects, like smoke in a very bright sunlight, but soon it disappears and I find myself in a fully lucid stable dream.

The awesome thing is that this reentered dream can be reentered again, and once you get the hang of this method you can reenter dreams until you run out of REM time. The reentered dreams feel a lot better than the average LD because there's absolutely no concern for the length of the dream. You can bring whatever experiment you do to a successful conclusion, you may finish that epic battle or bang that chick one more time. Possibilities are endless Once you know that you can reenter the dream at will you gain enormous amount of confidence in your LD ability that is very helpful.
I remember reentering one dream about 5 or 6 times and stopping only after I noticed that I no longer remember the first episode.

The biggest trouble with this method is *remembering* to perform the reentry immidiately upon awakening, this is why reentering normal dreams is somewhat hard. At the same time in a LD you can tell yourself right away that you are gonna reenter the dream once it fades.

That's a great idea! I'll look at the tutorial section to see if I can find it, that would be great if I could re-enter dreams because then i wouldn't have to worry about my dream fading really fast, i could just come back into it!

Thanks heaps!

Rubbing hands technique has been my greatest success. I had a lucid that was around 40 minutes (my last rem period). Amazing stuff!

40 minutes??? If only I could have one that long! That would be the best lucid dream ever...

Ah well, i'll just have to aim for that, hopefully rubbing my hands together or something similar will work well (still waiting for a lucid dream to do it in).

Congratulations on the great lucid dream though, how many lucid dreams have you had so far? You must have had practise to keep it going for 40 minutes?

Originally posted by Ev
I found a way that allows me to keep the dream going for a long time, I call it "dream reentry". *
.

This worked for me twice last night. Very nice!

Originally posted by speedbasssux


This worked for me twice last night. Very nice!

Awesome! I rarely see feedback on the dream reentry method, hopefully now more people will be inclined to try

When I finally have a lucid dream again i'll try the dream reentry method and post here to tell you how it goes (hopefully it works!!!)

In my experience, the first LDs I had where I tried to control the dreamcontent usually led me to wake up very soon afterwards. Maybe because this is just too exciting and the level of lucidity wasn't high enough to stay dreaming under all the excitement.

My advice:
Upon becomming Lucid, just sit back and observe the dreamworld all around you. Not only will this be a magically beautifull experience, it'll keep you in the dream longer than when you would try and rule the world. Do that for a while to increase Lucidity. Then when you feel your Lucidity is much stronger, try subtile dream control, such as flying, Morphing Objects, letting DCs float...etc Don't focus on changing the entire Universe around you since that might be too mentally exerting and exciting and lead you to wake up.

i've tried the dream reentry method, but didn't manage to get it to work... I may have been doing it wrong, or just didn't have patence to wait until the dream came back. I don't think it's a method which works for me, not yet at least.

I've now been not waking up after my LDs, so i've only been able to try the method once.

What you gotta do is have 1 successful reentry, then you will be familiar with the method. It's like WILD - without knowing what to aim for it may be hard.

You will have most success with either dreams that abruptly ended or faded LDs.


So next time you have a LD and it fades relax and think about reentering the dream. Focus on the last stable scene. Cease all motion within that scene. Look at this picture and then look IN the picture.

Originally Posted by Ev

What you gotta do is have 1 successful reentry, then you will be familiar with the method. It's like WILD - without knowing what to aim for it may be hard.

You will have most success with either dreams that abruptly ended or faded LDs.
So next time you have a LD and it fades relax and think about reentering the dream. Focus on the last stable scene. Cease all motion within that scene. Look at this picture and then look IN the picture.
[/b]

I'll try it, a lot of the time though, when my dream fades it doesn't seem like there is anything I can do about it, i'm awake in a few seconds. So i'll try staying calm and continuing the dream on, so far i've had no lucid dreams to try this.

Originally Posted by Ev

I found a way that allows me to keep the dream going for a long time, I call it "dream reentry". There's a tutorial on it in the tutorial section.[/b]

It seems like you could use this to become lucid too; if you re-enter a non-lucid, and you were awake long enough to realize you were dreaming, you should instantly be lucid. I became lucid accidentally like this once when I recognized a place I had just been dreaming about. And I remember having nightmares I couldn't escape from because I would wake up and go back to sleep, right back into the dream, so I would have to get up and really wake up good so I wouldn't go back. I'm going to try it for turning non-lucid into lucid. Thanks for the idea.

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

It seems like you could use this to become lucid too; if you re-enter a non-lucid, and you were awake long enough to realize you were dreaming, you should instantly be lucid. I became lucid accidentally like this once when I recognized a place I had just been dreaming about. And I remember having nightmares I couldn't escape from because I would wake up and go back to sleep, right back into the dream, so I would have to get up and really wake up good so I wouldn't go back. I'm going to try it for turning non-lucid into lucid. Thanks for the idea.
[/b]

Hehe, this is exactly how I stumbled upon this method - by reentering a nonlucid dream and becoming lucid I think that first reentry was caused by listening to a tape of LaBerge's where he says among other things " You may reenter any dream that you wish or create any new dream"

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

It seems like you could use this to become lucid too; if you re-enter a non-lucid, and you were awake long enough to realize you were dreaming, you should instantly be lucid. I became lucid accidentally like this once when I recognized a place I had just been dreaming about. And I remember having nightmares I couldn't escape from because I would wake up and go back to sleep, right back into the dream, so I would have to get up and really wake up good so I wouldn't go back. I'm going to try it for turning non-lucid into lucid. Thanks for the idea.
[/b]

That's a good idea! I think i'll try that and see if it works! Might be a good way to induce a lucid dream seeing as i'm in another dry spell (no fair...).