Thread: Forced Brief Awakening (FBA) Induction Technique - Early Testing

@Kaan I will definitely post an update after I've tested it longer.

Yes, it is more invasive. However, it's not nearly as bad as it seems! Because each check takes less than 2 seconds, and you get better at learning to perform it quickly then return your thoughts to where they were. So far I've been doing it for about 5 days, throughout each day, and it's been fine. It does have some load, but less than it sounds like it would. Certainly far less than I think ADA would be, as that is not distinct -- it's not easy to say "okay, I did the check, now I can get back" like you can with this.

So I don't think I will be turned completely nut after a month. : P We'll see though.

As for the chronometer technique, that is indeed interesting and similar. However, what's nice about this one is that you can do it entirely mentally. You hear the prompt, check even/odd, then continue, without having to move, press, or even look at anything. This makes it the easiest/fastest "passive reality check" I'm aware of. (other than maybe gravity-rc or the like)

Also, I doubt you need to do it every 60 seconds for it to work -- I'm just starting it at this extreme because I have a surplus of motivation right now, so want to notch it up as much as I can to get results faster. I will probably reduce the frequency to every 3 minutes or so later on. (after my initial 1+ month testing)

I'm not actively updating my success rate atm (will probably start that in a week or so), but for the record, I got a second success during my last sleep.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Aaaannd..... more silence?! Did I offend you or something?

Hi again. sorry but there have been certain things ive been unable to discuss due to gagging orders. Because the iWinks team gave me an Aurora (early tester) for no real reason other than my persistance I feel loyal to their wishes, however....

The Aurora, after much testing does have its problems. I would say it detects REM about 60% of the time, many times I will be laying in bed and the lights will cue when im clearly awake. Also the lights dont always wake me (and have only once actually penetrated into a dream) On the times it has woken me i have successfully DEILD'ed and ive done this only a handful of times, each night there seems to be a problem (lights not waking me, not flashing in REM, device giving me headache etc)

The actual device in theory is fantastic but the lights just dont wake me often enough to perform DEILD. Ive even handsown a sleepmask on top for darkness but it made no difference. It does have an audio alarm but ive not really tested this due to the wife would wake up. I only tested the audio alarm once and it did infact wake me and lead to a successful DEILD.

Throughout all of the devices ive constructed / used over the years Id say the Aurora is the most promising but only due to its REM detection. Id also say that its much more reliable to be woken up via audio signal than lights

I used to have an autostop alarm on my phone connected to a tiny earbud (bluetooth) but this was also impractical, it would be very sweaty and give me an earache.

Another device which has also worked was using my apple watch but the setup was very complex. You see, ideally there would be an apple watch app alarm that would vibrate and then stop automatically after a few seconds but no app on earth exists, trust me ive really tried to find an autostop alarm for apple watch. So what I did was I got an android phone, then downloaded a 'call scheduler' app to ring my normal phone each 30 mind after 4 hours of sleep. The Android app would stop ringing my phone after a few seconds. As my iphone is linked to my apple watch this means that my watch vibrates on my wrist when my phone is being called (by the app) and this setup worked. Because the watch vibrations arnt that strong I bought a little device on Amazon called a 'Ditto'. Its a bluetooth tiny vibrating object that will vibrate when my phone is ringing and so the following happens .... Android app 'call scheduler' calls my phone, my phone rings (on silent) which makes my watch vibrate and also the ditto vibrates ( the ditto is small so i 'stuck' it to my finger with velcro like a ring) and hense I have my vibrating autostop alarm!!!! Wouldnt it be easier if there as just a simple apple watch app to do this.

To be honest im still not sure what DEILD alarm works best. I would edge towards an audio alarm then vibrating alarm then lights.

Aurora will be fantastic once it is able to transmit high quality audio via bluetooth (to an earbud) once REM is detected

For now im going to stick to my vibrating watch alarm / ditto and post the results soon. Although this method has no rem detection it still seems to be more efficient than Aurora.

Hope this helps, sorry for the long delays, I will be very active from now on at DreaamViews :-)
Ezzo

Thanks, Ezzo, for the update . Aurora is supposed to be all about practice, not theory. Lights/audio/vibrate effectiveness may vary per person, over time. At some point, I hope people will post reviews, there are supposedly hundreds of devices shipped to early supporters now.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Thanks, Ezzo, for the update . Aurora is supposed to be all about practice, not theory. Lights/audio/vibrate effectiveness may vary per person, over time. At some point, I hope people will post reviews, there are supposedly hundreds of devices shipped to early supporters now.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Thanks, Ezzo, for the update . Aurora is supposed to be all about practice, not theory. Lights/audio/vibrate effectiveness may vary per person, over time. At some point, I hope people will post reviews, there are supposedly hundreds of devices shipped to early supporters now.

The thing with Aurora is that, for me personally, its is simply a DEILD alarm. The ideal situation would be for me to put it on, it then detects REM and flashes lights to wake me up to perform a DEILD but in reality thats only happened a few times. There is a 'secret' forum for Aurora users (On Slack) and only a few people are trying to master DEILD with the device - the majority are expecting to just put the thing on and become lucid, but we know thats just not going to happen for them.

Im going to spend the next 4 weeks really putting Aurora through its paces. I must say that the accompanying app / website that shows the sleep data is extremely good and its really easy to adjust the light settings (colour, intervals, length of flashes etc).

I am beginning to think that a WBTB is needed to see the lights when returning to sleep as the WBTB makes sleep lighter.

The Aurora has about 30 built in 'tunes' but they come from the motherboard and are very very 'tinny' much like the old digital watch alarms of the 1990's. However the 1 time I did try the Aurora with a 'tune' it did wake me and I did have a DEILD - I must need to retry.

So for the next month im going to attempt a DEILD using the built in audio tunes. I will post my results and hopefully the audio route will work better for me.

Fryingman - How do you DEILD? For me I use the Michael Raduga Techniques from his book 'The Phase'.

If I was to post a review of Aurora, Id say the following ...

The packaging / presentation and 'look' of the device is fantastic / stylish and much like the feel of unboxing a new phone
The manual - was written by me!!!! :-) so I will say its a great manual :-)
The app / website to analyze sleep data is amazing
The ability to alter the light settings and timings is also 10/10
The rem detection I would give 7/10 - it does give a lot of false readings and false light cues
Comfortability - really comfy, easy to sleep in but has given me a headache a few times (maybe the straps were too tight)

I think for the future they need to implement much better audio with the ability to record your own voice and then be able to transmit via bluetooth to earbuds

Overall the Aurora is pretty good, there are a lot of bugs but iWinks are always trying to improve it. They are always releasing software / firmware updates to improve the algorithmn. I get the impression that the iWinks team are really in this for the long haul and im sure there will be Aurora 2.0 in the future.

Ezzo

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

The thing with Aurora is that, for me personally, its is simply a DEILD alarm.

What I want from an EILD device is a toolkit that allows me to tailor a particular approach on a particular night using highly flexible combinations of timers, REM detection, current time, signaling, and success/fail feedback (feedback is critical!). With this basis, you can create notifications that focus on DEILD or DILD, as many times a night as you'd like. Aurora seems flexible from what you say.

Are there any ways in the tools to indicate either in the moment (ideally) or afterwards in a post-mortem analysis of the night that a particular signaling was wrong? I.e., that you were awake? I would think that feedback like that would be critical to the success of the evolving REM detection and signaling. In particular, I would hope that what would come out of "training" the device on your own sleep patterns would be a personal REM detection and notification regime that is effective for the particular user.

Ideally there could be "phase of night" differences: in the early (mostly deep sleep) night, it could use more aggressive signaling, while later in the night (lighter sleep) the notifications would be adjusted so as not to prevent falling back asleep again.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

What I want from an EILD device is a toolkit that allows me to tailor a particular approach on a particular night using highly flexible combinations of timers, REM detection, current time, signaling, and success/fail feedback (feedback is critical!). With this basis, you can create notifications that focus on DEILD or DILD, as many times a night as you'd like. Aurora seems flexible from what you say.

Are there any ways in the tools to indicate either in the moment (ideally) or afterwards in a post-mortem analysis of the night that a particular signaling was wrong? I.e., that you were awake? I would think that feedback like that would be critical to the success of the evolving REM detection and signaling. In particular, I would hope that what would come out of "training" the device on your own sleep patterns would be a personal REM detection and notification regime that is effective for the particular user.

Ideally there could be "phase of night" differences: in the early (mostly deep sleep) night, it could use more aggressive signaling, while later in the night (lighter sleep) the notifications would be adjusted so as not to prevent falling back asleep again.

Hi Fryingman, after a night with the Aurora on, I can upload the data to the app / website and it gives a graph of all the sleep stage including exactly when the lights cued, the graph shows deep sleep light sleep and rem. Also at any time during the night if I press the button on the device it will show that on the graph also.

So if im lying there awake and the lights cue then I can click the button and analyize what the graph shows the next day. Sometimes it shows on the graph that I was in REM when I know I was actually awake. This I believe is to do with REM and light sleep / awake having similar characteristics and so the algorithm thinks its in rem.

Ideally there could be "phase of night" differences: in the early (mostly deep sleep) night, it could use more aggressive signaling, while later in the night (lighter sleep) the notifications would be adjusted so as not to prevent falling back asleep again.

Also, why would you want the device to trigger in deep sleep? We cant lucid or OBE in deep sleep ..... or can we? :-/

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

Hi Fryingman, after a night with the Aurora on, I can upload the data to the app / website and it gives a graph of all the sleep stage including exactly when the lights cued, the graph shows deep sleep light sleep and rem. Also at any time during the night if I press the button on the device it will show that on the graph also.

So if im lying there awake and the lights cue then I can click the button and analyize what the graph shows the next day. Sometimes it shows on the graph that I was in REM when I know I was actually awake. This I believe is to do with REM and light sleep / awake having similar characteristics and so the algorithm thinks its in rem.

That's a good feature. Better would be if you could click "I was actually awake here" and the device would adjust its algorithms accordingly.

Also, why would you want the device to trigger in deep sleep? We cant lucid or OBE in deep sleep ..... or can we? :-/

I probably should have written "when sleep is deeper." It's much easier to fall back asleep (at least for me) earlier in the night. The closer to morning it gets, the more overall awake I find myself, and more sensitive to external stimuli. So early REM could use stronger signaling perhaps, and later REM "quieter" signaling.

That's a good feature. Better would be if you could click "I was actually awake here" and the device would adjust its algorithms accordingly.

This 'learning' feature has been suggested to the iwinks team a few times by beta testers so maybe in the future it will be intergrated

So last night, I put the device on after a 5 hour wbtb with a 30 min delay. Once 30 mins was up the device cued but then kept cueing each 4 minutes whilst I was awake. Not sure why it shows im in rem when i was clearly awake ... so epic fail last night.

Getting fed up really. All I want is a reliable device that can wake me during rem without me having to move as switching off alarms can ruing the deild attempt. I find it highly important to remain in sleep paralysis.

So tonight im going back to trying my apple watch device. Ill set it for every 45 mins after 4 hours sleep and will attempt deild each time. I wont have to move when it goes off so if I hit a rem spot then this should work - its worked in the past, in fact every device has worked in the past including remee mask.

Hey fryingman - whats your go-to device method for deild'ing? How many deilds do you induce each week / month?

.. and a happy lucid xmas to you all

Ezzo

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

This 'learning' feature has been suggested to the iwinks team a few times by beta testers so maybe in the future it will be intergrated

So last night, I put the device on after a 5 hour wbtb with a 30 min delay. Once 30 mins was up the device cued but then kept cueing each 4 minutes whilst I was awake. Not sure why it shows im in rem when i was clearly awake ... so epic fail last night.

Getting fed up really. All I want is a reliable device that can wake me during rem without me having to move as switching off alarms can ruing the deild attempt. I find it highly important to remain in sleep paralysis.

So tonight im going back to trying my apple watch device. Ill set it for every 45 mins after 4 hours sleep and will attempt deild each time. I wont have to move when it goes off so if I hit a rem spot then this should work - its worked in the past, in fact every device has worked in the past including remee mask.

Hey fryingman - whats your go-to device method for deild'ing? How many deilds do you induce each week / month?

.. and a happy lucid xmas to you all

Ezzo

Disheartening about Aurora. I'm not much of a deild-er. I've had only a couple deilds of note, and they came about spontaneously when the conditions were absolutely perfect. I've tried alarm deild a few times but always wake up too much.

That's a pity that, for now, the Aurora seems less good at detecting rem than the REM dreamer, and don't do so much more things thant the RD does.
But the good point is if you implement the software you can make it more efficient.

I'm still with my two RemDreamers. Comfort is not an issue to me, I only wear it in the late morning.
I'm trying different settings in term of threshold of sensitivity and use short clues with flash and beep to explore the DEILD approach.

Ezzo, in what does your routine consist exactly when you just have been awoken by the aurora (or anything else) ?
I know you use SOBT (Raduga) and I had been using it with succes when I used supplements , but what are your 3 cycled visualisations?
(just by curiosity).

Originally Posted by Kaan

That's a pity that, for now, the Aurora seems less good at detecting rem than the REM dreamer, and don't do so much more things thant the RD does.
But the good point is if you implement the software you can make it more efficient.

I'm still with my two RemDreamers. Comfort is not an issue to me, I only wear it in the late morning.
I'm trying different settings in term of threshold of sensitivity and use short clues with flash and beep to explore the DEILD approach.

Ezzo, in what does your routine consist exactly when you just have been awoken by the aurora (or anything else) ?
I know you use SOBT (Raduga) and I had been using it with succes when I used supplements , but what are your 3 cycled visualisations?
(just by curiosity).

Hi Kaan, what I do is this... The alarm wakes me and i do my best to remain still. I then spend about 5 seconds doing nothing, thinking nothing as this pulls be back towards sleep (its called forced falling asleep) after about 5 seconds if nothing strange has happened I will then turn my attention to the natural hissing in my ears. Sometimes at this point the hissing will roar into an almighty noise. At this point I will simply get out of bed and find im in an 'obe'. What also might happen is that I experience vibrations over my upper body. If I feel vibrations them I will wait till they calm down and then once again get up into an obe.

If nothing happens with the hissing or theres no vibrations them i wil switch my awareness between 'looking at the back of my eyelids and listening to the hissing for about 5-10 seconds each until a minute has passed.

There no magic here! Its simply a way to keep my awareness alive as my body falls back to sleep.

I also believe that vibrations are a unique (and very common) sensation. Although no one knows what causes these I have a damn good theory which I believe is correct. As we go from awakefulness to rem sleep our body will become paralysed. I believe the vibrations felt is the release of a chemical from the brain into the body to creat the sleep paralysis (much like the release of adrenaline). Once the body has released enough chemicals to paralize the body then the body is asleep and a separation can happen

Many times I have tried to separate whilst the vibrations are actually happening (and this is the advice given in many forums) however if my theory is right then the body is not fully asleep and I can wake myself up whilst attempting to separate.

It makes much more sense to me to wait until the vibrations have stopped as at this point I would have descended past the 'chemical release' and into sleep paralysis and can now separate.

A lot of 'astral projectors' believe that the vibrations are something to do with the soul separating from the body but I dont believe any of that

What do you guys think?

Kaan - id suggest simply 'play dead' for a few seconds and then focus on something like your hearing. The reason I swap my awareness to another sensation is to stop myself falling asleep for real.

Also Kaan - I have great success with RemDreamer but then I started to worry that the sensor that is constantly reading your eye movement could be dangerous to the eye. I contacted some electricians on forums and they said they would never wear the device even though the makers of RemDreamer say its 100% safe - what do you think? For me the rem detection is much much much more reliable than Aurora at present

Ezzo

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

Hi Kaan, what I do is this... The alarm wakes me and i do my best to remain still. I then spend about 5 seconds doing nothing, thinking nothing as this pulls be back towards sleep (its called forced falling asleep) after about 5 seconds if nothing strange has happened I will then turn my attention to the natural hissing in my ears. Sometimes at this point the hissing will roar into an almighty noise. At this point I will simply get out of bed and find im in an 'obe'. What also might happen is that I experience vibrations over my upper body. If I feel vibrations them I will wait till they calm down and then once again get up into an obe.

If nothing happens with the hissing or theres no vibrations them i wil switch my awareness between 'looking at the back of my eyelids and listening to the hissing for about 5-10 seconds each until a minute has passed.

There no magic here! Its simply a way to keep my awareness alive as my body falls back to sleep.

I also believe that vibrations are a unique (and very common) sensation. Although no one knows what causes these I have a damn good theory which I believe is correct. As we go from awakefulness to rem sleep our body will become paralysed. I believe the vibrations felt is the release of a chemical from the brain into the body to creat the sleep paralysis (much like the release of adrenaline). Once the body has released enough chemicals to paralize the body then the body is asleep and a separation can happen

Many times I have tried to separate whilst the vibrations are actually happening (and this is the advice given in many forums) however if my theory is right then the body is not fully asleep and I can wake myself up whilst attempting to separate.

It makes much more sense to me to wait until the vibrations have stopped as at this point I would have descended past the 'chemical release' and into sleep paralysis and can now separate.

A lot of 'astral projectors' believe that the vibrations are something to do with the soul separating from the body but I dont believe any of that

What do you guys think?

Kaan - id suggest simply 'play dead' for a few seconds and then focus on something like your hearing. The reason I swap my awareness to another sensation is to stop myself falling asleep for real.

Also Kaan - I have great success with RemDreamer but then I started to worry that the sensor that is constantly reading your eye movement could be dangerous to the eye. I contacted some electricians on forums and they said they would never wear the device even though the makers of RemDreamer say its 100% safe - what do you think? For me the rem detection is much much much more reliable than Aurora at present

Ezzo

Interesting points.
About the vibrations, I only had one real strong experience of OBE (which I believe is just another kind of WILD) and felt strong vibrations, but most of my WILD/DEILD experiences didn't contain any kind of vibrations.
I don't know where the vibrations come from, I guess it's rather the lack of external stimulus, but here is an interesting quote about REM atonia I found in a wikipedia page about REM sleep

REM atonia, an almost complete paralysis of the body, is accomplished through the inhibition of motor neurons.

When the body shifts into REM sleep, motor neurons throughout the body undergo a process called hyperpolarization: their already-negative membrane potential decreases by another 2–10 millivolts, thereby raising the threshold which a stimulus must overcome to excite them. Muscle inhibition may result from unavailability of monoamine neurotransmitters (restraining the abundance of acetylcholine in the brainstem) and perhaps from mechanisms used in waking muscle inhibition.[44] The medulla oblongata, located between pons and spine, seems to have the capacity for organism-wide muscle inhibition.[45] Some localized twitching and reflexes can still occur.[46] Pupils contract.[14]]

Galantamine + choline make transitions from awake to REM easier but I'd like to be able to achieve the same thing without any supplement, only an alarm that wakes me up from a REM stage..
I have been successful several times without any supplements though (and without alarm, I was lucky) , and It happens when I am focusing on what I'm seeing or on the feeling of touching an object, or when I'm jumping or doing some imaginary body movements.
just before I enter the LD, I don't really see, feel or hear something, it's rather foggy, like a daydream, but few seconds later it becomes very real and I enter in the LD.
I think, like Sageous often says, that focusing on the real body feelings, or vibrations, everything that Sageous calls "noise" can prevent you from entering the LD/OBE.
It sounds better to focus on the feelings that comes from the incoming dream.

I have never thought of just doing nothing during 5 seconds before attempting a visualisation, that's a good idea, I'll test it.

About the infrared LED I don't think it can cause any damage to the eye which is only sensitive to visible light.
Infrared light has at lower frequency than the lowest visible light in the visible spectre, so it's less dangerous than sleeping under the day light , all the more so as your eyelids are closed most of the time while you wear the RemDreamer, aren't they?
I never had any side effect since I have been using RD or even the NovaDreamer 20 years ago.

How long and how strong is the alarm that wakes you up?

On the RD I'm testing 4 flash/beeps with one second between each.
When I notice the beep/flashes, I count them. if there only 3, or 2, or 1 I know that at least one beep/flash is missing which means I was asleep just before.
That's a good indication that the RemDreamer didn't go off when I was awake. So it means that I have chances to achieve a DEILD.

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

I have a damn good theory which I believe is correct. As we go from awakefulness to rem sleep our body will become paralysed. I believe the vibrations felt is the release of a chemical from the brain into the body to creat the sleep paralysis (much like the release of adrenaline). Once the body has released enough chemicals to paralize the body then the body is asleep and a separation can happen.

That is brilliant. I had never heard it before, but it sounds right.

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

A lot of 'astral projectors' believe that the vibrations are something to do with the soul separating from the body but I dont believe any of that.

Depends on what they mean by soul. If it's another way to say the awareness, separating from the physical body as it drops into paralysis, then I would agree - but yeah, many of them mean something much more metaphysical.

Originally Posted by Kaan

REM atonia, an almost complete paralysis of the body, is accomplished through the inhibition of motor neurons.

When the body shifts into REM sleep, motor neurons throughout the body undergo a process called hyperpolarization: their already-negative membrane potential decreases by another 2–10 millivolts, thereby raising the threshold which a stimulus must overcome to excite them. Muscle inhibition may result from unavailability of monoamine neurotransmitters (restraining the abundance of acetylcholine in the brainstem) and perhaps from mechanisms used in waking muscle inhibition.[44] The medulla oblongata, located between pons and spine, seems to have the capacity for organism-wide muscle inhibition.[45] Some localized twitching and reflexes can still occur.[46] Pupils contract.[14]]

Hmmm - sounds like a fancy way to say it causes sleep paralysis.

Hmmm - sounds like a fancy way to say it causes sleep paralysis.

yeah but it explains how : REM atonia, an almost complete paralysis of the body, is accomplished through the inhibition of motor neurons.

.. I know - sorry, I was just being a smart@$$ dumb@$$.

@Venryx
Before generating random all odd or all even random number, did you tried with increasing odd, or even numbers (or decreasing), like "2" "4" "6" "8" or "9" "7" "5" "3" "1" ?
I just received the last updated version of RemDreamer pro, which can play a recorded message.
I made an audio file from a text to speech website, a synthetic female voice says "9" "7" "5" "3" "1". I added some reverb and a Fade IN volume ramp so that the sound comes progressively.
I then recorded this audio file through the RemDreamer mike and it will play through a flat little speaker that will be pressed against my skin behind my right hear.
Since I sleep with earplugs the sound is kind of amplified by bone conduction.

My goal is to be briefly awoken while on REM sleep to practice DEILD, or to have a FA where I can verify that all the numbers are odd, as a RC.
I was just wondering if the fact that the numbers are not random will make it too easy for the brain to trick me.

Originally Posted by Kaan

@Venryx
Before generating random all odd or all even random number, did you tried with increasing odd, or even numbers (or decreasing), like "2" "4" "6" "8" or "9" "7" "5" "3" "1" ?
I just received the last updated version of RemDreamer pro, which can play a recorded message.
I made an audio file from a text to speech website, a synthetic female voice says "9" "7" "5" "3" "1". I added some reverb and a Fade IN volume ramp so that the sound comes progressively.
I then recorded this audio file through the RemDreamer mike and it will play through a flat little speaker that will be pressed against my skin behind my right hear.
Since I sleep with earplugs the sound is kind of amplified by bone conduction.

My goal is to be briefly awoken while on REM sleep to practice DEILD, or to have a FA where I can verify that all the numbers are odd, as a RC.
I was just wondering if the fact that the numbers are not random will make it too easy for the brain to trick me.

No, I haven't tried any other number patterns so far. The even-odd approach sounded nicest to me, so I've been sticking with that until I've evaluated it fully.

As for your suggested approach, my guess is that it would still work a good portion of the time, but not quite as reliably as pure random. This is because I've noticed in dreams that if you anticipate things, or even think about anticipating it, your brain can figure out what you're referencing and then add it to the dream before your memory is even consciously retrieved. Thus, if you start hearing numbers, you might start retrieving the pattern memory, letting your subconscious catch on and start following it as well before you can catch its interference. But, I've also noticed that my subconscious is not that consistent/professional, so even if it starts doing a pattern, I'd guess that most of the time, it would still add random stumbles and insertions if you listened long enough. It's just, it won't "mess up" quite as reliably as if it were forced to do both the pattern plus randomization for each entry, I would guess.

By the way, I am still going strong at my "RVP v2" experiment -- the prompts continue to play every 60 seconds (when I'm in my room).

The results so far have been somewhat promising, though it has not reached a breakthrough point yet like I have (and still am) hoping. I've had a good number of times where the prompts have triggered awareness either in a dream, or just as I'm waking up (still having dream imagery, but so light that my gaining lucidity causes it to vanish). I am recording the date/time as well as the "current prompt count" whenever I gain a lucid from the technique. (I will provide the results later once I have completed the initial evaluation -- which is either when I give up, or hit a breakthrough point.)

I said I'd give an update when I either hit a breakthrough point or give up.

Well, I'm giving up.



The thing is, I was getting okay induction rates. Except... it changed a lot depending on the week, despite doing exactly the same thing technique wise each week, and for about the same amount of time. It's not that unexpected since it's known that a lot of things go into your "suitability for lucid dreaming" state, but I guess... I expected it to still be more predictable than it's been.

I will share some screenshots now of my results. I was originally intending to go into more detail about the experiment, and still might, but am distracted with various things atm and figured I would just share a basic overview for now for anyone who had been waiting.

This first screenshot is of the ~3 months over which I did the experiment. Each gap between gray vertical bars represents 3 days, each day represented separately with (potentially) an orange peak indicating how many lucid dreams were had that day. (Except the first few gaps -- they are thinner for some reason so only have space for 1/2 days each.)
Screenshot 2018-04-09 at 23.06.30.jpg

That's kind of hard to see long-term rate-changes, though, so I'll also include screenshots of that data, except smoothed out. By "smoothed out", I mean that for each row/slot/x-position, it's changed to not just show how many lucid dreams occurred that day, but how many lucid dreams occurred in the last Z days.

Here are the screenshots for varying values of Z:
==========
Smoothing value of 3:
Screenshot 2018-04-09 at 23.11.42.jpg

Smoothing value of 5:
Screenshot 2018-04-09 at 23.13.16.jpg

Smoothing value of 7:
Screenshot 2018-04-09 at 23.14.12.jpg

Smoothing value of 10:
Screenshot 2018-04-09 at 23.14.34.jpg
==========

At some points, I was getting ~4 lucid-dreams per week, which is quite good for me. But you'll see that each time, it would fluctuate back down shortly after.

Here's one more screenshot, with a smoothing value of 20: (hit limit of 5 for main post)
Screenshot 2018-04-09 at 23.15.27.jpg

Anyway, I'll have to think some more on what I can learn from the results. One thing is that toward the end, as I got distracted by some things, my induction rate fell substantially, despite, again, doing almost exactly the same things as before technique-wise. (the only thing I changed might have been a bit less strict adherence to the "keep it on whenever you're in your room" rule -- I started skipping occasionally, but I still did it most of the time)

I also made sure in the earlier times to not be doing anything explicit other than the technique, so as not to disrupt the results. But I guess, merely having more things on your mind puts a burden on the process, even when you had kept the technique constant, and as your only support for lucid-dreaming.

I'll continue to mess around with various approaches (including this one and FBA), but I'm ending the semi-formal recording phase and just falling back to "whenever I feel like it" mode. It was fun, and I think it did have an impact, just not as reliable a one as I was hoping for.

The highest induction rates I've had seem to have been with the FBA technique in my other thread. I will probably revisit that one next. [edit: Oh nvm, it's this thread. I've kind of been posting in the wrong thread, due to this being where I first mentioned my starting testing of RVPv2.]

The main reason: My family is moving to another house in a month or two, one where I have a larger and more separated room. So, it should be far enough away that I can use alarms without waking other people up. Which means I don't need to use sleep-headphones anymore, which was my main annoyance. (I didn't like turning it on and waiting for it to connect, and its sometimes making my tinnitus act up more due to the outside-sound obstruction -- it wasn't terrible, but it will be nicer to no longer need it)

So anyway, I'm ending testing on this for now, but I'll be back in a few weeks most likely to give the FBA technique another try. (this time without the need for headphones)