By the way, I stopped updating here because I stopped using this technique/setup (well, I used it for a while more, and then stopped).
It works well -- at one point I was getting lucid or semi-lucid dreams the majority of nights I used it (ie. >50% success rate) -- however, I stopped because of a combination of two main reasons:
1) I was getting annoyed some by having to wear the sleep headband/headphones. If I were living on my own, I could just use speakers, but as it stands speakers might disturb my family members.
2) It was disturbing my sleep some, at the frequency/aggressiveness I was using.
If it were just one of those reasons, I probably would have continued, but as it went, it was enough to cause me to kinda just fade off (again) in my usage, getting focused instead on daytime programming projects. And when I resumed enthusiasm for lucid dreaming (a few weeks ago), I wanted to focus on another technique now. (for fun, and for the two main reasons above)
I'll probably come back to this approach if the other approaches I'm trying fail, but for now it's on the storage shelf.
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BY THE WAY: I know some people hate this sort of thing, but... I'm trying out a super secret new technique which I'm pretty curious about seeing the results from. It's an extension of the Random Voice Prompt (RVP) technique I posted about earlier.
It's not really secret actually, so I'll just give a summary: basically, it's the RVP system, except simplified to just the random numbers, and you have it run throughout the day instead of just when going to bed. It's kind of like turning it into an ADA technique, EXCEPT that it's a much easier version of ADA because the action you perform is very fast (<2 seconds), and then you can return back to whatever you were doing. It's fast enough that I have it run a voice prompt EVERY 60 SECONDS, and even then it does not overly disrupt my activities. (even programming, watching movies, etc.)
I've been doing it a few days, and have only had one success so far (a dream character saying 1 2 2 1, which I immediately recognized did not match the "all even or odd" pattern, so became lucid), however, I am optimistic that it will eventually yield good results, just on account of how frequently I now perform the pattern check throughout the day. (Every 60 seconds is pretty often! I've performed the checks many times just while writing this post.)
Anyway, one thing I like about this new technique is that it's very distinct and therefore easy for everyone to understand and perform consistently. This is a quality that most techniques do not have -- most need substantial explanation for people to be on the same page. For this technique, it's this simple:
1) Enable the voice-prompt engine.
2) Whenever you hear a four-digit number spoken, check the pattern of digits: if they're all even, mentally-speak "even"; if they're all odd, mentally-speak "odd"; if it's neither, say "Wrong! Lucid!", and you're in a lucid! -- because the real voice-prompt engine only ever does "all even" or "all odd" patterns. (One further possibility: if it's too muffled to hear. In that case, just do a quick reality-check, as sometimes you can hear the real prompts from within dreams, but it's too muffled so you can't hear it clearly.)
Anyway, I'm heading to bed in a few minutes, to test my luck. I'm in this experiment for the long haul though -- even if I don't get any results, I plan to stick with it for at least a month (probably two or more), because to me, the idea seems very promising. (and it's easy to perform, so I should be able to keep it up that long without straining)
When I'm further along I will make a thread specifically for the technique, and give live updates there. Just thought I'd give a quick peek into what I'm working on.
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