Thread: Trying out MILD? This is how you become skilled at it.

Really great thread, Zoth. Will definitely include it in my "Find out What Technique is Right for You!" thread (Once editing is fixed xD)! The study is interesting and I agree with it 100%.

Is this the current technique you're doing? How's is working out for you?

Thanks for taking the time to make this

Hey Mancon! Thanks, I hope this gives new people the feeling that they got something to pratice during the day, and harvest the results at night. Like some lucid dreamer said "some of us lucid living" lol. Erm, I got 2 lds while perfecting the list, but I don't really count them in, since I'm still waiting for the right moment to get back to LD action (this topic is sort of one of the exercises that I will be doing).Anyway, next topic will be a personal review of that study mentioned in the top of the post, that will give us material for a juicy discussion ^^

PS: sorry I have no clue how to remove that image, was meant to mention something about it, now I can't remove it

Basically that bracelet with the locker is what I use to see my performance. Every time I spot the event/object, I roll one number up. the third wheel is for the times where I fail to reality check when I see the trigger.

"Many people perceive MILD as something like "I will remember I'm dreaming", but this leaves no trigger to activate your lucidity, leaves nothing to the brain to retrieve that intention. To do MILD properly, you need grab some mnemonic to aid you. And that good thing is that if you choose a recurrent dream sign, you can apply something like "Whenever I see X person/animal/place/situation/feeling, I will do a reality check"."

Well, assuming I still haven't been able of finding my dream signs, do you believe prospective memory trainings like this one could still improve my MILD?

Anyway, next topic will be a personal review of that study mentioned in the top of the post, that will give us material for a juicy discussion ^^

Did you ever get to write such a review? If you did, could yo share a link?


EXTRA: As you're interested in these memory practices, I will share one I am developing for working both prospective and retrospective memory. I believe it won't be of much use for you (your retrospective must already be good and you probably recall your dreams very well), but I also think it could interest you anyway, maybe just out of curiosity.

What I do is choosing 3-5 cues at the beginning of the day. This is for the Prospective Memory. Then, whenever I spot a cue, I will try to remember everything that's happened so far in my day since the last time I spotted another cue. If it is the first cue of the day, I will try to remember whatever happened since I got out of bed.

@Lucsande:

Like I pointed out in this topic, you can use other "kinds" of dream signs in conjuction to prospective memory. These exercises are not really meant to be the technique, but rather to develop your prospective memory, which in it's own way, it's useful to pratically every DILD technique, and even effective for WILD, due the nature of the "future intention" in this type of memory.

Did you ever get to write such a review?

Yes, but I haven't posted it in digital format yet, as I have one paper notebook where the analysis of lucid dreaming problematics goes in the first place. I will let you know when I do

And that memory exercise is quite interesting. I tried something similar in the past, combining prospective memory with the method of loci to form specific visual mnemonics to make a temporal line of sensorial information of past events since the previous cue. It was quite fun, and I definitively gotta try it again! Part of it resembles the actions in this video:

I like this idea. I am not going to try it because the amount of things I am trying right now that are working.

How has this been working for you for the last 3 weeks?

i am trying to develop my prospective memory. besides picking aleatory items which i never know when they will pop up, i also choose a dynamic strategy so to speak. for instance if i know i will be at home in the next 10 minutes i think « i will remember to RC next time i touch my keys ». then, i choose another future activity to RC gain and so on until i forget . i have often become lucid without aparent dreamsign, so i think somehow we can program our memory to remind us we are dreaming without dreamsign association. that would imply some degree of natural lucidity. i mean, maybe we have a remote feeling or intuition we are dreaming and can use amplify it by the intention to remember we are dreaming.

Nice tutorial Zoth.

Nice post, Zoth. I was actually looking around for a way to systematize Laberge's list of exercises and ended up creating some kind of spreadsheet, still not very convenient.

I started researching how to write a simple android app to do this and lo and behold, someone has just done it!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...b3NwZWN0b3IiXQ..

This app is great:

- You can use the built-in list of tasks or create your own
- Has a widget that shows you the four tasks of the day at a glance, in case you forget
- Tracks how many times you do each task and shows you a graph of each day to show your improvement

It's quite simply the perfect tool. I've been using for almost 3 weeks now and it is definitely getting easier to remember things. It just takes a while to get used to how slow the results are. Eventually one day you find yourself remembering things without really realizing why.

I read it on Apple Reader THIS IS GENIUS!!!! I read it on Reader because it was too hard to read. Words coming out of the page..

I'm also trying to work on my prospective memory. The issue I have with the LaBerge exercise is that a number of the items are things I only do at home in the morning, and I'm concerned that if I finish 3 of the 4 days' targets immediately after reading the list then I won't be much of a memory workout. The alternative is to ignore them and say "only after I leave home" which also doesn't work that well, since I'd like tasks more or less with possibilities spaced out during the day.

I guess the real answer is to make my own list relevant to me and modern times (the "next time you read something" one is pretty silly for people sitting on the internet reading all about LD .

I'll also modify the exercise so that once I find 4 things or discover I've missed them, I'd start on another 4, so that all during the day there are things to look for, I don't want to train myself to "relax" once I hit the day's targets.

I'd be interested in any other modifications to the exercise that people have found useful.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I'll also modify the exercise so that once I find 4 things or discover I've missed them, I'd start on another 4, so that all during the day there are things to look for, I don't want to train myself to "relax" once I hit the day's targets.

I did this exercise for a while and my prospective memory improved noticeably, to the point where I can remember "plans" all day without reminding myself. It makes it easy to do reality checks all the time.

I modified the exercise a little differently from you, though: I kept the same random 4 things every day, but each time I would see one I would tally it up and continue with the same 4 items for the rest of the day. In the beginning I would get on average less than 4 tallies a day, but by the end I was regularly breaking 15 tallies a day. It gives you an quantifiable way to track your improvement in memory.

I did this with the android app I linked in my post above.

I think that's a great idea and another valuable modification. I'm however missing many "firsts" and only realizing it like a deja vu moment minutes or hours later. I want to focus on the "the next time you see/hear/whatever an XYZ, do a state test", in LDs time is precious so I want to make sure the "aha!" moment comes as soon as possible. Heck even though I consider myself as having a very good memory (in some things), sometimes I can't remember all the 4 events for the day all through the day, never mind looking for them .

When you do this, do you basically "program" yourself to recognize the target at the future time? Or do you keep the list in the mental "foreground' all day long? I'm assuming the former but I thought I'd ask to be sure.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I'm...missing many "firsts" and only realizing it like a deja vu moment minutes or hours later. I want to focus on the "the next time you see/hear/whatever an XYZ, do a state test", in LDs time is precious so I want to make sure the "aha!" moment comes as soon as possible.

...When you do this, do you basically "program" yourself to recognize the target at the future time? Or do you keep the list in the mental "foreground' all day long? I'm assuming the former but I thought I'd ask to be sure.

Yeah missing them and only realizing it later was pretty standard for me, for a long time (about a month I think). Progress is slow and seems to come out of nowhere. Actually the "foreground" approach is the only thing that worked for me.

I eventually figured out some tricks to doing it effectively, here was my approach:

- First thing in the morning, I would check out my new list of items for the day and memorize them.

- I found that there are two barriers to success: prospective memory is only the second one. The first is the ability to remember lists! I would often forget which things I was trying to remember that day. To plant them in my memory I would visualize them one at a time using as many senses as possible. For example, if an item was "the next time I see a traffic light" I would close my eyes and imagine a bright red light (visual) and the sound of honking traffic (aural) and the smell of car exhaust and traffic (oral). You can remember things much more easily via synesthesia than via abstract lists in your head.

- During the day it is difficult to remember to do things. When you do remember it seems to come out of nowhere. What eventually made it come easier and more often was to walk around with a mild state of awareness, just paying attention to everything in general without focusing on anything and without having any internal dialogue or daydreams. That way when you see things you will instantly remember what you're supposed to do, due to the general un-distracted context of your conscious experience. Therefore the challenge shifts from remembering to do things to remembering to be in a certain state of expectation.

After a while the concept of remembering to do things just became a larger part of the background process of my thinking. It's like an internal program is running regular checks to see if there's anything you're forgetting to do.

+1 for not remembering lists, i have exactly the same issue right now! It's frustrating because normally I'm quite good at memory stuff, just not this exact type of memory apparently!
Another issue is that I don't just want to become sensitized to traffic lights, vegetables, etc. (building up "dreamsign targets" out of the prospective memory exercise targets), so to really test the prospective memory a constantly changing set of random-ish (but with a good possibility of occuring) goals would be ideal.

Speaking from experience, I have not become sensitized to any of the items I frequently used for prospective memory targets.
Rather you will become sensitized to the context in which you most frequently encountered them, meaning you will trigger the mental state of alertness and doing memory checks whenever you find yourself in in the same context.

To clarify with a personal example, since I work in an office, I would encounter the vast majority of my targets while walking from one place to another (either through the hallways of my building or to/from work or public transportation).

Now whenever I'm walking somewhere I naturally drop into a state of expectation and alertness. I rarely walk anywhere in my dreams, though, so this does not translate into useful reality checks while sleeping.

Also great idea about the visualization to help remember the list. I started doing that just recently to help remember the day's list, but only visual. Incorporating all the other senses to in visualizing "hitting the target" sounds like a super idea and I'll start using that.

I've just started using Prospector on Android, which does exactly the same thing. Check it out if you have an Android smartphone.

I'm definitely going to try this.

After doing this exercise for a while and seeing some improvement, I decided only 4 targets per day were not enough to exercise PM. So I started a continuous target selection process: after hitting/missing targets, I replace the "finished" target with a new target. I make sure to select targets that are far enough away to get them out of my short-term memory, but not so far away in time and in likelihood that I won't encounter them and lose the chance to hit more and more targets. I'm up to about 75%+ hit rate now, and I'm often considering more than 8 targets per day. Sometimes as many as 12. My two DILDs came on days where I chose a lot (more than 10) of PM targets throughout the day.

As a result my goal-center is quite a bit more active throughout the day, and I have little trouble remembering targets now. I always visualize encountering each target to "set" it firmly into memory. And I always accompany the visualizations of recognizing the target in different surroundings / environments with vocalization of "I'm dreaming" repeatedly.

Originally Posted by lucsande

"Many people perceive MILD as something like "I will remember I'm dreaming", but this leaves no trigger to activate your lucidity, leaves nothing to the brain to retrieve that intention. To do MILD properly, you need grab some mnemonic to aid you. And that good thing is that if you choose a recurrent dream sign, you can apply something like "Whenever I see X person/animal/place/situation/feeling, I will do a reality check"."

Well, assuming I still haven't been able of finding my dream signs, do you believe prospective memory trainings like this one could still improve my MILD?

Yes. I have experience getting some DILDs exclusively using prospective memory exercises, MILD exactly as LaBerge writes (using past/the last dream), and reflection/intention (also in LaBerge), and getting some with MILD using recurrent dreamsign visualization.

My first couple of DILDs occurred on days where my prospective memory exercise was very active: I had 10-12 targets throughout the day.

My most recent 3 DILDs came from a dreamsign MILD visualization I believe, and incubation of that dreamsign so that I have the chance to notice it. What was different about these last 3 DILDs is that they all were in/around one particular location (my dreamsign), and I instantly became lucid at the start of the dream when appearing in that place.

I think the prospective memory exercises are valuable for teaching yourself to "set intention" to notice something. MILD with the last dream and with recurrent dreamsigns are both versions of this: intending to trigger an action based on noticing something.

In addition maintaining a lot of prospective memory targets throughout the day may raise general background awareness.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

...MILD using recurrent dreamsign visualization.

..
My most recent 3 DILDs came from a dreamsign MILD visualization I believe, and incubation of that dreamsign so that I have the chance to notice it. What was different about these last 3 DILDs is that they all were in/around one particular location (my dreamsign), and I instantly became lucid at the start of the dream when appearing in that place.

I think the prospective memory exercises are valuable for teaching yourself to "set intention" to notice something. MILD with the last dream and with recurrent dreamsigns are both versions of this: intending to trigger an action based on noticing something.

In addition maintaining a lot of prospective memory targets throughout the day may raise general background awareness.

Okay - this sounds good - I will try to do visualisations of my dreamsigns in the day and attach a notion to do something with it - namely RC.
I know very many dreamsigns of me - but these are things, that are not part of my life now.
Like the place I grew up, my parents, old friends, I did not meet for ages .. and and - nothing occurring in my actual life right now.
To visualize them in waking and attach a RC to the visualization - sounds good to me.
Do I have to randomize the other things - is it detrimental, if I just pick 3 or 4 new ones for the day myself from the/a list?
And how come?
Intuitively I have a vague notion of the randomisation making sense - but really understand it I do not.

The thing about what I'm doing is that I'm in a sense "betting" that I'll encounter my dreamsign in dreams. It's generally a good bet -- I have lots of dreams in that location (although it's been a week since the last one, a pretty long "dry spell," normally I dream of that place almost every night.) In textbook MILD you use your recent dreams so that your SC understands that it's dreams that you want to recognize. I was trying to make it even stronger by using one common dream theme and only visualizing using that. Worked well last week but this week I haven't encountered it yet. I think it will work well for me since my dreamsign occurs normally with very high frequency. We'll see!

Anyway, that's my theory: work on visualizing a particular scene or a scenes with a common theme, both incubating the dream to occur and practicing visualizing becoming lucid in that scene so that when the incubation does occur, you have a good chance of becoming lucid.

Okay - will do!
Thanks!
smile.gif

First of all, sorry for forgetting about this thread. There has been quite some valuable input to it, and since I'm returning to my daily practice schedule, I wanted to develop the concept (and extend it). Bear with me, because this post will be long (but juicy!):

I modified the exercise a little differently from you, though: I kept the same random 4 things every day, but each time I would see one I would tally it up and continue with the same 4 items for the rest of the day. In the beginning I would get on average less than 4 tallies a day, but by the end I was regularly breaking 15 tallies a day. It gives you an quantifiable way to track your improvement in memory.

Yup. I didn't develop the explanation much, but it's assumed that at some point you can achieve an higher number of targets. This is, as you said, a good way to quantify your progress, but also to make sure you're prepared to integrate another system I'll talk about in a sec.

When you do this, do you basically "program" yourself to recognize the target at the future time? Or do you keep the list in the mental "foreground' all day long? I'm assuming the former but I thought I'd ask to be sure.

Prospective memory tasks based on time tend to show lesser results than prospective memory tasks based on events afair, so your goal is never to recognize the target at the future time, but to link it to certain events (scenario for example, aka physical context). The answer for your 2nd question (even thought I already saw that you tackled these already, they are food for thoughts that I want to address later) is a bit below.

I found that there are two barriers to success: prospective memory is only the second one. The first is the ability to remember lists! I would often forget which things I was trying to remember that day. To plant them in my memory I would visualize them one at a time using as many senses as possible. For example, if an item was "the next time I see a traffic light" I would close my eyes and imagine a bright red light (visual) and the sound of honking traffic (aural) and the smell of car exhaust and traffic (oral). You can remember things much more easily via synesthesia than via abstract lists in your head.

Also great idea about the visualization to help remember the list. I started doing that just recently to help remember the day's list, but only visual. Incorporating all the other senses to in visualizing "hitting the target" sounds like a super idea and I'll start using that.

Indeed! I thought this was too obvious to point out, but you will indeed have an easier/harder time with the exercise depending on your retrospective memory levels. After all, these 2 memories are connected Answering both the question above and yours, one of the most effective ways to tackle the issue of many targets, and how to easily recall them (and without having to think too much) is the application of the memory palace technique, or the locci technique. For those that haven't heard about it, it's about creating a "mental scenario" using your visual memory (which is considered to be "most developed" type of memory) and inserting objects (which can really be anything in conceptual terms). When you need to retrieve that information, all you do is to mentally go around that scenario (preferably one that you're already used to, like your house) and you will easily recall all your targets. (This is one of the most effective memory techniques, and is has many uses both in lucid dreaming and in the waking life, like studying ).

After a while the concept of remembering to do things just became a larger part of the background process of my thinking. It's like an internal program is running regular checks to see if there's anything you're forgetting to do.

Yup, that's the goal: Spontaneous retrieval. That's why this exercise works so good with awareness. By being more aware of the moment, you'll be more likely to pick up targets.

Rather you will become sensitized to the context in which you most frequently encountered them, meaning you will trigger the mental state of alertness and doing memory checks whenever you find yourself in in the same context.

I also came to that same conclusion: you'll see how it worked out for me

Now, this exercise isn't as you all may realized a direct way to lucidity. It's only a mean to improve prospective memory and it's consequences on MILD. So, at some point, what you want to switch to is this (thanks again StephL for reminding me of this post ):

Originally Posted by Zoth

Dream signs can vary, and for some people it's not that easy to spot them. If your recall isn't the best, there are some "universal" dream signs. I say universal because they are still cues that might indicate that you're dreaming, and they show up with high frequency. I personally don't put them in the same bag as the "personal" dream signs, I put them above because they're way reliable and consistent, due reasons I'll explain shortly.
First of all, you want to link your awareness primarily not to dream content, but to the dream cues. What are them? I put them in a short acronym which translated to english is DIPE:

Deslocation Displacement (this translation makes more sense now )
Irregularities
People
Emotions

Displacement refers to one characteristic of the dream: the dream transitions. As you can see by reading dream journals, even people with great recall show dream reports of sudden dream transitions to a different plot or scenario. Now I won't bother you with the theories behind the "why does this happen?", but this is especially useful due lucidity coming more easily if you stop assuming you need to be lucid in your dreams, and act like you could be dreaming at any time of the day/night. So, Displacement refers to the act of linking reality checks with physical and mental displacements. I think you pretty much got the idea of what I mean by physical: they refer to leaving/arriving to new scenarios, like whenever you leave/arrive home and arrive/leave any other place. By mental deslocations, I refer simply to those "space-out moments" where you're distracted by some random thing. It's not easy to achieve continuous awareness, because we weren't made to be "aware" at all times, but you can take that to your advantage and do a reality check when you realize you aren't in "awareness" mode. Since DILDs come out of moments like this, is a pretty good dream cue. If you ever seen the movie "Waking Life", just recall the speech of the "boat" driver: "The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. It saves on introductions and goodbyes. The ride does not require explanation - just occupants."

Irregularities refer to the simple sensorial or cognitive "errors". Dreams are all about the feeling, not so much about the details, and this is easily seen by the nature of the dream: is always a plot, and (almost) never a moment of passivity. Once you get lucid though, you become way more away of the incongruities in the dream: you notice how objects can float by themselves, how some parts of your fingers are gone, how you are surrounded by tv celebrities, etc etc. The trick is suspending your "analysis", which often leads in self-justification, especially in dreams ("that clock is showing letters instead of numbers! Oh wait, it's probably just broken...") and just perform a reality check. This may take a while to perfect, because we're so used to either dismiss an apparent incongruity or to quickly justify it. Before you find out why somethig feels wrong, do a reality check. Yes, even when you can't find your second shoe

People refers to another quite basic concept: dream characters. They populate everyone's dreams, and can be quite remarkable in the sense that they help "form" the plot. And it's important to include yourself in the lot, as awareness of the self is very useful: how many dreams do people have where they can't recall their body? Loads. How many dreams people have with people they know? Loads. People they don't know? Loads.

And once again, it's not about dream content, but about constant questioning. Where's your mother right now? Why are you alone? Doesn't that man look like your old friend? Good questions that boost your awareness and work independently of your reocurring dream characters. If you have them though, use them by any means.

Emotions, the last point. Many dreams have explicit emotional messages, especially regarding the plot. For example, you can experience anxiety (quite a frequent one) due not finding someone, due having a bad "plot", as you can be very happy because you won the lottery, are having sexy times with an atractive woman/man, etc etc. The point is: you are (almost) never at a passive state. Even now, while reading this you can attribute your emotional state to something in the lines of: calm, bored, interested (you better choose the word interested, this is a lot of text! ). Even though we may not be talking about strong emotions, once again, it's not about the content, it's about the cue. Whenever I find myself faced with a situation that I know it triggers an emotional response, even if I don't feel it right away, I do a reality check.

As you can guess, DIPE translates in LOADS of reality checks, which not only strengthens the habits of each point, but shortly decreases the time between each questioning of reality. And unlike people might think, the more reality checks the less effort you are spending in doing them. I once accounted 2 days with an average of 1 reality checks every 15minutes during 16hours periods (the remaining 8 dedicated to sleep), and I certainly wouldn't be able to keep up if I wasn't so used to doing them, because there's many cues available. Also, none of these reality checks are "out of the blue" reality checks, because unless you're constantly reminding yourself to do a reality check, you're gonna take quite a while to get used to doing it. And if you are constantly reminding yourself to do one, then chances are you are going to get bored/annoyed/tired pretty fast, the so-called "overdrive", which as you remember, has negative consequences in your intent of lucid dreaming.

Now, DIPE was created as a sort of "fusion" between prospective memory exercises, dream content, and self-awareness, which I consider to be the 3 pillars of lucidity. My doubts were:

- Are some reality checks more effective than others?
- If we waste time on prospective memory exercises, don't we use it less for self-awareness and other lucid dreaming techniques? How to balance, what to prioritize?
- If MILD is reported to be so effective (I used a single article that reviewed the effective of several techniques, but the methodological quality of the studies was somewhat low, so yes I came with a bit of a bias here ), how could we perfect it to integrate self-awareness?

This is why I came up with DIPE. The fact that it is multi-dimensional facilitates the apprehension of several cues (as opposing to one type of cue with the normal reality checks). In it, there are concerns about the visual elements of the dream (scenario), with the dream content in terms of context (dream characters), the self-awareness (perceiving more detail at the same time you practice prospective memory skills, because your brain is actively - even if you don't realize - cue seeking), and even emotions: a major aspect of dream plot. What happens (or should I say, it's meant to happen), is that with a successful degree of prospective memory experience, you should be able to strengthen all these points making DIPE extremely effective in those 3 pillars I mentioned before. We're talking about:

- Being aware of physical/mental dislocations (possible dream signs)
- Using (not only, but especially) negative emotional cues as triggers for lucidity (everytime you feel nervous you perform a reality check)
- Using re-ocorrent dream content (in form of dream characters) to your advantage
- Developing critical-thinking regarding irregularities: these in theory would be picked more easily due the increased self-awareness state (which again would be intensified by the prospective memory nature of the exercise).

I've had very good results with DIPE, and I'll be testing it again (in a more rigorous way) for a period of little more than 1 month. I haven't talked much about it on the forum because it seems a really intensive way of practicing for lucidity, but if anyone else is interested on trying it out (without dropping out 1 week later), I could make a thread in research and we'll see how it goes for others.

PS: something relevant that I forgot to add: it's totally fine to use notes or other aids to help with the exercises. Not just because at the beginning it's hard to "remember to remember" but also because if you're trying to create an habit, you should make it super easy at first, because it's the hardest period to make it "stick". Hope this made sense