Back after a long couple of months!

[Marina1992]

Hi all! I have been away from the site as well as lucid dreaming in general for a few months...Life tends to drag you back sometimes! Anyhow, I'm quite saddened by the fact that my dream recall has almost completely vanished. I used to be able to remember a good 3 to 4 dreams minimum every day, but now it's a mission to recall just the one! I am still DJing, but this doesn't seem to be helping. I've had a few LDs since first discovering this site (which was maybe over 3 years ago), but I really want to get serious about LDing. My issues are as follows: - What can I do to further improve my dream recall? - I keep seeing so many techniques and ways to approach LDing, which would be best to choose in my situation? Thank you for taking the time to read this, I really want to start LDing properly!

[Zoth]

Welcome back Marina If I may say so, being active on Dreamviews is more than socializing: it's a good way to grip yourself into lucid dreaming. It's impossible to read and share experiences without being even a bit more inspired and motivated to practice and work hard. I'll repeat this throughout the rest of the post, but really fix this idea: architect your daily routine to include lucid dreaming and it will be so much easier to stick with it - What can I do to further improve my dream recall? - How consistent is your dreaming schedule? Unless it's making you sleep less than 6-7hours, don't cave in and stick to the routine! - How about setting 2 alarms? One of them extremely low (and if possible one that turns itself off after a few seconds) and a later one that rings 10 minutes later. During that time window, you want to just lay in bed thinking about your last memories. Go ahead and turn a voice recorder and just leave it there while you think about anything that comes to your head naturally. Visualize yourself walking and see what associations come. - Get in the habit of stopping during the day and thinking about what have you been lately: where have you been, what have you done? Stop to make quickly mental recaps as this exercise not only helps you with recall but also can act as a reality check...or simple a "have I been alert?" check. - Nothing to write? Write about lucid dreaming...anything about lucid dreaming: what you want to do, why you do it, ideas you've read in DV or in some other place, videos that inspired you, etc. Basically, inspire and let yourself be inspired in the morning so you're more pumped to practice during the day! - I keep seeing so many techniques and ways to approach LDing, which would be best to choose in my situation? Think basics: how can you be aware that you are dreaming? - You should make it a second nature to reality check every time: a) you see something you find unusual; b) you see something that pops often in your dream journal - You should stop taking things for granted, dreams in many aspects are almost identical to the waking life: a) Be mindful: don't OCD-search into oddities in every second of your day, but be aware of what's going on around you. b) Be conscious: you might be dreaming at any moment (yes, including now!). Live like a child: amaze yourself by everything you see, lucidity (like/unlike god) is in the details. c) There is no "waking life": you're ALWAYS dreaming. Assume it's always the next reality check that is going to reveal the truth, assume you need to fail 500 times to get the 501st right. - Prime yourself for lucid living: a) Visualize yourself not in a lucid dream, but becoming lucid by reality checks, identifying oddities, etc. Do this especially in the morning as many times as you can: it won't stick properly when you're tired and just want to rest. b) Make yourself responsible for your progress: track not the number of lucid dreams or dreams recall, but the amount of days in a row you've wrote in your dream journal (regardless of content), the amount of failures regarding reality check in key situations. Make those numbers better, and when you're saturated with exercise, rest. You're not forcing yourself to remember, you're practicing hard when you have the energy so you don't need to when you're exhausted. Hope this helps ^^

[Marina1992]

Hi Zoth! Thank you so much for your quick response! That's what I love about DV, the support is really good - How about setting 2 alarms? One of them extremely low (and if possible one that turns itself off after a few seconds) and a later one that rings 10 minutes later. During that time window, you want to just lay in bed thinking about your last memories. Go ahead and turn a voice recorder and just leave it there while you think about anything that comes to your head naturally. Visualize yourself walking and see what associations come. I tried the alarm thing for 2 weeks, but they either jolt me awake, or don't wake me up at all. Being jolted awake isn't so much an issue except that I find I can't recall anything when that happens. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper unfortunately. I tried messing with the settings but I can't seem to find one which wakes me up 'nicely'. - You should make it a second nature to reality check every time Ironically enough, reality checks so far haven't really been working out so well for me in dreams. For example, I'll plug my nose, and genuinely won't be able to breathe. I'll look at clocks, writing, those won't change. I've even tried the pushing fingers against your palm thing but again, nothing. It's highly possible that I'm doing them wrong. Is there a fool-proof(ish) RC I can start doing regularly which will work in my dreams? I mean, I try to remain aware of my surroundings and my waking state as much as possible, but it would be nice to have something specific to zone in on. Your advice sounds like the way to go, I'm super excited to get back into it. I know what you mean about LD needing to be a part of my day; when I first joined, I was on the site reading posts etc everyday. Within the next two weeks I got my first LD without trying! I hope this time I will be able to control it a little more and work on making it a regular thing!

[Zoth]

I tried the alarm thing for 2 weeks, but they either jolt me awake, or don't wake me up at all. Being jolted awake isn't so much an issue except that I find I can't recall anything when that happens. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper unfortunately. I tried messing with the settings but I can't seem to find one which wakes me up 'nicely'. From what you describe, you might not have the most optimized sleep schedule (but who does, right ?). Ideally you want to be waking up by yourself which for sure will result in at least minimal recall. Sadly this might mean at first that you wake up sort of harshly by the alarm, but it's the most direct way to define your sleep routine. There's also a second reason as to why I'm insisting on this: better awakenings might also mean better recall of awakenings during the night. And those moments can serve as natural WBTBs or recall opportunities. Is there a fool-proof(ish) RC I can start doing regularly which will work in my dreams? I mean, I try to remain aware of my surroundings and my waking state as much as possible, but it would be nice to have something specific to zone in on. Are you saying that this occurrence of reality checks failing within your dreams is common? Because if such, then you're way closer than you think. Let me develop: Reality checks are in themselves actions (hopefully) associated with specific cues. In dreams, we either do them randomly (force of habit) or because there's an element that made us suspicious. In your case, whatever the reason, you're exhibiting the desired behavior, but you're missing the crucial part: linking the action to lucidity. Assume that every reality check is a confirmation, not a question: you're reality checking to assert that you are indeed dreaming, not to check if you are dreaming. This makes a huge difference, because if you assume downright from the start that you are dreaming, then a reality check falling won't deter you from questioning your reality. Personally, any time I reality check I become lucid, because the act in itself is too strong and meaningful to make me forget the possibility that I am dreaming. If several of them fail, I'll still be highly alert in the next minutes. How can you achieve this? Slower reality checks with more rationalization beat fast reality checks with high automaticity (aka, doing them in a mechanical way). Remember, it's impossible for you to reality check in face of 100% of the cues, all you want to do is make the habit stick so it starts showing up in your dreams. So make the events memorable instead of plenty and even if your reality checks fail, you'll still be focused enough to become lucid. I mean, I try to remain aware of my surroundings and my waking state as much as possible, but it would be nice to have something specific to zone in on. I know what you mean ^^ You can always try the DIPE system (its explanation starts in the middle of that post), which is designed around the concept of universal dream signs (meaning, things that can happen in any of your dreams, giving you specific things to look out for), it has worked out great for me back then.

[Marina1992]

Are you saying that this occurrence of reality checks failing within your dreams is common? Because if such, then you're way closer than you think. Yeah, every couple of dreams, usually halfway through, I'll be prompted to do an RC, but they always fail! I think the best one I've done so far is actively trying to change the dream environment and to see what happens. It's written in one of my DJ entries actually > Determined to prove this to myself and clear the dreams influence from my mind, I head to my bedroom door. Standing in front of it, I imagine a sunset. I figured that if this was a dream, I should open the door and see a sunset. Taking a deep breath, I open the door. My room is as it always was, nothing changed, apart from one of my walls having been turned into one big window. After standing there for about two or three seconds, the sky suddenly starts to change colour, and I witness the sun rise, through my bedroom window. I smile; though it wasn't exactly what I'd imagined, it was close enough. < Anyhow, if I can link the simple fact of thinking of doing an RC to lucidity rather than focusing on the result, I may get somewhere! Thank you I'm already getting better recall! Woop!