December Bootcamp

December Bootcamp

In preparation for my big resolucid next year, and since school is finally finished and I have all the time in the world, I have decided to make December a bootcamp month for myself. I'll be working hard on the fundamentals, memory, intent and awareness so that I can hit the ground running next year. Consistency of input is the big thing I need to improve on in order to get consistent outputs.

My goals for December:

-Write in my dream journal every night, no matter how much or how little I remember. (On a side night this will give me motivation to complete my dream journal formatting program I've been working on in python :).
-Meditate every day. I have gotten lax about it and I don't know why lol, it has been so beneficial. Sensory awareness meditation will help with my dream body awareness and breaths meditation should help with regular awareness and calmness.
-Post on Dreamviews every day. Not that related to lucid dreaming practice but will greatly help motivation and becoming more active is never a bad thing, right.
-Let go of the pressure associated with lucid dreaming. This is a tricky one as I generally either place too much emphasis on becoming lucid as a success, which leads to frustration and stress when it doesn't go according to plan, or place too little emphasis on it and become apathetic towards practice. Any advice here would be much appreciated :).
-Update my dreamsigns and reality checks. I am sure since I first tried to list my dreamsigns over a year ago some of them will have changed, and sorting that out will help me refine my practice.

So I think that's it. If anyone has any suggestions for anything else I could be doing feel free to say so. I am going away for the next few days so I probably wont be on Dreamviews then, but I'll be sure to post everything from there when I get back. Besides, it'll give me an opportunity to further test my theory that sleeping in a different location/while on holiday greatly boosts dream recall.

I'll keep progress of any major developments/accomplishments here. Righty-o, off we go!

As far as letting go of the pressure associated with lucid dreaming, I've been there and learned from this.

The trick is to learn from the past, focus on the present, and plan for the future.

If you do this, you won't place too much emphasis on becoming lucid because it becomes okay to fail as you can learn from it. Being patient helps with this too.

At the same time, if you stick with your game plan, you won't be placing too little emphasis on it or becoming apathetic towards practice.

1 week in, and it seems to be going ok :). I have had pretty decent recall, particularly when on holiday with about 5 dreams a night (more proof for my theory haha). I have also begun meditating again after forgetting for the first few days. I have been pretty active on DV, however I still need to modernise my dream signs etc. and go through my dream journal, a task for tomorrow. No lucidity yet but vivid dreams and a bit more awareness than normal. Here's to week 2!

Week 2 Update: Things have been ok this week, given the extra stress and illness I have had. My recall has sort of been alternating each day between diddly squat and 3 or so dreams, hopefully those 3 or so will become the norm haha. I have been writing every little scrap I can remember in my DJ though; consistency is key.
Meditation has been slipping a bit :(, but that will be my focus next week to bring that back up to scratch.
I have been decently active on DV, and I think I have made some headway with letting go of pressure.
I hadn't had any lucidity the whole week, but just this morning I went back for a nap I had a strange lucidity experience. I'm not if it was a WILD or DEILD or not, cause I'm unsure if I was actually asleep or not for a while before I got lucid or not, but I think it might have been a DILD. I was just lying in my bed in the dream, thinking about stuff, when I felt myself waking up. I checked my hands and, sure enough, 6 fingers greeted me. Once I got lucid though, I couldn't move. I tried moving my arm, but it was stuck. I then tried launching my whole body, so I rolled over sideways and bam I was awake. It was a little disappointing to wake up so soon but still, better than nothing :).

Week 3 Update: Well my recall has been ok, but other aspects have been taking a bit of a hit. A combination of laziness and forgetfulness has meant my actual lucidity practice and meditation practice has been lessened this past week, but I'm making an extra effort this week to focus on that. I also will focus on solidifying school as a dreamsign in my mind, which should be easier since I am finished with it. No lucids this week but things are sure to pick up next week. Until then :).

Final Update: This is a little late because I had my top wisdom teeth taken out and its the end of the month anyway so it's time to wrap this up. Lets see how I did :).

-Write in my dream journal every night, no matter how much or how little I remember.
I have written in my dream journal every day this month. Although 2 or 3 days I couldn't remember anything I still wrote that down (and probably annoyed people looking at recent dream journal entries with my spam haha). I feel this has greatly helped my recall, as it was on a little bit of a low point in November averaging <1 dream a night. I've got the data for the month (excluding tonight the 31st) and I have had 60 full fledged dreams and ~20 fragments of dreams. This means I have averaged recalling 2 full dreams and about 1 fragment every night, which is a definite improvement. Considering I haven't been sleeping too well for the past week this is even better.

-Meditate every day.
This one has been a bit trickier haha. I reckon I have probably meditated 1/4 days this month, which is well shy of what I would like it to be but it is a start. I have started doing it again the past few days and the main obstacle for me is laziness/forgetfulness. I need to try harder as it is very relaxing and rewarding, though hard.

-Post on Dreamviews every day.
As mentioned before I have posted something on my dream journal every day, and I have also posted on the forum most days. Not always on topic stuff but nevertheless. I could always be a bit more active though so I shall continue striving for this.

-Let go of the pressure associated with lucid dreaming.
This is difficult to gauge as I have only had 2 microlucids this month, both through morning naps (perhaps I should investigate that). I definitely don't feel under any stress that I have to have lucids, but I think I may have swung a little too far in the opposite direction, so for the new year I will try to focus more achieving lucidity.

-Update my dreamsigns and reality checks.
I have read through my dreams this month and can safely say that two of my biggest dream signs, combining to appear in at least 50% of my dreams, are being at school/with people from school and playing video games. Reality Checking whenever I think about school should be easy as I no longer go there every day, however doing it in the middle of a heated game might be a little more difficult but I shall endeavour to do it as much as possible. I have also started incorporating my new (not really) reality check for my big resolucid.

So that is it for the bootcamp, just one more night of hopefully meaningful dreams and maybe lucidity and we will be in a new year. I shall be posting a big resolucid which is a bit daunting but I figure it is the best way to keep myself motivated and to keep track of my lucid dreaming journey. Until then. :offtobed: