Thread: Dream Length/Order of Operations

If you average 5-10 minutes that is quite good

I would say 25% of mine are mere seconds to a minute
25% 1-3 minutes
25% 3-5 minutes
and only 25% in the 5-15min range

some dreams are just more stable than others in my experience
always try to remember to stabilize at the beginning at least and then occasionally if you feel your losing the dream

btw almost all of my 10min lucid involved destabilizing entering the void and surviving to a new dreamscape

Two things:

First, DEILD-chaining is a great boon for dream length. You can experiment with it at the end of every LD. It's good for two reasons. Of course, it can extend a dream that destabilizes. But also, knowing that you have a backup plan can give you confidence within the dream to be more ambitious and to not be dismayed at the first sign of the unexpected. And as cooleymd described, there's a variant of chaining where you don't really wake up. Instead you enter a void or a false awakening, which reboots the dream. It's not technically DEILD, but the general strategy is the same: remain patient and still, and refocus on entering a new scene.

Second, it my experience, a dream tends to remain stable for as long as the narrative continues. This can be counterproductive with goal-setting if not practiced carefully. You set the goal of going to a particular place, just as in your example. And through some feat of dream control you manage to get there. Great! But that was your whole plan, so now the narrative has no where to go. Show's over; fade to black. Bummer.

To build a longer narrative, you need to add a longer sequence to your goal. Go to some place, AND THEN, find some character, AND THEN, ask them a question, AND THEN, take note of whether their accent is what you expected, and so on. It doesn't have to be too elaborate, just more than place X or character Y. At a minimum, plan to explore a scene with multiple senses. A good choice is to recreate a scene from a movie, or your life, or a previous dream. It's a concise plan to articulate, but it actually packs in a lot of narrative because invoking it will bring in your whole memory of the scene. As well, if you find yourself at the end of a narrative you can just start a new one. Build a new scene with a new goal. You can revisit the old one another time. Lastly, you can always extend a narrative with improvisation by playing the "Yes, And..." game.

In sum: have a longer plan, have at least two such plans, always build in open-endedness and improvisation, and always have DEILD-chaining as the backup.

Hmm good ideas. Thanks. I'm gonna try these.

Originally Posted by sisyphus

remain patient and still, and refocus on entering a new scene.

Yes that is a good description of DEILD which I have done maybe 2-3 times (once at least lucid to lucid),
but as for Void survival you are simply blind, I would never stay still but rather instantly begin rubbing my hands together violently

Interestingly there is a variant where I begin to paralyze within the dream, and occasionally have tried to violently lurch free to continue hand rubbing, most often I can maintain the dream void even If I can only rub one finger against the hand. Once I violently fought to the bitter end and lurched awake
I would say my void survival if I am able to get my hands together maybe 60%, but as often as not my real hands are moving across the sheets instead


As to continuing, yes after watching a Youtube video about people running around doing crazy things, I did this in one of my longest lucids, going from DC to DC and extending the second (post void portion to around 6 additional minutes) It was easily one of my top 4 most epic lucids. So keep the action going

The problem with goal setting can be: "Oh I'm lucid, OK, I can't wake up until I've found 12 hub caps, Oh what is that a trash can made of 2-hub caps per side with a hub-cap bottom and a hub-cap top, oh crap only 2 to go..." what ever you think of will likely happen If you had demanded to find 12 snakes the dream scape would have been crawling with them!