What am i doing wrong? Please help

I need help. I seem to be going backwards, I first found out about lucid dreaming about 2-3 weeks ago. Since then I've read countless DV posts, read a couple of books pretty much anything i can find on the subject. I reliased pretty quickly im not going to have much success until i improve my dream recall significantly, my dream recall has been shockingly bad most of my life. I have a dream journal plus practicing mantras before bed etc to improve recall which i thought was helping as i had a few days of vivid short to long dreams soon after starting.

Then my recall started getting worse again, remembering literally nothing when i wake up, so after some digging i found mindfulness and ADA, ive been practicing mindfulness for the last week and feel im doing pretty well, its on my mind most the day and im pretty sure im doing it right after reading all the guides carefully. This made no difference, so I've also been meditating for the past 3-4 days, at least half hour a day, one day i had a 2-3 hour session. Im practicing Vipassana insight meditation and have been following a couple of books that were recommended to people here on DV. I even had one moment where i had a very faint image appear in my mind during a session but quickly disappeared after i noticed it.

But still my recall is non existent. Ive now stopped eating after 6pm and changed my diet alittle, i no longer drink tea or coffee, only green tea. I also now snack on nuts and bananas instead of chocolates and crisps, I've tried incorporating some exercise into my life which is hard to keep up but ive been doing it on and off.

Basically im willing to have a complete shift in lifestyle to achieve ultimately a lucid dream, but everything i read that can help has not been helping. I need some guidance, last night i convinced myself i was going to have a long vivid dream, im not setting the bar too high, im currently only aiming for recall. Again woke up this morning, no recall. Is it possible some people just can't do it?

Im also now worrying maybe i ruined my chances from a young age, from the age of 15 to about 22 i smoked alot of weed and occasionally other drugs aswell. Im now 26 and havent touched anything since, so thats 4 years clean but maybe there was long term damage to something thats required for dream recall and lucidity all together?

Any help and advice anyone can give id be hugely greatful, at this point im not sure what else to try, obviously i will continue what im doing im not giving up, not just yet anyway.

Hi Mikeyy109,

First of all, I don't believe that some people just can't do it - in fact I know several people that believed so until they had one. Anyway, having a negative attitude towards LDing won't make it easier to achieve, only harder.
About dream recall, it's something that fluctuates naturally. For example, my recall goes from between 8 full to 2 incomplete dreams, with the average of about 4-5 (after a long history of practicing). So it's totally normal to have several days with no recall in your stage of practice. Some time ago I posted here my tips about increasing recall, so check them out - maybe one or two might end up helpful:

Tips about recall at the last reply (#12)

Either way, I like to compare LDing to things like building muscles, trying to learn a new language, or trying to lose weight - in all of these examples, the most counter-productive thing that can happen is getting stressed or anxious about seeing little to no progress. Also, you simply can't expect results in one day or even a week and even after a month results might be smaller than anticipated. It's like deciding to just stop eating one day to lose weight - not only this won't cause weight lose, it will most likely make you sick and create stress about not being able to lose weight. And after a couple of days, the person trying this is likely to give up. Same here - always stay positive and know that your progress will lag a week or a month from your practice. Even if you're doing everything right - results will start showing up quite some time later. So just stay consistent, and patient, and don't over-do things in the hopes to speed things up - this only leads to more stress.

Also, these dietary improvements and exercise are great of course, but I'm not sure how big of an impact they have on LDing if any... Also, just so you know many recent studies found plenty of benefits in a moderate consumption of tea, coffee, and dark chocolate. :)

Thats good to hear, I know ive read too much effort/expectations can be bad and i have been trying to be consistent but without pushing myself and expecting too much. This morning really with the first time ive felt frustration towards it as last night i was sure id have some results today. Thanks ill give that a read aswell and i understand what your saying. I know once i see some results ill be able to have a huge boost in confidence and motivation, its just getting that first result. Thats interesting, i heard coffee is bad for dreaming in general, ive mostly cut those for the sugar aspect, green tea i have zero sugar, everything else its 2 teaspoons standard.

Thansk for the reply spock, i feel alittle better about it

Is it worth my while setting an alarm throughout the nite to wake me up and practice recall? Rather than sleeping straight through till morning?

"Trying too much" is a common reason of failure. You don't need to hurry up! Slow and steady wins the race. Don't worry.

in the best case you practice to notice your microawakenings and tag your dreams... big boost in recall and more overall awareness thruout the night. we wake up every 90-110 minutes after every sleepcycle. normaly we just turn around and fall instantly asleep again but with a little practice and intentionsetting you can notice these awareknings and remember everytime one or some dreams, tag them shortly (to not stay awake to long maybe 5-10min) set your intention to lucid dream again maybe visualize something while falling asleep and repeat trhuout the night. the chances are pretty high to get lucid in the later hours then.

how to pracice? use a mantra like i wake up after every sleepcylce and i wll remember my dreams (or write my dreams down) set a strong intention while falling asleep and after some time you will notcie that you awake maybe once and then twice a night untill you wake up after every sleepcylce. you can drink some water before bed to have a physical reminder ;)

good luck and keep up a consistent and postive practice and mind then lucid dreams will come "on their own" !

Thanks RelaxAndDream. Im going to try this, do you suggest practicing waking up naturally or can i set vibration alarms every 90 mins to help at first then try naturally?

hm i for my part dont like alarms that much. i used them at the beginning to do a major WBTB after 4-6h of sleep but in my opinion its not that hard to notice the awakenings with enough intention and its way more natural. you wake up after REM and most of the time wil lremember dreams without to much effort (just dont fall asleep while remmebering again xD). with alarms you probably wont hit the exact moment so you wake up during a rem or something so your recall will suffer and it breaks up your sleep more in my opinion. but i read that a lot of people use alarms and it seem to work too...

i would try for a week without alarms and just set a strong intention to wake up often during night. after a week when you dont see ANY progress you can try with water or an alarm.

Hi there Mikeyy and welcome to DreamViews!

I find that nights I either try too hard or try too many different things at the same time I not only lose full recall of any or all dreams but I have a tense, uncomfortable and fitful night's sleep.

Practice a few things at a time until they are almost second nature before adding more and always look to the eventual goal of having a LD as not having a set time frame. Some people are born naturals, some people just get it and others it is difficult for. I was natural as a child to the point I would get reality and a dream mixed up and now I find myself starting from scratch but it doesn't bother me. As Spock said it is like learning a new language (which I am doing, will be starting a third language soon) or stretching a muscle, don't try and take on too much at once and take breaks every now and then but always remain optimistic that you will get there. Trust me, even if it takes you a year it will be worth the effort, time and practice.

P.S. My experience with alarms is that if I here one I bolt into action, I use them to wake up before work and I always hear them. Alarms can have you conditioned for the 'fight or flight' reaction we use in every day survival. Any alarm also will require you to move to reset it and if it is on your phone the light from the screen could be enough to dazzle you and leave any dream memory fragments that could have helped you recall the whole disappear. Although I do know many people use them with great success, this is my experience.

What RelaxAndDream said!

Awakenings aren't only beneficial for writing / recording more dreams, but also can increase the vividness of the following hours of sleep. And also, like he said, I'm not a fan of alarms either... Maybe a custom alarm app, where you can make it play for a couple of seconds instead of at least a minute? But, noticing awakenings is not that hard, you just need to set on to do it. There are other tricks, like drinking too much or too little, to cause waking up. Experiment with the different ways - but I really think the best one is by training mentally.

Thanks for the advice everyone, im going to try waking in the night, i have a fitbit which can vibration alarm briefly then shuts off by itself, ill use this but try doing it naturally aswell. I will do it eventually, ill have to just slow down like you all said and not put too much pressure on myself.

You don't have to try to wake up, you already do. What you're trying to do is notice yourself waking up. You often wake up after your dreams.

Keep in mind that sleep cycles aren't always 90 minutes. From my experience, they range from as high 2 hours to as low as 15 minutes. For me, they usually range from 1 hour to 30 minutes later in the night.

If you just pay attention to what happens while you're sleeping, you'll notice the stuff that you should.

Ok, how do i do that? Im normally out like a rock all night, i tried to drink lots of water before bed a couple times and ended up waking up to my alarm normal time but busting for toilet or needing to go before i even fall asleep fully. Would that be apart of mindfulness training? Or just telling your self to do this every single night until one day it starts happening? Would the subtle alarm idea not help in making learning to wake up after cycles faster? Thanks dolphin

Okay, so how I started noticing my micro-wakenings was through dream recall, you say you have trouble with this but before I re-learned what LDs were I had the same issue and never recalled dreams unless they were completely out of the ordinary and because they were dreams discarded the memory of them.

Literally all I changed was my intentions as I went to bed. "I will remember my dreams." "I remember my dreams." and "I will realise I am dreaming." as I went to sleep worked miracles for me. They didn't get me lucid but who cares, all of a sudden within a week I am recording between one and three dreams a night, and the ones I don't have control over are still quite exciting to re-count, read Shooting Digger, a ND of mine and tell me you wouldn't have thought of that during a LD, I love my NDs, and love being able to recall them. because I enjoy reading my dream journal my mind seems to interpret this as something that is important to me and naturally develops a recall upon awakening.

The use of the term "tagging" a dream during a micro awakening, for your information, is simply realising you have just left a dream, using something substantial from that dream as a "point to remember" before going back into your REM sleep. I can recall on a good night four dreams without stopping between each and recording them individually because of this tagging. I either use something significant from the beginning or end or the most vivid part of the dream as an anchor, when I wake and meditate on that anchor I can recall the rest of the dream around it.

All this from my intentions being shifted as I fall asleep to "I will remember my dreams." or "I remember my dreams." All you have to do is mean what you internalise when you use these as your mantras, within a few days/weeks, you will even realise when you micro-wake.

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Originally Posted by Mikeyy109

Im normally out like a rock all night

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Sleep more. The more you sleep, the lighter your sleep will be. If you don't have time to sleep more, you could also try to fit in a nap during the day.

If you have a day off, keep sleeping in as much as you can it's impossible to sleep anymore. You'll notice that the more you sleep, the sooner you wake up after falling asleep. Also, the longer you sleep, the easier it will be to recall dreams because your body doesn't need as much slow-wave delta sleep any more, so you go into REM a lot quicker.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dolphin

Sleep more. The more you sleep, the lighter your sleep will be. If you don't have time to sleep more, you could also try to fit in a nap during the day.

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That would be amazing if i could lol. Unfortunately i have a 2 year old thats obsessed with me, plus another one on the way. Currently i have to get up at 6.30 every morning to give me 10-20mins for recall practice and journal writing before he starts calling for me. So best i can do is get to bed earlier, which is currently 10.30 earliest, any earlier and im not tired/losing all my free time :/

That's okay, you can still make it work with less sleep, you just have to be extra aware while you're sleeping. It's tough for me to describe awareness in any other way than simply paying attention.

The best awareness technique I know of is to stare at the back of the eyelids continuously as much as possible while sleeping. In order to stare, 100% of your attention must be on staring. This makes this technique challenging to do, as many other thoughts often compete for the attention needed. If you're able to stare continuously enough while falling asleep, though, it's very effective because as much attention as possible while falling asleep will be on something related to dreaming. This helps maximize awareness.

Set your alarm clock only for the time you have to wake up to start the day. Stare at the back of your eyelids as much as possible while sleeping and see what happens. If you wake up from a dream, don't write it down, just keep staring. Watch the dreams come and go. This will help give you chances at WILDs by encouraging staying still upon awakening. Don't try to stay still or WILD, though. Just focus on staring forward with your eyes closed at whatever there is to stare at until your alarm clock goes off. Do this to exercise your awareness in order to make it stronger. Your meditation experience will come in handy here. The stronger your awareness is, the more dreams and awakenings you'll notice. The night will also seem longer as your awareness increases because you'll be more conscious of the time passing. I believe if you're staring all night long, you'll be conscious of a lot more than nothing. I know I am!