Let's get my Hands on MILD! - 1 YEAR test

Hi!

As I said in my post in the Introduction Zone, my main problem until now has been lack of consistency and changing techniques too frequently. That is now going to drastically change!

For 1 YEAR I'm going to concentrate on this personal Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dream (MILD) version I feel very much drawn to. Even if I initially fail to see results, I'm going to keep working on it without giving up, until I master the art of becoming conscious in dreams.
I'm convinced that everyone who became a frequent lucid dreamer managed to do so by taking what appealed to him the most from others' techniques and developed a personal peculiar method/routine that finally worked for him. That's what I'm striving to do here.

Daytime
- Presence/Self-Awareness practice with Hands trigger:
The goal is to eventually mantain permanent self-awareness. In order to achieve this, I'll use my Hands as a trigger to "wake up" when I'll inevitably come back to a non-lucid mindset: whenever I notice my hands during the day I'll come back to a lucid/self-aware mindset and try to mantain it for as long as possible. That will also train my Prospective Memory.
- MILD mantra, repeated occasionally throughout the day: "When I see my Hands, I remember I'm dreaming." (Inspired by R. Waggoner)

Before Bed
- "Awareness watching Awareness" Meditation
This will reinforce the effects of my daytime Self-Awareness practice.
- MILD mantra coupled with Visualization of myself watching my hands and exploring a dream setting.

Awakenings
- Whenever I wake up (naturally during the night or with a 5 seconds alarm I put after 6 hours of sleep), I'll attempt to Keep Still and vividly Imagine my Hands (clapping or rubbing them).
- If I don't manage to enter directly the dream, I'll just reinforce the same MILD intention and get back to sleep.
- After my actual wake up alarm (usually after 7 hours), I'll recall any dreams I had writing them down in my Dream Journal (detailed for LDs and only key words for Non-LDs).

That's basically it!

I'll consider myself consistent if I can mantain everyday the Basic Routine of Self-Awareness+MILD, while trying to implement all of the steps most of the nights, according to the ups and downs of my daily life.
I'll follow Naiya's take on this: "Practice and consistency are extremely important with MILD. To get the best results, you should be doing it every single night. If you wake up in the morning with no lucids, don't think of it as a failure. If you did the MILD before bed, then consider it a success because you got your practice done. Your lucids will come when your mind has begun internalizing your practice. "

Every tip or critique is very welcome, I thank you in advance, but for 1 year I will not change the basic structure of it.

Resources

• Books:
  Buhlman, William - Adventures Beyond the Body
  Castaneda, Carlos - Journey to Ixtlan
  Koyote The Blind - The Golden Flower
  Laberge, Stephen - Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming
  McCaul, Kim - Multidimensional Evolution
  Monroe, Robert - Journeys Out of the Body
  Morley, Charlie - Dreams of Awakening
  Peterson, Robert - Out of Body Experiences
  Raduga, Michael - The Phase
  Taylor, Albert - Soul Traveler
  Vieira, Waldo - Projeciologia
  Waggoner, Robert - Gateway to the Inner Self
  Wallace, Alan - Dreaming Yourself Awake
  Wilson, Ian - You Are Dreaming
  Ziewe, Jurgen - Multi-Dimensional Man
  Ziewe, Jurgen - Vistas of Infinity
  
  
• Articles/Posts:*
  ADA vs. Self Awareness [Internal vs. External] | Dreamviews
  All Day Awareness, A DILD Tutorial by KingYoshi | Dreamviews
  Awareness and Presence | Gurdjieff (pdf)
  Daytime Self-Awareness Helps Lucid Dreaming at Night | Big Think
  Dutchraptor's Deild Guide - Become an Ld god - Dreamviews
  FryingMan's Unified Theory of Lucid Dreaming: Pay Attention, Reflect, Recall - Both Day and Night | Dreamviews
  How to become a Lucid Master in 60 days or less | Reddit
  Lucid Dreaming Experience Magazine
  My Journey with Self Awareness and My Twist to It | Dreamviews
  My personal method of becoming lucid. If anyone is interested | Dreamviews
  Naiya's Simple MILD Technique | Dreamviews
  Night meditation: Why I no longer perform lucid dreaming techniques, and yet have more lucid dreams than ever | Reddit
  Prospective Memory and Lucid Dreaming | Dreamviews
  Sati: An Eastern Concept of Awareness | Dreamviews
  Sivason's Dream Yoga | Dreamviews
  
  *I can't post links as I'm a new user, but you can find them easily with a search engine.

Here's a graph showing my results since the first month I knew of the existence of lucid dreaming.
As you see the main thing I have to address and defeat is the lack of consistency. That's the purpose of this thread.

Attachment 10226

p.s. For the moment I count as lucid every dream in which I obtain self-awareness, however feeble and even if for only a few seconds.

You'll probably smash this goal in less than a year tbh, hell, maybe even less than 2 months. I'm not saying this to hype your head up, it's just interesting.
MILD is stupidly simple, and i'll be posting some kind of ermm..... "insight" to it, in a few days or so about how it should be done, as coming from a person who's mastered mild to such an extent to have lucid dreams throughout the night on demand, and the same with dream recall.

I usually just lurk around the forum, cause i love lucid dreaming, and i feel like i could leave a post here and there without getting TOO involved, but the first thing you have to get out of your head is the idea of it being some LONG ASS JOURNEY, or some kind of impossible feat/mission that will take years to complete, it's really...... not..... if you start to accept the fact that lucid dreaming isn't hard, it's just hard to explain, then you're pretty much golden

Thanks for the tip, I really look forward to reading your take on MILD. Could you anticipate what you do differently that worked so well?

Yes, I actually expect to see success much sooner, but the 1 YEAR mark is useful in order to keep a mindset of consistency.

Very cool, DixonHill. I like the routine you've written out for yourself. It looks pretty thorough. I like your idea about using your hands a prospective memory trainer. I think I might incorporate that myself. I use my hands for RCs, but have not mentally attached the idea of prospective memory to them. Have you practiced any event-based prospective memory training (ie, the next time I see a red car I will remember to do a RC)?

It looks like you'll be doing very well so long as you do maintain your consistency and diligence!

Skipper1100, I'm also interested to hear your take on MILD. It's the technique I've been working with and I like hearing about it from the perspective of others! I hope to hear what you have to share soon.

NIGHT 1

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: Just 5 min before bed
Awakenings: Didn't catch natural awakening. Was already awake when 5sec alarm rang.
DJ: 6 non-lucid dream fragments recalled.
LDs: -

Comment: Significant increase in dream recall compared to previous nights.
At least two clear moments in which I could have noticed my hands and thus become lucid.
Not bad as a start!

Very cool.

I've had the same change insofar as having a great increase in dream recall.

NIGHT 2

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: -
Awakenings: Got back to sleep without remembering to try to enter the dream.
DJ: 2 non-lucid dream fragments recalled.
LDs: -

Comment: In both of those fragments I could have noticed my hands and thus become lucid.

NIGHT 3

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: 10min in the afternoon and 20min before bed.
Sleep time: 00am-08.30am
Awakenings: -
DJ: 4 non-lucid fairly long dream fragments recalled. Lost some of the details during the morning.
LDs: -

NIGHT 4

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: -
Sleep time: 11pm-8am
Awakenings: -
DJ: 1 non-lucid dream fragment recalled.
LDs: -

Every time a month ends I will create and post graphs to track progress of n° of LDs, n° of Non-LDs recalled, total estimated time in the lucid state.

NIGHT 5

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: -
Sleep time: 0am-8am
Awakenings: Tried to imagine clapping, but with too little focus.
DJ: 1 non-lucid dream fragment recalled.
LDs: -

Slight change in the mantra so that I can use the same one for daytime Self-Awareness and pre-sleep intention: "When I see my hands I become aware."

NIGHT 6

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: 10 min in the afternoon.
Sleep time: 0am-8am
Awakenings: I repeated MILD intention after 6am awakening, but for too little time and without visualization.
DJ: 2 non-lucid dream fragments recalled. Other vivid memories that disappeared at awakening.
LDs: -

For your hands to remind you of dreaming, something must remind you of your hands.

Try to mentally connect things with your hands so that these things remind you of your hands. For example, if you want to connect hand soap with your hands, tell yourself "hand soap=hands" Try to connect your hands with many different things in this way. The more things that remind you of your hands, the more likely that something that reminds you of your hands will appear during your dreams.

When recalling your dreams, try to recall things that could have reminded you of your hands, especially where your hands were and what you were doing with them. Tell to mentally connect these things with your hands so they are more likely to remind you of your hands.

Thanks. Yes, that's how I'm doing it. The great things about hands is that they compare at least briefly in every single dream.

NIGHT 7

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: 30 min in the afternoon. I should start doing it consistently before bed.
Sleep time: 00.30am-8am
Awakenings: -
DJ: 2 non-lucid dream fragments recalled.
LDs: -

Improvement

I will couple the MILD intention with breath meditation, so as to do both at the same time. In breath: "When I see my hands".
Out breath: "I become aware".
Both before bed and after every awakening.

While I meditate, I will visualize the hands scene or just passively observe the light patterns in the blackness depending on the level of drowsiness.

After having set sufficiently the intention, I continue to meditate only on the breath while falling asleep.

I think your frame work is fine. This has many good elements and easily could work. As far as any kind of tip, I can suggest one element to also focus on. During your days make a point of noticing your hands every time you really use them. Normally we open a door with almost no awareness of actually reaching out and engaging the handle. You should become aware of your hands any time you use them. Stop mentally and notice your hands, until that is natural for you. This is probably a good meditation for building mindfulness too. Of course then after making a point to notice your hands, you would do all the rest of the things you plan on.

Thanks sivason! Yes, I'm attempting to do exactly that. It seems it's starting to sink in.

NIGHT 8

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: 20 min in the afternoon. 5 min before bed.
Sleep time: 0am-8am
Awakenings: Got back to sleep too quickly. I have to make a point to rouse myself whenever I wake up during the night and actually do the MILD/meditation.
DJ: 3 non-lucid dream fragments recalled. More vivid than usual. One of them was a false awakening (I dreamt I had slept late in the morning). In one of them at the end I nearly succeded in re-entering the dream but was already waking up. Good signs!
It seems meditation before bed is the key. I have to up the duration.
LDs: -

NIGHT 9

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation before bed: 5-10 min.
Sleep time: 11pm-4.30am
Awakenings: -
DJ: Little sleep due to early morning appointment. No dream recalled.
LDs: -

NIGHT 10

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation before bed: 5 minutes
Sleep time: 1.30am-10am
Awakenings: -
DJ: 1 non-lucid dream fragment recalled.
LDs: -

* Updated Routine *

Daytime:
- Presence/Self-Awareness practice with Hands trigger.
- MILD affirmation: "When I see my Hands, I become aware."

Before Bed:
- Breath Meditation coupled with the MILD affirmation (coupled with Visualization).
In breath: "When I see my hands".
Out breath: "I become aware".
- Breath Meditation while Counting Numbers trying to retain awareness while falling asleep.

Night Awakenings:
- I Keep Still and immediately Enter the Dream.
- If I don't manage to enter directly the dream, I'll just reinforce the MILD intention and get back to sleep while trying to retain awareness.
- Dream Journal.

NIGHT 11

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation before bed: -
Sleep time: 0.30am-6.30am
Awakenings: -
DJ: 1 non-lucid dream fragment recalled.
LDs: -

NIGHT 12

Basic Routine: ✔
Meditation: -
Sleep time: 11.30am-7.30am
Awakenings: -
DJ: 1 non-lucid dream fragment recalled.
LDs: -