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I set an automatic alarm which turns itself off for 3am, and I wake up myself automatically at 2:00am. My mind is racing too much and I am too hyper to fall asleep to be able to FILD. plus the anxiety of the alarm going off keeps me up.
I turn off the alarm and I still can't FILD.
My schedule is as such:
5am I have to wake up
I go to sleep at around 10pm, 1030pm at latest, and wake up at 5am, for context.
Set the alarm for 5am so it doesn't cause anxiety anymore.
Try to notice your natural awakenings at night. You could notice at least a few each night with enough motivation to notice them.
Upon each awakening, relax until you feel like you are about to fall asleep, do the finger thing for about a minute or so and do an RC. If it doesn't work, go to sleep and try again the next awakening.
I have no success with natural awakeningsQuote:
Originally Posted by dolphin
It might work better if you only try lucid dreaming on nights when you don't have to get up @ 5 am? If there are any nights like that. For me it always works better when I can sleep in as late as I want in the morning, in fact most of my lucids seem to happen after I've had plenty of sleep and sleep late.
Have you tried mantras to remind yourself to wake after each REM period? This worked well for me, especially when I combined it with drinking a big glass of water before bed. You normally wake slightly after each REM period anyway but just barely and briefly, and you just don't remember. So if you engage in a little 'kidney-loading' before sleep, when you do wake you'll stay awake because you feel the need to go to the bathroom.
For my mantra I said "I wake after each dream", because I'm not sure my subconscious would understand a technical terms like REM period.
I had 2 different strategies - for one I wanted to do a full WBTB, so I would go ahead and go to the bathroom, but for the other I wanted to just lie still with eyes closed and remember the dream, so I could fall back asleep immediately for a DEILD attempt. I found I could do this even though I felt like I needed to drain my kidneys pretty badly. I was afraid of a 'bed-wetting incident', but it didn't happen. And I'd also wake after the next REM period (they get longer and closer together later in the night) and I could get up and use the bathroom then if I needed to. Though sometimes I could make it through 2 or 3 awakenings before I purged myself.
You could try with an alarm that shuts itself off automatically after a few seconds.
I'm using this one at the moment, but it still requires days of practice to understand what's the best time for you, how many seconds, what volume, etc. I'm still in the process of making it work.
DH