Had a series of dry spells, now I'm trying to remember basic practices.

I've had abnormally low LD rates for the past several months. Between June 2017 and November 2018, I had an average of 23 LDs per month (median of 17). In the last 6 months, I've gotten between 5-15 per month, and I'm really struggling to break out of that.

I try to cover the basics:
-General Daytime Awareness (nose plug RC, 10-15/day; started using the Gravity RC)
-Detailed Dream Journal (variable levels of detail)
-Getting enough sleep (8 hours is the target)
-Having a regular schedule

I feel like I'm missing something critical that I forgot. So, I'm currently studying everything I did to achieve high rates in the last 2 years. Here's a couple of things I did:

-Alternating Strategies - Every night, I attempted either WILD or Full WBTB + SSILD, switching between them every night. This arguably gave both approaches a higher success rate than doing either of them exclusively.
-WBTBs were ~8-20 minutes each.
-Burnout has been practically nonexistent, including in these recent months. It happens, but not often.

A large number of LDs were spontaneous DILDs. Hopefully the Gravity RC will help in bringing those back.

I think I should WILD like it all depends on WILD, and RC like it all depends on DILD. I think that recently I've been slacking in RCs because I've been depending on WILD being successful; which has not turned out as well as I'd like so far.

I posted this in the hopes that the wonderful folks of DV could help me fill in the gaps.

Something critical that isn't explicitly mentioned in the basics you mentioned is building/maintaining knowledge of what dreams are like. We have to know what dreams are like in order to identify them during the dream. We can lose some of this knowledge over time.

The gravity RC can help with building knowledge of what dreams are like by helping to teach us what gravity is like during dreams. When we know what gravity is like during dreams and we identify gravity during dreams, we can become lucid. The gravity acts as a sign of dreaming.

Speaking of signs of dreaming, our dream journal can also help us build knowledge of what dreams are like if they provide a record of these signs. Go through the dream journal and find signs of dreaming that were missed during dreams. Remind yourself that these are signs of dreams and intend to become lucid from similar signs in the future. Also do this when recalling and writing down any new dreams.

Oh yeah, that dreamy feeling. It’s unmistakeable—if I notice it, that is. Noticing dream signs is probably my weakest area. I’ll go back through my DJ and find what the most common ones are. For some of them, I accept them as normal every time; I need to break that too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jacob46719

I posted this in the hopes that the wonderful folks of DV could help me fill in the gaps.

---

Don't forget about the fundamentals! All those techniques and strategies are fine, but they may prove worthless if you haven't established a solid lucid mindset...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sageous

All those techniques and strategies are fine, but they may prove worthless if you haven't established a solid lucid mindset...

---

Haven't forgotten that. I read your post, and the memory point you described just happens to be something I've already been doing after becoming lucid (and it works). Though your point wasn't very clear on whether this concept applied in the same way to non-lucid dreams.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jacob46719

Though your point wasn't very clear on whether this concept applied in the same way to non-lucid dreams.

---

I'm not sure what you meant here, but if it's this: No, the concept of turning memory back on would apply only to lucid dreams, since you would be literally unable to do that when not lucid.