CanisLucidus

I would love to see those organic alien walls! Awesome! False Awakenings, my arch enemy usually but I really, really want to change that! My lucid last night (nothing worth DJing) had me waking into a very convincing false awakening where, like you above, I was also looking to write in my DJ and found my self writing over my previous entry and flowed into a fairly long non-lucid! Ugh! I have this feeling that either many of my FA's start in a non-traditional way or that I am completely forgetting exactly how they started. If only I can make a breakthrough with this it would be huge I feel. *Anyone have any ideas? I am trying motionless RC's when I feel myself supposedly waking up but I am afraid that I am so sure that I am actually waking up that I am not consistently RCing upon every supposed awakening...and I must not be though I have a vague recollection of RCing and getting a result that I am awake and later seemed like it might have been a false result.

It's cool that you had such a similar experience! Hey, we should congratulate ourselves at least on the good habit of wanting to immediately dream journal everything as soon as we "wake up".

I wish that I could give you "the secret" on never getting fooled by false awakenings ever, ever again, but clearly there are plenty of times where they totally fool me. Witness the above entry!

I'd say you are actually in pretty good shape if you think you are frequently attempting motionless RCs that then fail. Which ones are you using? What happens for you when they fail? My biggest issue is that I just assume I'm really awake and go about my business. I do this on lots of real wakings, too, so it's no wonder that this is an issue!

Thanks CL! I try to float and/or spin in the bed then I do a glottal sound (meant to be glottal stop and see if you can breathe via throat but doesn't feel right for me)...my WL eyes or dream eyes are closed. Perhaps the glottal sound and feeling in the throat is being accurately duplicated in the dream and perhaps I am not believing the float or spin will work since I am fairly sure I awake.

Sounds like you had a good day yesterday in regard to your entries.
Yeah the '90s man!

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Thanks CL! I try to float and/or spin in the bed then I do a glottal sound (meant to be glottal stop and see if you can breathe via throat but doesn't feel right for me)...my WL eyes or dream eyes are closed. Perhaps the glottal sound and feeling in the throat is being accurately duplicated in the dream and perhaps I am not believing the float or spin will work since I am fairly sure I awake.

Interesting, so you try to do a glottal stop and if your air "breaks through", then you'd conclude that you're dreaming. Is that right? I had to look up an ESL video to be sure of what a glottal stop was, ha ha...

A similar set of tricks I use for false awakenings to immediately enter an LD is to either imagine my legs sliding out of bed to touch the floor (in which case an OBE-style LD immediately starts) or to use a trick Cosmic.Iron suggested. You can mentally imagine your hand coming up to perform the nose pinch reality check. By doing that you avoid using your muscles and performing any actual movement. In an LD, you can often will it to happen.

The one I use most commonly is to just imagine my legs sliding/rotating/oozing out of bed onto the floor. If all goes well, I'll find myself confused and in semi-darkness running around a dream version of the bedroom.

@Highlander - Thanks, man! Yeah, it was a good night of dreaming. In the United States it was Thanksgiving, which is a festival of overeating. For me this meant some incredibly deep sleep and rich dreaming in the morning. If my theories about this are correct, all the food/carbs ought to be perfect for raising serotonin and possibly catecholamine levels in the brain (due to the way carbs indirectly aid transport of tryptophan and tyrosine across the BBB.)

We even call this effect "Thanksgiving sleepiness!"

I'm glad you enjoyed Thanksgiving day. Yes you're right with the tryptophan from the turkey and the spuds, etc.

The storylines of your recent lds are absolutely awesome! I found the part where you lowered the graphics especially cool.

I know I have asked this before, but am still curious about these - did you journal after each one or had them one after the other? Either way, very impressive as usual.

Interesting, so you try to do a glottal stop and if your air "breaks through", then you'd conclude that you're dreaming. Is that right?

Well that is the way it is meant to be done, but I was just making the popping/clicking/clucking sound associated with using it in language but I may try the way it is meant to be along with your excellent tips above, thank you! I also realized I can try that not breathing thing in that thread we both responded in. I am playing around with a mantra "Every time I find myself back in bed #1 I DEILD, #2 I Reality Check" and also "Every time I am in a bedroom or see a bed I Reality Check." I think that I have an awful lot of FA's that I am not catching or remembering because they probably seem like such a mundane activity, that we do every single day, to the waking mind. Even when they are weird in a dream, the dreaming mind slickly folds it into a scenario that somehow "makes sense" to the dreaming mind's usual lack of waking memories.

Originally Posted by NyxCC

The storylines of your recent lds are absolutely awesome! I found the part where you lowered the graphics especially cool.

I know I have asked this before, but am still curious about these - did you journal after each one or had them one after the other? Either way, very impressive as usual.

Thanks, I am the type to definitely enjoy winding up in a video game. And leave it to me to fiddle with the graphical settings for no reason.

Yep, that's a good question... I did journal each of these right after waking up. Well, paper and pencil, dialogue + keywords/sentence fragments to make sure I have the gist. I don't bother writing any of it as a cohesive story until I get time the next day. I just write down everything I'll need in order to remember.

I think that these also serve as a bit of a mini-WBTB, which is also good for motivation to keep doing it. It is sometimes not easy at all to get out of bed and journal. I sometimes say to myself that I'm going to just "lay here and try to DEILD" but I strongly suspect I just want to fall back to sleep. The recall is so much better if I do get up and at least write down some bits and pieces. Otherwise the dialogue in particular will be completely gone by the morning.

Originally Posted by CL
Yep, that's a good question... I did journal each of these right after waking up. Well, paper and pencil, dialogue + keywords/sentence fragments to make sure I have the gist. I don't bother writing any of it as a cohesive story until I get time the next day. I just write down everything I'll need in order to remember.

I think that these also serve as a bit of a mini-WBTB, which is also good for motivation to keep doing it. It is sometimes not easy at all to get out of bed and journal. I sometimes say to myself that I'm going to just "lay here and try to DEILD" but I strongly suspect I just want to fall back to sleep. The recall is so much better if I do get up and at least write down some bits and pieces. Otherwise the dialogue in particular will be completely gone by the morning.

I think you raise a good few points here regarding your recording methods. It definitely strikes a chord with me, especially writing the keywords and the mini-WBTB.
The part about DEILD but want to fall asleep is so true - I have failed to record normal dreams down due to that course of action.
I also have often 'worried' whilst having an LD like if I can cope trying to remember and transcribe the detail down afterwards! This can certainly dull the experience and and a dream prematurely if you are not too careful.
I do try and get the dialogue down first and keywords, where applicable.
I have been known to write the story backwards in staged paragraphs. (Not totally recommended if you're liable to forget after; but good if you put the paragraphs in order, etc.)
I managed to remember a big block of the start this way - however, I only ever do it if I'm really worried about losing the dream story and detail, usually when I cannot remember the start initially.

Yeah, I agree with all of that. I have in fact for the most part tried to give up DEILDing out of full-length lucids (if I can remember to do so.) Otherwise, a significant percentage of the time I just wind up falling back asleep, which compromises recall a bit. Fortunately, recall in lucids seems to be far better than normal dreams, so it's not a total disaster. But still!

You're right about anxiety too. I find that it's hard to avoid worrying about stuff in the dream state, or that at least it takes a lot more practice. It seems that the rational mind is what I lean on for dissipating worries and this seems to just take a little bit more effort/practice in dreams than IWL. It seems that the best result is when this is turned into a positive. When I can focus on remembering details (rather than worrying that I won't remember them), I seem to get a nice boost in vividness without the anxiety/dulling effect that you mention.

I love the places you DILD in. So cool man!

@ CL.

Yes, confidence and practice seem to be the key. I will have to take a leaf out of your book on this.

Yep, that's a good question... I did journal each of these right after waking up. Well, paper and pencil, dialogue + keywords/sentence fragments to make sure I have the gist. I don't bother writing any of it as a cohesive story until I get time the next day. I just write down everything I'll need in order to remember.

I think that these also serve as a bit of a mini-WBTB, which is also good for motivation to keep doing it. It is sometimes not easy at all to get out of bed and journal. I sometimes say to myself that I'm going to just "lay here and try to DEILD" but I strongly suspect I just want to fall back to sleep. The recall is so much better if I do get up and at least write down some bits and pieces. Otherwise the dialogue in particular will be completely gone by the morning.

That makes sence. I try to put down keywords and run through the dream in my head (slightly lifted from the pillow - you know why!). Totally agree about the taking notes action being used as a mini-wbtb. This technique seems to be working quite well for you.

Alas, we are always faced with those post ld dilemmas and trade offs, to Deild or not to deild? I have lost a good amount of ld info this way due to falling into unconscious sleep post ld. The pull of the pillow is just too strong!

On the brighter side of things, I take solace that even if I forgot an ld or info from it, the experience is still stored somewhere in my subcon and I still got an ld workout.

Alas, we are always faced with those post ld dilemmas and trade offs, to Deild or not to deild? I have lost a good amount of ld info this way due to falling into unconscious sleep post ld. The pull of the pillow is just too strong!

On the brighter side of things, I take solace that even if I forgot an ld or info from it, the experience is still stored somewhere in my subcon and I still got an ld workout.

Ha ha, the "pull of the pillow" is strong indeed! A great deal of what I've learned in lucid dreaming is just having the grit necessary to drag myself out of bed when the time is right. And I still kind of suck at that many nights. But I'm much much better than I once was, that's for sure!

And I like your attitude... I hope that wherever these memories lie that they are kept safe! You know that there's storage beyond our conscious immediate recall, just from those experiences of suddenly remembering a bit of an NLD and then the rest coming back to you after you keep thinking through it.

But I only completely relax once I get the thing down on paper or on DV.

And I like your attitude... I hope that wherever these memories lie that they are kept safe! You know that there's storage beyond our conscious immediate recall, just from those experiences of suddenly remembering a bit of an NLD and then the rest coming back to you after you keep thinking through it.

Read an article about this recently. It looks like even if you can't recall a certain piece of information, the same brain areas light up as when you are able to recall it, showing it is indeed somewhere there! The challenge for us remains how to access it.

Read an article about this recently. It looks like even if you can't recall a certain piece of information, the same brain areas light up as when you are able to recall it, showing it is indeed somewhere there! The challenge for us remains how to access it.

Hey, that sounds like a cool study. Rather than a storage problem per se, so much of learning how to properly use our brains is about organization and access of information.

It's like how those memory champions remember these crazy long strings of numbers by putting together stories or "memory palaces" in their heads. The sheer quantity of visual information isn't an issue at all, so long as there is a coherent way to organize it. Fascinating stuff.