Fuzzman

So I don't intend to use this journal for all my dreams but I wanted to start using it at least for the most memorable ones or for side notes about my progress so I can keep track of it and see how I'm improving.


Some stuff about my experiences, I had first heard about lucid dreaming maybe 5 years ago but got really interested in it and started practicing it probably about 3 years ago. In that time I've taken long breaks from it and not had much progress, maybe about 10 short lucid dreams total. About 8 months ago I planned to get back into it with full force, and to truly motivate myself I started working on developing a dream journal app for my phone since there weren't any good ones available (Windows phone). I finally finished it a few months ago and it's the first app that I've ever made, I had some programming experience but still had to learn a lot in order to make it, but I think it turned out pretty well and I'm really proud of it!

Anyway, after I finished it I decided to finally begin working with LDing again and to start things off I began working on my recall by using my new app and exercising my memory during the day. Unfortunately at the time I was quite an avid pot smoker and I think I hindered myself a bit much early on by smoking too much and not being able to remember my dreams at night. I've pretty much quit by now but still smoke maybe once every couple weeks. After about a month of recall practice I started meditating and doing ADA by paying attention to my surroundings and my senses and throwing in a few reality checks every so often. This combined with cutting back on smoking really made my recall improve a ton, from barely any dreams at all to multiple a night. I had maybe a couple lucid dreams during this time but it felt almost like it wasn't really lucidity but just dreaming about lucidity and still going on autopilot in the dreams, so I decided to research on the forums and rework my technique.

What I'm starting to do now is basically trying to maintain a present moment self-awareness/mindfulness and critical thinking about what I'm doing and thinking during the day. I decided that I don't much care for the usual physical reality checks like the nose pinch or finger through the palm because I feel like I could be self-conscious about looking strange around people and be less likely to do them as fully as I should. So what I do instead is when I see my common dream signs, when I'm not being self-aware, or just at random times throughout the day I'll become aware of myself and where I am, think about what I was just doing and what I'm about to do, then really ask myself if everything makes sense. Sometimes if I feel comfortable with it I will look at my hands or do a nose pinch to be sure. What this has done for my dreams already has made them feel like I'm really in the moment in my dreams and more aware of my actions, like I'm actually there instead of it just feeling like I'm watching the events play out on auto-pilot and then waking up to random memories that don't feel like mine.

Also during the day and especially before bed I'll be practicing some Lucid Daydreaming, where I will daydream my most recent or vivid non-lucid dreams, and visualize them again as best I can to change the events so that I become lucid in them at certain moments and act out what I would do when becoming lucid, reminding myself that I'm dreaming while visualizing. I sometimes do it when I catch myself daydreaming other stuff too, or at least just remind myself that I was visualizing and bring myself back to the present moment and go through my mental reality check. I think this practice will have a double effect on lucidity because I will be more conscious of visualizing which should transfer to better recognizing dreaming since they are vivid visualizations and also I will be practicing getting lucid from dream signs, going through proper steps to stay in the dream, and doing my intended tasks. It probably also helps that I am using my recent dreams and changing events in them so that I switch them from being non-lucid to lucid. So far from doing this practice for the past week I've had a couple moments in my dreams where I will be thinking of a previous part of a dream and recognizing that it was a dream, once almost obtaining lucidity because it made me stop to think about it. I think this shows that my brain is beginning to realize the difference between dreaming and reality.

Anyway, I guess that's enough typing for now. I just wanted to get that out there and start a journal so I can track my progress along the way, I think I've got a good system figured out and want to start my baseline here. I'll keep working with my current practices and see how things go for the next few weeks.



Edit: So I just noticed Naiya's MILD tutorial from someone commenting on it and see that it's pretty much exactly what I'm doing with the daydreaming practice, so that is a good sign that it will be helpful!