FryingMan's DILD course workbook

Well LD #30 not withstanding (it was entirely unsatisfying), I'm mighty dry. This is a disturbing trend. Frequency is not accelerating despite lots and lots of day work. Recall is OK but not at close-to-LD levels of awareness or length or even close to my recall of the first few months. It must simply be that I'm not doing enough, or expecting enough, or am not positive enough, or not enough of <something>, or am doing things wrong, or maybe doing too much. I'm mostly sleeping well, but not waking up much in the middle of the night. One thing that has changed is that I'm not so excited any more about waking up in the middle of the night to do recall. I wonder if that's enough to stall LDs? Maybe I need to recapture that excitement. I've had a healthy dose of stress recently but not enough I think to explain multi-week dry stretches.

I had my 7 LDs in 10 days during the last competition, where I also was not waking up much in the middle of the night, so not waking up alot didn't seem to hurt there. Of course during the competition I had strong motivation, but I feel pretty darn motivated most of the time still.

I'm considering returning to 100% LaBerge, with prospective memory targets, and reflection/intention, and MILD. Maybe doing ADA-style stuff just burns me out? I don't feel tired by it, but maybe there's some invisible expectation/intention "muscle" that I'm overburdening?

I may give the open beta thing another solid try, and get more systematic about dream yoga.

Perhaps my goals are not strong or clear enough?

Oh and maybe I need to return to WILD attempts on a regular basis.

And somehow figuring out how to restore waking in the middle of the night again.

I quite understand you FM, I was burnt out about ADA-style techniques... and I have to admit I never worked as hard as you are doing, good job!!
I'm now doing the bare minimums, which means I'm getting like two low quality LDs per month, but at least I don't feel so frustrated because I'm not investing much.
On the other hand, I sometimes check Hukif's DJ and wish I could have kept with the hard work of ADARC and get that crazy amount of LDs :-?

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One thing that has changed is that I'm not so excited any more about waking up in the middle of the night to do recall. I wonder if that's enough to stall LDs?...I had my 7 LDs in 10 days during the last competition, where I also was not waking up much in the middle of the night, so not waking up alot didn't seem to hurt there. Of course during the competition I had strong motivation, but I feel pretty darn motivated most of the time still.

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I know a lot of this is talking/typing out the issues so that you can resolve them, but I will chime in and see if there is anything that strikes a chord with you. I know you can move past this! Recall is helpful but it sounds like you are still having good recall. Middle of the night recall does help heighten your awareness the rest of the night typically, but the competition results seem to point to another factor or combination of factors.

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Maybe I need to recapture that excitement. I've had a healthy dose of stress recently but not enough I think to explain multi-week dry stretches.

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Based on what you are saying, stress is probably not the solitary factor, but it definitely doesn't help as you know. Perhaps recapturing the excitement is one factor. I think that was part of the reason I slacked on my daytime practices and got my dry streak...but it sounds like your daytime practices were kept up, so perhaps just the excitement level could have been a common factor between us and our dry spells.

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I'm considering returning to 100% LaBerge, with prospective memory targets, and reflection/intention, and MILD. Maybe doing ADA-style stuff just burns me out? I don't feel tired by it, but maybe there's some invisible expectation/intention "muscle" that I'm overburdening?

I may give the open beta thing another solid try, and get more systematic about dream yoga.

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I would definitely go with your gut on these items. I can see the overburdening playing a factor. I definitely think there have been useful exercises in the open beta thing (he just posted day 6 but I still need to read through it) and have no doubt about dream yoga (I just have no experience with dream yoga exactly).

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Perhaps my goals are not strong or clear enough?

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I have always thought of you as someone who sets strong and clear goals.

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Oh and maybe I need to return to WILD attempts on a regular basis.

And somehow figuring out how to restore waking in the middle of the night again.

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I think both of these will help a good deal in that they get your awareness going in the middle of the night but am reluctant to recommend this for you if you have trouble getting back to sleep.

Thanks for the advice! Well as for strong and clear goals, I think I need to set more definitive short-terms and medium-terms, review them more frequently, and take more concrete action to achieve them. "Lucid all night every night" I'm realizing will be a multiple year span of every day effort and attention (awareness!). I can talk the good talk about my plans but I've really not been very systematic about actually *doing* them. It's sort of like analysis paralysis:

Analysis Paralysis: Why choice is bad for you. | Board Game Meta-Blog | BoardGameGeek

so many techniques, so many exercises, which ones do you invest in? I need to create a daily schedule I think to get myself organized (for both sleeping and waking activities). At least always stick with the fundamentals, in that I'm pretty sure you can't go wrong.

Well at least I had a semi-epic non-lucid last night and in general lots and lots of dreaming, with many details just beyond recall's reach. With awesome flying and spiders and wine and sailing and casinos. Damn spiders didn't get me lucid though I was too busy trying to catch them and put them back into the bag.

In the past such nights have signalled lucidity is close so I'll take that as a good sign. Kept waking awareness yesterday but more sporadic, and less intense. I'll try dialling back the waking intensity for a while to see if that leaves more "energy" for dreaming.

edit: I've also turned down the intensity of my exercise. I'm still getting it fairly regularly, but I'm not pushing myself so hard. The super intense exercise wasn't helping with dreaming, but it was delivering very deep sleep. But I suspect I was constantly under slept so that didn't help.

Sleeping fairly well the past nights so that's good but need to return to more epic dreaming!

I think that you found a lot of great answers in your last post and especially agree with this:

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In the past such nights have signalled lucidity is close so I'll take that as a good sign. Kept waking awareness yesterday but more sporadic, and less intense. I'll try dialling back the waking intensity for a while to see if that leaves more "energy" for dreaming.

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I think your next lucid is right around the corner my friend!

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

I think that you found a lot of great answers in your last post and especially agree with this:



I think your next lucid is right around the corner my friend!

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Your predictions have always come true, may it be so now! And at least, recall is holding fairly steady.

Light, frequently interrupted sleep last night, set hourly alarms starting at 5 hrs (turned them off after several hit and was feeling tired) but lots and lots of dreams, which was sort of the point, but I think I prefer to sleep through to morning and recall fewer but more high level awareness dreams than lots and lots of autopilot low/no-awareness dreams. Tried some RILD (rhythmic WILD) but the timing never felt right and nothing came of it that I noticed.

Ew, bad night. 3 tiny dream moments recalled, a few seconds from each. 2 hours late to bed though so not too surprising.

Tried a brief nap late afternoon today, was feeling tired, and at one point I realized I was looking through my closed eyelids at a piece of paper with writing on it that I knew wasn't there. I woke up immediately at that point, darn...

I gave ADA/RC-location about 5 months, and it has raised my general awareness quite a lot but it's just not bringing the lucids like I want. So I'm going to continue on being continuously skeptical of my state during the day, telling myself "I'm dreaming," and doing Sivason's dream yoga exercises.

I may switch to ADA/RC gravity but I'm a bit leery of giving it my full attention. Nose pinch works for me 100%, what I need is increased awareness and better / longer recall. It may be a matter of physical conditions (consistent out of bed time, I'm pretty good now at to-bed time last night not withstanding).

My daily routine has me in the same places almost all the time and not around a lot of people. I think I need to mix it up more and get out into the thronging masses into different places.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

Ew, bad night. 3 tiny dream moments recalled, a few seconds from each. 2 hours late to bed though so not too surprising.

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Sounds like some of my recall. By the way, what is your process when you have all of the great recall?

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Tried a brief nap late afternoon today, was feeling tired, and at one point I realized I was looking through my closed eyelids at a piece of paper with writing on it that I knew wasn't there. I woke up immediately at that point, darn...

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Even if it was just HI, that sounds like good awareness. :)

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I gave ADA/RC-location about 5 months, and it has raised my general awareness quite a lot but it's just not bringing the lucids like I want. So I'm going to continue on being continuously skeptical of my state during the day, telling myself "I'm dreaming," and doing Sivason's dream yoga exercises.

I may switch to ADA/RC gravity but I'm a bit leery of giving it my full attention. Nose pinch works for me 100%, what I need is increased awareness and better / longer recall. It may be a matter of physical conditions (consistent out of bed time, I'm pretty good now at to-bed time last night not withstanding).

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5 months seems like a good amount of time to see more significant results but I have never really done more than sample ADA/RC for short periods of time (breathing, gravity). Have you asked Hukif his thoughts? I definitely understand being leery though.

I'm going to count LDs #31 and #32 from last night! :banana:

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

Sounds like some of my recall. By the way, what is your process when you have all of the great recall?

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I wish I could put my great recall (when it's great, it's been several weeks now without it) in a can and sell it (and use it myself!). It just comes to me, I just remember it. Recently I have not had to ask my self "what was I dreaming about?" the dreams have been immediately on my mind upon waking (sign of close to lucidity I think). But sometimes (even with the great recall) I need to remain still, and if it still doesn't come, I ask myself, "What was I just dreaming about?" Then it usually just starts pouring in. Once one scene is recalled that usually leads to a cascade of memories. I keep going over the scenes again and again, 1) trying to remember them if I'm not going to physically journal immediately, and 2) hoping to trigger associations of previous scenes to keep going further and further back into the dream(s). I examine the fleeting feelings and memories "on the tip of my tongue" hoping for them to materialize and solidify. But in the really really epic nights, it's just fully "there" already.

Last night I drank a lot of water during the day and evening on purpose. 1) The brain works better when well hydrated, and 2) it helps to produce middle of the night wakings and (I think) awareness peaks.

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Even if it was just HI, that sounds like good awareness. :)

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I had some very active HI this morning and I think actually the beginning of many dreams this morning like yesterday afternoon's nap mentioned above. I had a period of quickly flashing color blobs that normally I only experience at bed time when extremely exhausted or sleep deprived. Interesting night last night, see below.

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5 months seems like a good amount of time to see more significant results but I have never really done more than sample ADA/RC for short periods of time (breathing, gravity). Have you asked Hukif his thoughts? I definitely understand being leery though.

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And of course, on the day that I decide I've given ADA/RC-location enough of my time, I have a location-based lucid :).

I have to say I'm feeling really motivated by Sivason's dream yoga. I've been doing the diffuse vision and listening exercises and I think they're producing a change in awareness. I realized the diffuse vision teaches how to "see" without reacting, without associating visual sense with physical eyes (at least that's my take on it). I think this helps tremendously in converting freshly-forming dreams into solid dreams.

I had what I think was a brief LD like that. I was dozing in bed lightly just noticing the images starting to form and then fade repeatedly, staying relaxed and receptive, and at one point I found I was in a hospital. "If I'm in a hospital, then a cute nurse will come through that door right now" I said/thought. And right on cue a nurse opened and entered the room through the door (and turned to my right, didn't come towards me :) and I felt a surge of excitement from my idea coming true and I woke up. I think I'll count that one :).

And last night I also suddenly found myself standing (on the ledge?) of a huge outdoor rectangular quarry in daytime. I felt some imagined fear at first (animals?) but realized that 1) I don't know this place, and 2) immediately before this I was somewhere else so I must be dreaming. Don't remember anything after that, I probably woke up.

Didn't record that until morning, almost forgot it, recalled it along with other dreams at later awakening.

So a nice night finally.

Oh, also grabbed a girl from the back (she was clothed :)), spun her around hoping for a CG, when her eyes looked into mine I kissed her and felt the familiar zip/zing (adrenaline?) and fade to awake. Given another second it would have been lucid, very close.

Congratulations on the lucids FryingMan!! :D That dream yoga exercise seems interesting. What is the awareness feeling that it creates for you?

You are on the prowl!! :D

#%*}*{*##%!!!!!!
Night full of fun/funny dreams, I very dutifully set each of them into memory and reviewed them from waking to waking, UNTIL THE LAST ONE when they all slipped away except the one I woke from, and the detail from that one degraded, too. Must. Record. During. The. Night!!!

At least I finally remembered the (very brief) sexy-time. and a new "DCs say the darnedest things" entry

LD 33, wow, bizarre dreams (fun!), took 33g of my sons's bodybuilding amino acid blend (@ 00:20), bedtime @ 00:45

06:00 nothing, no recall, disappointed.

07:40 alarm one dream, lots of dream signs, missed them, short, but kind of interesting

09:30 WOW some BIZARRE and wild & crazy dreams, *most excellent*, into and out of lucidity. Very unusual for this late in the morning. Residual effect from the AAB? Does it work that long? It must be as it was highly out of the ordinary for me at that time. I was pretty tired though still from the weekend. REM rebound + AAB? Does AAB cause REM suppression and rebound?

In case anybody wants to repeat, the mix I took is called "Up Your MASS" :).

"Up Your MASS"...what a great name! Congrats again!!

Jet lag night #1:

4 dreams scenes recalled, not bad considering the sleep deprivation of being awake about 29 hours. Tried 50mg B6 after waking at 3am even at risk of not sleeping, I drifted comfortably for a very long time with a number of forming dreams that evaporated (or HI). BTB at 4am after a snack. Felt a WILD starting at one point with "waving arms" sensation but got excited and it subsided. Just resolved to drift comfortably and not care about sleeping, eventually I woke and realized I had slept and dreamt a bit more. Better I think than last time I started out on jet lag. Didn't take melatonin since my bedtime was too early to take it. May take it tonight.

2 scenes (and there was the memory of much more there but it elluded me) in first 8 hours, 2 scenes late morning after falling to bed again. Girls gone wild in a pool, gotta love it. Was just a bit too far away for a good view but it was still fun.

Can I have my dreams back now, please!?

I've had a handful of short dreams most nights, quite unsatisfying, nothing approaching heightened awareness at all. Par for the jet-lagged course. I'm adjusting, though. I'm extremely tired most nights by 9-10pm and generally fully awake by 7am. I'm stockpiling various supplements (amino acids [l-glutamine, l-aspartic acid, l-theanine], 5htp, b6), and will give them a proper try-out once I've returned from my trip and recovered (again) from the jet lag. I'm trying them now but with basically zero results.

Tried a WILD last night around 5th hour but just fell asleep eventually. The rhythmic approaches don't seem to work better for me than the mantra-based ones, but it will take more experimentation.

Oh, and I ordered a REMee. Hope it arrives before I have to return. I'm looking forward to trying it out and getting it configured. I mostly plan to use it as a DEILD-inducer or only in nap mode after waking in the night. My dreaming schedule though is pretty regular: most dreams between 5-7 hours, so I may try hitting that range right from bedtime.

I have high hopes for REMee. I think people consider it a failure just because it takes effort to configure/use/personalize. Sure, REM detection would be great. But I look upon it as just a configurable timer-based light-flashing sleep mask device, and I hope that will end up working. I've been training to notice lighting as an RC for a few months now in anticipation of some sort of light-based mask, so hopefully I'm ready for that as well. It also may work as a recall enhancer to wake up in the middle of the night in a more gentle way that audio alarms.

I'll also try out the sleep cycle alarm app to see if it works to map my sleep cycles.

Had some slightly more aware dreams (with some waking memories), short but clear/vivid memory of a few scenes.

I did the self-hypnosis text for lucid dreaming right before bed (the one StephL it using I think). I may record this and just play it back for more thorough hypnosis (so I'm not trying to visualize and read at the same time). Liked it, I may do the dream recall one as well. I also did a lot of autosuggestion during the evening. Felt very positive after that, really excited in fact. Nothing lucid last night though.

w00t my REMee has shipped, let the games (and detailed sleep timing analysis) begin! I RC now in response to any bright light and especially red lights, and have been for a while in anticipation of getting a LD sleep mask.

edit: Haha, driving at night is an exercise in continuous RCs, red lights EVERYWHERE :).

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

w00t my REMee has shipped, let the games (and detailed sleep timing analysis) begin! I RC now in response to any bright light and especially red lights, and have been for a while in anticipation of getting a LD sleep mask.

edit: Haha, driving at night is an exercise in continuous RCs, red lights EVERYWHERE :).

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I look forward to hearing about it when you receive it! What RC do you use while driving?

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

I look forward to hearing about it when you receive it! What RC do you use while driving?

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For sleep masks you're supposed to be extremely aware of lighting and changes in lighting so that's what I've been working on for a few months now, adding to my routine. Walk outside into bright light: RC, come upon some bright reflection: RC, etc.. Since the mask will be shining red lights in my eyes I'm especially making note of red lights around me, which when driving includes stoplights and the rear taillights of cars, which are of course *everywhere* at night. Drove past a local business which had lots of internal red lighting (no, not that sort!) visible so I did a bunch of RCs in response, and so on.

OK LDs #34, 35:

00:00 Saturday 2014-05-03 LDs #34, #35, epic night full of vivid long dreams, many lucid-like - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Super sweet long vivid dreams, the "night felt long." I even noticed twice in my dreams that I'd been dreaming for a long time as I got lucid. #34 had waking life memory of dream yoga practice. 3mg melatonin at bedtime (even though I was already tired) hoping for REM rebound in 2nd half of night & vividness, and got vividness & length.

Next night (haven't written it up yet) 00:00 Sunday 5/4/2014, sense of very long dreams, memories of a few select scenes. No supplements.

Last night: LD #36, TOTM:

00:00 Monday 2014-05-05 LD #36 Galantamine, TOTM - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Firsts:

+ first time TOTM in first week of the month
+ first time got a (somewhat) decent lucid with galantamine
+ first time recovering from the void
+ first time moving an object fully within my field of vision with TK (from floor to my hand).

34, 35, 36!!! Congrats FM!! :D For your next potential jet lag, don't forget your "sweet spot(s)" to get you back to where you are at and beyond! :)

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

34, 35, 36!!! Congrats FM!! :D For your next potential jet lag, don't forget your "sweet spot(s)" to get you back to where you are at and beyond! :)

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Thanks! Hah, yeah, the sweet spot is @ 1.5 weeks...must just give it time. REM rebound (if that's what it was) via melatonin at bedtime helped, but it probably it just a matter of getting sufficiently rested and getting some recall back.

Just getting lucid (and staying there) is still SUCH A TRIP. "I'm dreaming!" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I only just now noticed that Scarlett's eyes are flashing! RC time!

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

Just getting lucid (and staying there) is still SUCH A TRIP. "I'm dreaming!" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I only just now noticed that Scarlett's eyes are flashing! RC time!

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So true!

I was wondering how many people catch that. I am hoping to trigger flashing eye dream signs, especially in Scarlett, but with anyone would do.

As close to "taking a night off" last night as it can get. Still set intention to recall, still used remee. Very interestingly, I woke at about 1.5-2 hours with 2 coherent scenes of recall, highly unusual as dreams that early usually are very "LSD trip"-like, very abstract and truly bizarre. Well the 2nd scene of the dude stretching on the monkey bars was a bit unsettling actually.

One more waking at about 5.5 hrs, quick journal, then the next thing I know it's time to get up... no supplements last night.

Just purchased ebook of "Are you dreaming?" by Daniel Love, and am heading for mole (moh-LEH, not the little ground creature!) enchiladas and a virgin mojito or two and settling in for a long night of interesting reading!

May try Mugwort again tonight this time adding Wormwood & Gotu Kola, and try the tea at an early WBTB instead of at bedtime. Maybe...

LD #37 :banana:

WILD attempt, a bit shorter than previous night's WILD attempt, started on left side, turned to right, didn't feel like I was drifting off quickly enough so I jettisoned and turned on to my stomach (emergency position of last resort when both sides are uncomfortable) and had a very vivid, fairly long (several scenes recalled well, but there was so much more) dream that ended with a very high visual detail short DILD. I was extremely disoriented towards the end of the dream (awareness rising and being confused at the dream environment?) and the appearance of a tiny version of my old deceased beloved dog with the face of a pig gave me the jolt to realize I was dreaming. I was astonished at the visual realism and just sort of stood there dumbfounded for a bit, then the dream woman DC to whom I was talking when I became lucid spoke to her young female assistant in the other room, and I decided I needed to go see her to show her my weird pig-faced tiny dog, and getting close to her ended the dream.

I then re-entered the dream non-lucidly and flew around DO a bit observing a big indoor facility, and ended up in a doctor's room with 2 other sick people and my wife who wanted to be looked at by the english speaking doctor (this was the english speaking room of a foreign country's hospital), and I thought I saw a ferret sleeping on a tray table but instead it was a piece of medical equipment covered in ants.

I awoke confused about the order of these dreams, and when I could have fallen asleep to have the second one. I think I was awake only for an instant when waking from the LD and fell back into it right away (only non-lucid).