Thread: FryingMan's DILD course workbook

Well after July's successes I've been smacked down by sleep issues. I've always had a tendency towards sleep maintenance insomnia (waking up after 5 hrs of sleep and not getting back to sleep), especially when practicing LD night-time methods, and especially when intent for LDs is high. Focusing on sleep first, now, establishing a regular schedule, learning healthy circadian rhythm practices like getting lots of outside morning light as soon as I get up, and avoiding evening home lights, bright screens, wearing blue blocker glasses, etc., before bed.

I'm maintaining my All Day Lucid Presence practice as much as I can, and emphasizing happy/joyful/stress-free waking life choices. I've all but stopped reading the "news," for example, and I find I do NOT miss it a bit! The world may be going to hell in a handbasket, but I don't need to follow the second by second updates.

I've been reading "End the Insomnia Struggle" and it has really helped.

I finally have taken positive and concrete steps to deal with my sleep maintenance insomnia. And I believe it's working. I slept about 7 hours both of the last couple nights with no long wakeful phases, and even had a low-grade LD last night (#271)! I'm focusing on sleep 100% for now, so recall and LDing is on pause for the most part, although I did start dialing back up the daytime lucid presence recently.

If anyone does ever have any issues, I highly recommend the book "End the Insomnia Struggle," it's really helped reshape how I approach the night, sleep, dreaming even, and given me concrete tools to deal with the insomnia. The option I chose is called Stimulus Control Therapy: in short:

+ don't go to bed unless you're sleepy (also best if at a regular established time, which I've been doing)
+ get out of bed and go to a different room and so something quiet/boring, if at any time you're in bed for 20 minutes without falling asleep (you can return to bed whenever you feel sleepy again, up until your designated wake-up time).
+ get up at the same time every day regardless of how much you've slept
+ no daytime napping

The benefits of this particular approach is that it allows you to have a good night on occasion and sleep more or less as much as you want to or can (if you go to bed early enough). The idea is to retrain your brain to build a very strong association between being in bed and sleeping, and not sleeping outside of bed.

I've also started getting outside first thing in the morning to get early morning sunlight in my eyes. This helps to strongly establish the circadian rhythm. A lot of insomnia issues (of the type where you wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep) are when the sleep drive is out of whack with the circadian rhythm.

The book helped me to realize that you can't fight insomnia and you can't force yourself to sleep. You have to basically just be willing to accept whatever experience one particular night has in store for you. This relieves a lot of the stress of insomnia, along with knowing that there are effective behavioral treatments that really work (stimulus control and sleep restriction therapies). I'm very hopeful that this SCT will give me the ability to fall asleep much much faster in the middle of the night, which would be great for LDing!

I've kept a sleep log this last week when doing SCT and I see the improvement already: measuing is of course approximate but these are the times I've calculated that I've slept:

Hours slept the night of:
8/22: 5.75
8/23 5.33
8/24 6.75
8/25 6.36
8/26: 6.8
8/27: 7.08

Woohoo !

I have accumulated 3 solid weeks of sleep log data, and I'm into my 4th now. My average time asleep (although how I count it hasn't been exactly stable, trying to account for time awake at initial bedtime and in wakings during the night is difficult) seems to be improving. And most important of all, I'm not lying awake for long periods in bed frustrated about not falling asleep. I think the trend is for longer, better sleep, but time will tell.

What I can say is that I am more and more aware and familiar with my sleep/wake rhythms. My sleep drive is regularly very high in the evening now. In fact, if I'm doing something quiet, like sitting watching a video, it gets to the point where I start nodding off and can't keep my eyes open. I'm learning more about how much sleep I can reliably generate under what circumstances. The good news is that I typically have a very vivid, long period of dreaming within the sleep window of what I can typically generate (6.5 hours). The not-so-good news is that it's less than I'd like, for dreaming. But we work with what we have. I did sleep for a bit over 7 hours today (hard to tell light sleep from awake without a fitness tracker device), while being in bed for around 8.5, the last hour of that in a semi-sleep state, perhaps some light sleep for some of it, which was still restful. I haven't been in bed that long mostly sleeping/solidly resting for quite a while (without feeling wide awake and not being able to fall back asleep). I really think the therapies from the book are working well, and I feel confident I can manage much better now.

I'll continue with the logging and perhaps the therapies for probably at least another month, and then start slowly to work on incorporating some night-time LD practices (short MILD, SSILD, probably won't touch WILD for a while).

Well, a real milestone, had LD #272 last night, TWO MONTHS after my previous LD, and about a week (or a bit more) into my "post sleep therapy" rekindling of practice.

That's the good news. The less-than-good news was that it came after a long (longer than I wanted) period of wakefulness in the middle of the night. It's a familiar pattern: wake, can't fall asleep, then spend an hour or more working on relaxing and maybe some techniques (I did SSILD, thought "oh well, might as well try to WILD at this point"), then have a LD.

Interesting tidbit: I felt quite hot, as in temperature at the point where I realized I wasn't making progress back to sleep. Since I now know that our bodies must cool off in order to fall asleep, I removed the blanket and just tried to relax while cooling off. Apparently it worked, I started to feel drowsy again as I cooled off, and managed a few SSILD cycles before then falling asleep.

I pondered just getting up at that point when I couldn't sleep (it was around 3:55am, I felt like I'd been up for about 20-30 minutes already at that point). Decided not to, very glad I didn't!

LD #273 last night, 3 weeks since last LD. That's a lot better than the 2 months since the prior one!

I've begun in earnest the Four Foundational Practices as taught in the new 2022 edition of The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Frequently all throughout the day I "wake myself from the dream of distraction," increase clarity and presence, and (1) recognize the dream-like nature of all experience, and (2) reaction to experience, trying as best I can to make this recognition right when the experience/reaction arises. Before bed I (3) review the day, giving another chance to realize the dream-like nature of experience, for those that I may have missed during the day, and set strong intent for recalling dreams and having lucid dreams. (4) in the morning I review the dreams of the night, and if not lucid, recognize that I did dream, but did not recognize the dream as dream while within it, and set intent to notice (get lucid) in future dreams, and set strong intent to continue the practice throughout the day.

I'm also dabbling a bit in the beginnings of the night practices, placing awareness in the throat chakra of the central channel, promoting strong peacefulness.

LD #274 last night, with the help of galantamine and OOHHH BOY what a ride. Fully conscious WILD entry with mega-vibrations (of a magnitude I've never felt before) and no (discernible) discontinuities. Quick trip to the void/fade, FA (missed), some non-lucid content, then lucid again via latest state test. Ultra-waking vivid experience, seemingly indistinguishable from waking. Super bright and high-res. Many scenes and interactions, things seen, some dialogue. FA (VERY convincing, but a state test caught it) and continued. WOOOOO. DJ forthcoming.

Haven't updated here in a long while. I really ramped up my intent for the winter competition, and had a string of LDs in the 2nd week of the competition. Then the holidays and New Year's hit, and things really fell to the wayside in dreaming. I moved to focusing on waking life activities and interests, and dreaming quickly deteriorated.

It seems an unfortunate fact that I'm one of those for whom dreaming requires continuous effort and intent, otherwise the ability quickly begins to atrophy.

I'm going to try to pick up intent for the summer competition and see how it goes. Recall has been pretty good in the last couple weeks, with some quite vivid scenes and some approaching lucidity situations (controlled flight is usually a sign that I'm quite close to full lucidity, and I had one of those recently).

Renewed motivation, this time with a plan for "forever" (we'll see!), with help from reframing motivation as being "loving the process/system" (of training/practice) and generating internal rewards from practice instead of achieving goals: continual incremental improvement, adopting identify rather than "doing something".

LD #291 last night in a night of difficult sleep, and a long morning's semi-lucid romp. Good fun. I'm going to maintain and continually improve from here!

I'm *definitely* making 300 LDs by year end. Almost certainly by end of October, even better if end of September, by end of August would be boss! I have a more strict definition than some: I must explicitly acknowledge that I'm dreaming from within the dream.

LD #292 last night. Also a brief (FA I think) lucid moment. Did a nose pinch "in bed" and I could breathe, got lucid, then I felt my body "phase" into being awake there I was awake in bed.

LD #293 last night. I've just not been dreaming much recently. REM deprived for some reason....but I had a huge night of dreaming last night, including short lucid moment in the middle of a serious of long/vivid/epic non-lucids that culminated at the 4-hour waking....a very early time for me to be having that level of dreaming.

A short moment, but it was a critical thinking LD, where I noticed that an exit to the room I had just entered through had vanished. I affirmed out loud that I knew I was dreaming because the exit (in the floor) had disappeared. Exits appearing/disappearing is a pretty big dreamsign. Location/path awareness.

LD #294 about a week ago: walking down a street (outside my cousin's house in city A on the hill) I noticed that the sword/stick I was swinging around was always growing back after a piece broke off of it. Walked in to cousin's house, through the living room, into the kitchen, (there was a woman sitting there?), don't remember the rest...

LD #295 last night: a short, waking-up LD, I'm lying down on the ground looking up at the (very blue [DS]) sky, recognize this as a dream sign, especially the sort of artificial distortion I see in the visual field, do a nose pinch, air can move, realize I'm dreaming, try to move to get up, try to think how I can stand up, but when I turn my head, I'm awake in bed, and nose pinch confirms I'm awake.

Looks like I may reach my goal of 300LDs by end of the year! Dream recall is on the up-tick. Winter is much better for dreaming: lower room temperature, darker in the morning.