Thread: spd's workbook

Nice start spd! Do you remember what you did leading to those next 3 LDs? You must have been doing something right I hope that you keep it up and participating in this community is a great way to help you along. I can tell by your enthusiasm, and the way that your post comes across as quite friendly, that you will fit right in here.

It looks like you know the recipe for your wbtb now. Another thing that you can try, if you don't like using the alarm, is drinking a cup of water before going to bed. It can create what feels like a more natural awakening when you need to go to the bathroom. Of course you may need to experiment with varying amounts of water before you find that it wakes you up at the appropriate time to do your wbtb...so whichever method you like better of course. One of the keys is finding what works best for you as it is different for each person.

It sounds like you are doing the several things to help you along. Sivason is great! If the dream yoga class looks like it is right up your alley, go for it! Find something that feels right and then make it your own.

You can add any questions here or anywhere you are looking around the forums that match up to your question. It is a great idea to come here to organize your own progress and have a place to get help based on your workbook updates.

Hey fogelbise, and a late congrats on becoming a DILD teacher!

drinking water sounds good I shall try it. The need to go to the toilet should help ensure I get out of bed rather than stay in there abd fall asleep after a wbtb I am not sure what I did differently to get my first 3 lds but I am guessing the initial excitement of attempting to LD helped. Come to think of it, I had clear goals for those three lds (having my first ld, talking to a specific dc, and flying) so maybe I should put a real emphasis on trying to preform a particular task.

I have started to feel that my RDAT is losing its enthuisasm but after re-reading through gabs DILD guide I am really feeling confident avout my questioning of reality + rc. Today I am deciding on telling my self I could be lucid and trying to stick my finger tgrough the palm of my hand a repeat the mantra "next time I dream I will stick my finger through the palm of my hand" and repeat it again before I go to sleep with visualisation. As a relaxation technique I find the steps of SSILD to be very relaxing and I do it before my mantra now.

Also during my wbtb last night I remembered my dream in very good detail, better than any other dream I've ever remembered. The fynny thing is as soon as I woke up I thought I couldn't remember anything. For me this shows the importance of lying in bed still and trying to remember dreams

Wow I had a lucid dream a few minutes ago! It was very short and I stuffed it up kinda but its very exciting anyway!

Ok so firstly I tried drinking water before bed and it had good success I drank two cups before I went to bed and I fell asleep inbetween 10:38-11:00 I woke up at 4:23 went to the toilet read an entry from my dj (didn't have any recall at this time) Re-read gabs colection of DILD techniques went to bed at 4:45 and started my relaxing + mantra and visualisation. Despite only having a 22 minute wbtb it took me ages to fall asleep I was still awake up until 6:20 I think. Not fully awake all the time but still too awake I am considering trying out different relaxtion techniques and experimenting with three glasses of water before bed to hopefully get a slightly earlier wbtb. If it wasn't a school day I wouldn't have to worry about this so much!

Another interesting thing about last night is the visual imagery I saw at one stage I was falling asleep and suddenly became aware I was falling asleep I think I dream was starting to form because I saw many greyish objects including a door, clouds, a fire ball and a fire ball going into a door. All these objects were gray. I think I might write this down in my dj.

anyway on to the lucid dream: Teacher showing the sound system in his car at my garage for some reason. A friend takes his car he apparently stole out of my drive way and is giving my brother and I a lift. I thought this was weird, especially since it had no P plates and my friend is only 17. but I still thought it was really happening. he starts driving I freak out as he starts driving I question reality again and now come to the conclusion that I'm lucid. However my freaking out episode left me without a dream body so I couldn't do a reality check. I could still feel my self moving in the car so I think I had closed my eyes in the dream because I was scared of the car. Realising I was lucid I tried to salvage the dream now I was seeing photograph-like images probably similar to what its like entering a WILD (I wouldn't know because I have never succeded in a WILD) I kept repeating I am dreaming and trying to take in the detail of the photograph in front of me the photograph seems to stay for a while but I eventually move my leg accidently IWL which wakes me up

Congrats on another LD!!
-Getting back to sleep is something I have struggled with off and on. Funny thing is the longer I seem to be awake, the more likely I am to LD, but only if I get back to sleep! Check out a great post here on tips to try: http://www.dreamviews.com/wild/12557...ml#post2057511
-Goals for what you want to do in your LDs definitely help!
-RDAT: is that Random Daily Awareness Technique?
-those visuals you saw as you were going to sleep can keep you from fully going to sleep if you pay attention to them. Try letting them float by...it takes some time to get that down but if you are going for DILDs instead of WILDs you can often just skip noticing them at all and just doze off. SSILD seems to work well with dozing off and then randomly getting lucid like a timer going off...tick tick tick, wow I am dreaming. Those visuals when you were trying to re-enter the dream can be treated differently sometimes. Sometimes it is easier to grab on to those when you are just waking up from a dream and re-enter (DEILD, a type of WILD).

Thankyou!

Yes well since this was my first time getting lucid from a WBTB and this is the longest I couldn't go to sleep you could be right! I guess I will experiment with drinking more water for a slightly earlier WBTB. Thanks for the link that guide seems very useful I will read through the whole Q & A later

Yes RDAT is random daily awareness technique! Thanks for the advice with the visuals. I guess my mantra and visualisations are working so I will keep at it!

spd, the link I provided jumps you directly to one post that talks about getting back to sleep. The whole guide/thread is great too though.

For the last two days I have been to busy (and lazy) to rrally commit to Lucid Dreaming but now I am back into practicing

If you can find some aspect of the experience, the learning or the daily practice that is interesting to you, you may find it easier to consistently work towards any of your LD goals. For me early on, just knowing I was having all of these bizarre dream experiences (even non-lucid dreams) felt like I was creating extra hours each day...like I was finding extra time!

Let me know if you have any questions.

Sure thing exams have popped up so I have been spending a lot of time doing that so I haven't kept up with my daily routine as much. I have still been taking down notes for my dream journal and have noticed some interesting dream in the last week. I will be asking questions in the future thanks

No worries exams are very important and keeping up with your dream journal will be helpful to transition back into your daily routine later.

Ok exams are now finished and I am going to continue my daily routine which at the moment consists of
-writing in dream journal
-questioning reality and preforming the finger through the palm reality check + 1 or 2 other ones
-picking 3 objects/things each day and when ever I come across them preform a reality check
-before bed I read some DV threads and my DJ
-use relaxation techniques before going to sleep and drink water
-mantras+visualization
-wbtb
-read dj and dv threads
-relaxation techniques + mantras and visualization

It is good to see you back Did you have any questions or are you running into any challenges?

Hey fogelbise! I don't have any questions at the moment but I'm sure I will soon! Also 290 posts and 290 likes :O nice

Haha thanks Sounds good, I will check back in later.

Ok I have not had a lucid dream sincw but my recall has been getting pretty good now. I think my brain is starting to see dreama as important to some extent because even when I don't recall a dream I will sometimes do something throughout the day and it will make me remember a small fragement, or an image, or a feeling from a dream I had that night.

Also a little bit unrelated next year in psychology the first topic is all about the concious self and includes sleep so I am really excited for when that starts up to learn more about sleep cycles and NREM and REM sleep

That is great that you are improving your recall. Since you previously had concerns about getting sleep, have you considered saving the wbtb's for school breaks or weekends?

Thanks Thats the thing I forgot to mention I havn't been doing wbtb's recently because Its to draining at the moment. I like the weekend idea, and its school holidays in a week and a half so then I will be able to wbtb heaps

also I have a question are lucid dreams possible in 30-60 minute afternoon naps? or is there barely any REM sleep in afternoon naps?

Other people have success with lucid naps but not myself so far...but it could be that my normal power nap is so ingrained into my brain to just zone out and I don't really enjoy naps longer than 20 minutes normally since they tend to leave me groggy. From what I learned from Sageous though, it works best within 3-4 hours (or less) of waking up for the day. I think it may only work reliably after 3-4 hours of waking up if you happen to be sleep deprived (which is not something I would ever recommend aiming for, but if you already are...perhaps). Laberge apparently mentioned success with afternoon naps in his early research but according to his lucidity institute website, it suggests this so called "nap" (which sounded like a late wbtb to me) as a good method:

In fact, the nap technique, refined through several NightLight experiments, is an extremely powerful method of stimulating lucid dreams. The technique requires you to awaken one hour earlier than usual, stay awake for 30 to 60 minutes, then go back to sleep.

Ok that makes sense and helps a lot I will post here more to keep you updated on my progress

Indeed, if you take a nap within few hours of waking up in the morning, you body understands it's just a nap. It knows you just went through NREMs that you need for restoring and repairing our bodies. so it jumps straight into REM.

But if the nap is later, and closer to your normal bed time, it may think it's just an early bed time and it will attempt to go through full sleep cycles. Those start with about 80 min of NREM and 10 min of REM. As we sleep, NREM gets shorter and REM longer. And towards morning, and during morning naps, we just go through a very short falling asleep before we get into REM.

Good luck

Thanks gab

I'm having trouble sticking with my routine. Like my interest and attitude towards LDing is still there but the practices can leave you a bit exhausted haha. Would doing my daily routine 6 times a week and taking a break from all the reality checks, awareness, etc for 1 day be a good idea?

Also holidays start at te end of this week so that = more sleep, naps,etc

Some days I cut back on my full day practices just so I don't get burned out and stop altogether. I think you have more to lose by stopping for weeks at a time...so one day off would do you well, especially if you are feeling close to burning out. I often do almost nothing during the day towards lucid dreaming on my weekends and I am able to keep on an ever-improving path so far.

Agreed with fogelbise. Some people report having lucids, just after they decide to take a break from practicing. In my opinion, this is because of the mental state. When we are trying to have a LD, we are often trying too hard. We want it so badly. And that's not the best attitude to have.

But when we take a break, our attitude is "I know I can lucid dream, so I'm not gonna push it, if it happens, it happens". And that's the way to go. To KNOW, that we can, but without trying too hard or pushing it...

But even if you take a short break, I would not stop writing in the DJ. Our mind still needs to know, that dreaming and remembering them is important to us. Happy dreams

Thanks for the reply gab and fogelbise sorry for the late reply, I have been lazy/only have access to a phone /had a reply written up but it deleted itself :/

anyway I like the idea of taking breaks on the weekends so hopefully I don't burn myself out again Since my abscense I have had two lucid dreams, one was a result from talking to my bro about lucid dreaming and reading about lucid dreaming for around 3 hours before I went to sleep this was the lucid dream "I was in a huge park with many grassy cliffs walking around the paths by myself. I later on find a bike and start riding that around the grassy cliffs. I am actually non-lucid for quite some time riding the bike around but I remember thinking for some reason that it riding along these cliffs will increase my chance of getting lucid tonight. As I keep riding the bike I realise that I am getting close to the streets again and realise that there are lots of shops should I ride down the cliff in front of me (now being on this hill with a bike reminds me of a past dream) So I am thinking about riding down to where the shops are where I hear my dad call my name in an angry voice. I look down below and my dad has a wooden house set up on one of the grassy hills. This trigures lucidity and I'm trying to remember to preform the finger through the palm rc. I know the first time I attempted the rc I stuffed it up, I believe I tried to stick my finger through my phone screen instead of my palm haha. Next time I tried sticking it through my palm and I had success. Watching and feeling it go through my palm was awesome, as I have never succesfully used that rc in a LD before. When I look up dad is shouting at me in a house although it now feels like my real house. I see this as a perfect oppurtunity to try out my favourite dream attack: freezing people I have only ever been able to freeze a brick wall and decided that now was the time to practice more. I stuck my arm out made my palm face dad and tried to freeze him. The first attempt didn't work although the second surely did and he stood there with pale, frozen skin and his mouth open from shouting. I started flying around my house and even attempted to shoot beams of ice while flying As a result I had to rotate my arms to stop myself hitting the ground. I eventually landed on the ground against my will :/ I briefly opened the front door of my house and closed it (I don't know why, maybe my lucidity was fading) I heard my mum running down the hallway towards me very happily and I was interested to freeze her while she was running. I did,and she halted to a stop, frozen, but nearly crashed into me haha. I was then able to unthaw her as well so to practice I then asked her if it was ok to freeze and unfreeze her repeatingly to practice and she told me it was fine, but watch out because she can't eat sugary foods (lol?) I then woke up from moving my hand in bed and forgot to attempt a DEILD

Also I had another one a couple nights back where I woke up at 5:30 and eventually fell asleep again at 9 where my lucid dream happened. I became lucid when I was frightened by a bike riding towards me at high speeeds with an invisible rider came towards me I jumped out of the way, became lucid and flew so fast I was flying right through some trees.

Despite being lucid in both these dreams I feel like I wasn't lucid enough? Like in the first one I just randomly opemed the front door and closes it again and especially in the second one, despite being lucid I was concerned about the bike and I was panicking even though there is nothing to worry about and I am lucid! Actually my panicking is why the dream ended I freaked put because of the bike and the sky was getting dark so as I was flying I was trying to fly super fast because I was still worried about the bike and I tried changing the brightness.of the sky at the same time because it was getting dark because of this I hit the ground and the dream went all fuzzy for a bit and continued without me being lucid