Thanks fogelbise, I haven't been able to repeat that success my recall is still okay. My sleep routine has slipped a little over the past few days, but these things happen, and I should be able to get back into the routine easily enough.
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Thanks fogelbise, I haven't been able to repeat that success my recall is still okay. My sleep routine has slipped a little over the past few days, but these things happen, and I should be able to get back into the routine easily enough.
I've been a bit lazy in updating this, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been active. I had a close call last night, and I think I unintentionally WILDed.
I did my usual bedtime routine - stretch, energy work, meditation. This has been working out well for me. My recall is still pretty good and I sleep better.
This time something weird happened. I lay in bed after 5-10 minutes of meditation. I felt my body "buzzing" with sensations after the energy-raising practice I did. As I lay in bed, I experienced something that felt like something more than the hypnagogic imagery I experience during a DEILD. It felt like I was "lifted" out of my body and I was flying down the stairs. I didn't have to relax into the dream image - it was like the dream was forcefully pulling me in. In this image the lights were on downstairs, when in waking life the lights had all been turned off.
The suddenness and intensity of this experience shocked me, and I jolted awake before I could reach the bottom of the stairs.
fogelbise - does this experience sound familiar to you? I would be interested to hear your take on it.
I'm going to have to try this again. It happened after I experimented with a new energy-raising/chakra practice. Hopefully I might have another chance to go through with it.
Congratulations on the WILD Pickman!! It definitely put a smile on my face as it brought forward the memory of an enjoyable WILD I had where I was shot up out of the bed at the beginning of a WILD. It is unusual, but not unheard of, to WILD so close to going to bed for the night, but it seems more likely if sleep was off on previous nights or if you have an atypical NREM/REM pattern of sleeping. Very cool!! :D
Thanks fogelbise - I have spent my nights since then trying to replicate my success with no luck until last night. However, it wasn't a WILD, but an unanticipated success with WBTB. I woke in the night, stayed up for a little bit with the lights on, and then fell back to sleep to experience this: Abusing Richard Branson's hospitality - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
It was another odd one, where I kind of knew that I was dreaming, but didn't act on it until later. It was a little bit short-lived, but fun from what I remember of it. It probably came in the middle of an REM cycle because I didn't wake up from it. It wasn't until I went over the dream in my mind on waking that I realized I had a lucid moment at some point.
I'm still trying for another WILD success though.
No success over the past few nights, but my dream recall is getting less fragmented. My quality of sleep is getting better due to a disciplined commitment to my sleep routine so we'll see how it goes.
Last night I did have a moment where I should have become lucid. I had one of those dreams where I left a room, only to return to it a few seconds later to find the place different. The lights had come on and the curtains closed all by themselves somehow. Instead of going lucid I just felt freaked out, and tried to figure out how that happened.
Congrats on another LD a few days back! :)
The dream you mentioned yesterday...that can definitely happen to me as well. I will occasionally question something and then an explanation presents itself during the dream and I sometimes accept it and continue on non-lucid.
It seems like your frequency is improving! Keep up the good work!
Last night, yet another brief lucid dream success: Lights out on the seafront - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
I forgot to stabilize because I was so taken by surprise by being plunged into darkness. My focus was on seeing what is in front of me. Unfortunately, I lapsed into non-lucid dreams.
However, the dreams were very vivid, and my recall was pretty good. The frequency of my lucid dreams is definitely improving, so hopefully I can have longer lucid dreams if I keep this up.
Congrats on another LD!! :) You can definitely have longer ones. I don't know if I mentioned this to you yet, but one factor that also gave me longer LDs was realizing that even if it seems like the dream is ending, that doesn't have to mean that I am definitely going to wake up. I found more and more occasions in which I could patiently wait out the fading of the dream into the void and form a new dream environment through visualization, closed eye teleporting or simply waiting to see what forms while reminding myself that I am dreaming and rubbing my hands if there is nothing else to touch.
I meant to get back to you on this sooner. So do you think that the darkness that occured in the dream was the void? Or the transition into another dream, or dreamless sleep? It was just weird that I could see lights in the distance, just not in front of me. Visualizing new dream scenes within a lucid dream never seems to work for me, so next time it happens I might just focus on stabilizing and waiting to see what else comes up.
Since then, I haven't had much luck with lucidity. My recall is still pretty good, and the sleep routine is going okay, but apart from that nothing more interesting as of yet.
Yes, I think it definitely could have been the void. I think that the void can occur in different situations like the end of a dream, the end of REM, or just through a loss of awareness...but these are just hypotheses. Do you generally consider yourself good at visualization? If not, the wait and see approach is fine as long as you are actively reminding yourself that you are dreaming and doing some hand rubbing or feeling around for anything you can find. If you lose patience, you can try a closed eye teleport by simply thinking
(one word can sometimes work like "beach") where you would like to arrive after closing your eyes for a second.
That's the thing - I consider myself pretty good at visualization, but when I apply it during a lucid dream it has as much effect as it does in the waking world. It has no effect whatsoever. That's why I generally opt out of tasks where I have to conjure things up in my dream environment, because I have never succeeded at it.
As an update: Not much success over the past couple of nights. Reasonably good recall, and good sleep, but no lucidity.
Another success a couple of nights ago, but it was so brief that it was hardly worth posting a DJ entry for. Basically I was outside a train, and I briefly tried to interact with a DC. I've been getting a lot of these mini-lucid experiences over the past couple of months. I guess I really need to step up my game with the dream recall.
Congrats on another lucid! Have you noticed anything common between these "mini-lucid experiences" that might help you identify the best area to focus on? I had a short lucid experience last night but upon reviewing the details it seemed it was an important one. I feel like I learned something important that I had been meaning to ask my subconscious during an LD and feel like I may have gotten my answer last night.
I had a look back at the last three lucids, and interestingly, two of them were train stations! The only thing that seems to connect these dreams is that it just dawned on me that I was dreaming - except for the one by the sea where the realization was more sudden. But they were all in the middle of a REM cycle.
I'm not sure how important either of these dreams were. I wasn't asking my subconscious anything.
And a couple of nights ago, I had another mini-lucid that occured under similar circumstances: Strange assortment of imagery - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
It's a bit of a weird one, and the lucidity seemed to dissipate quickly. I wonder if I had stayed lucid, would I have gone into the void like with the previous seafront dream?
So last night, I had another one, and it was longer this time: Partying with Daniel Radcliffe; Dancing in the mirror - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
It's funny how long lucid dreams always seemed to leave me feeling knackered the morning after. I overslept by half an hour, so it's a good thing it wasn't a work week.
WBTB seems to be key to longer lucids. I felt like I almost WILDed while I was getting off to sleep, but the sleep paralysis freaked me out, and I kept on resisting it until I dropped off. But I realized I was dreaming fairly quickly.
Awesome!! :) Congrats on another 2 LD's since we last spoke! It sounds like you are discovering your keys. Try to think about all of the things you might have been doing leading up to these successes so that you can keep them up. I definitely feel WBTB is very powerful.
Thanks fogelbise. Dream recall and a regular sleep routine that involves abstaining from any screen for at least an hour before bed seems to be key right now. WBTB seems to produce longer lucid dreams, probably due to the place they take in my sleep cycle.
My recall is still pretty good, although on Saturday night I should have gone lucid when I dreamed that I got up at 1:30am to find that the sun was out and most people were up and about. I found myself asking people what the time really is, but I woke up before I could realize what was happening.
I don't remember, do you normally do anything right before going to sleep? I do recommend at least lightly thinking about how you typically get lucid and lightly setting an intention to keep an eye out for catching that that night...and also doing this at any awakenings whether brief or longer like wbtb. I say lightly (lightly idea from FryingMan) mainly to make sure you are still able to go about your normal going to sleep routine.
Yes, I have a routine that involves stretching and meditation before bed. As for thinking lightly about lucidity, I actually did this before my last lucid dream when I woke up in the night. For my WBTB session I decided to sit and look over this list I keep under my pillow that contains all the things I want to do in a lucid dream - like a "bucket list" for lucid dreams. Since I'm not involved in any challenges or competitions on this board right now, I use it to remind me of what I want to do should I become lucid.
I actually tried this last night when I woke up at 5am. My dreams were still pretty intense with good recall, but no lucidity unfortunately.
I woke up at 6am last night and attempted another WBTB, but only briefly. This seemed to result in a dream that was "sort of" lucid - I thought I was in a lucid dream, but I wasn't sure, so I kept my behaviour in check I woke up before I could make up my mind for sure whether or not I was dreaming.
The dream itself was just set on the road outside my home. Nothing worth writing a DJ for, I was just wandering about outside.
I realize that I haven't updated this in a while. I'm still trying to get lucid, although my pre-bed routine has slipped a little. Despite this, my recall is still pretty good. Interestingly, my dreams have been more intense and with better recall over the past week despite the lapses I've had in my discipline, and I think this has something to do with some changes at work and my usual routine that came into place on Monday. It reminds me of how my dreams became more intense when I started doing Crossfit. It seems as though any shake-up, whether to my body, my mind or my life in general seems to have a strong effect on my dreams.
Still a good sign and with more time in the dream you probably would have become fully lucid :)
That is great that you found positive results despite dealing with changes at work...hopefully changes that are overly stressful. Lapses in discipline are okay, I would just recommend that you continue to maintain some semblance of your practice so that it is easier to ramp it all back up when you are ready to.