Thread: Nick Seagull's Workbook

Right now I'm trying to do a RC (mental ones) a lot during the day. I'm constantly questioning reality, like, "Why that guy over there looked at me? Maybe he is my subconscious?"
Sometimes I like to close my eyes and hear the noises around me, when I had my last LD one of the things I've noticed was that there were no environmental sounds, like car noises, bird chirps, etc...
I don't know if it is like that everytime, but I thought it would be good.

As for my dream recall, I kept saying this mantra all day long, "I will remember my dreams", today I woke up with 6!!! dreams annotated in my tag notebook, right now I'm rewriting the dreams into my DJ.

By the way, 2 nights ago I was thinking about what armor could I use in this MMORPG game, I was thinking about it like for 3 days during the time I was playing, but couldnt know what to use. So I fell asleep thinking about the armor. So I woke up and I recalled a dream. I was playing this game and a friend tells me "Hey, hey, hey, hey, you have to buy this, this armor is awesome". So I googled it and it was true, it was the best armor for my character

And well, 4 of my 6 dreams today were about lucid dreaming, BUT NO, MY MIND WONT THINK THAT IT IS A DREAM BECAUSE IT IS NORMAL THAT IM IN THE BALCONY OF THE POPE TEACHING ABOUT LUCID DREAMING.

Sorry about that.

Well, enough rant! I'll keep my awareness up and I will post about my progress!

I'd love to hear some tips! Thank you

Welcome, NickSeagull, to the DILD class!

It sounds like you've had a great start already! Yes, there is a lot of material, and a lot of if can be confusing. Let me say, though, that if you have already found an approach that works for you, I would stick with it. Lucid dreaming is all about personal discovery: how you sleep, how you dream, your consciousness & awareness. Ultimately in the end you need to adapt everything to yourself. And if you like FILD/WILD and it works for you, I'd say keep doing it!

DILD is great, too, and has the benefit that every night we dream, so there's always a chance to get lucid even if you're not trying to WILD that night. And all the day and night work we do applies to both approaches.

Awareness: do what feels right / best to you. In short, the ultimate goal is to learn to *pay attention*, and not live life like a zombie. The issue many people have with "ADA" as defined by KingYoshi is that it focuses on the external world, not yourself. It is *self*-awareness that we're after in lucid dreaming practice (lucidity = self-awareness). So while you're practicing your moments of awareness, see if you can work in the notion of *you*: how do *you* feel, what are you thinking, how are you reacting, how are you affecting your surroundings (and how are they affecting you?). Paying attention during waking life also affects our dreams: they become much more vivid and you feel like you're really there, which I believe is one of the important precursors to lucidity.

Dream Journal / Recall: I'd suggest modifying your manta to be "I remember my dreams." Mantras / intentions are best kept in the present tense, so that your mind interprets them as "right now and always" as opposed to "some time later in the future". Congrats on your big recall night! Continue setting this intention, keep reaching for recall on every waking, and your recall will grow and grow. Recall does go up and down naturally, but with continued work the average night will keep getting better and better. I have a link to my recall tips on the top line in my signature, you may find some ideas useful there. You can always build your dream recall higher -- the more you work on it and consistently practice it, the better it will get, over time. Practicing and spending effort and time on dream recall *every single night* is one of the best things you can do.

Reality check and critical reflection: It sounds like you're doing both, which is great. I prefer to keep the notion of "reality check" to a simple, fast, clear check, like nose pinch/hand check. "Mental reality checks" I think are best decribed as "critical reflection." Usually it is the critical reflection & raised awareness that leads you to do a reality check to determine/confirm your state (waking/dreaming). It's useful to realize that at any conscious moment, you could be in the dream state. Never just assume that you're awake, because when you're in a non-lucid dream, you totally think that you are awake! The more you can do this all through the day, the more this kind of thinking will move into your dreams and you'll get lucid more. I'm not saying to ignore senses, just don't put *all* of your efforts into the environment around you, try to always include yourself in your awareness.

WBTB: good that you're doing this. You may experiment with gradually increasing the time of WBTB. I personally do like micro-WBTBs as well, but sometimes you can re-enter your dreams with even more awareness if you get up for longer periods of time. Experiment, keep careful records, and over time you'll discover the ideal length of time -- which may be different every night, depending on how you feel.

Dream signs: Don't get frustrated, everybody including very experienced lucid dreamers miss dream signs all the time. Dreaming about lucid dreaming shows that you're really close to lucidity, that the subject is close to your thoughts. I myself just last night in a dream thought I should change my job to "lucid dreaming professional" but missed it! As your dream journal grows, you will see patterns develop. When you detect these patterns, you can do daytime MILD practice: visualize your recent dream scene, imagine yourself there in the scene, then see yourself getting lucid in that situation, think/say "I'm dreaming! This is a dream! <the sign> means I"m dreaming!" You want to try to associate strongly experiencing the particular dream sign with the idea "I'm dreaming!" It's also good to associate anything strange, odd, surprising, or shocking with dreaming. "Anytime I see something odd, I'm dreaming!" "That's odd, I'm dreaming!" "That's weird, I'm dreaming!" Repeat these to yourself, try to imagine the feeling of experiencing surprising things, and immediately conclude "I'm dreaming!" I had one dream where I was looking at a weird device attached to a refrigerator (this is a dream-sign of mine, up-close inspection of weird little things/objects). Later I transitioned to a new location but I was still thinking about that weird little thing. "That was such an odd little tube, I've never seen anything like it before...WAIT! ODD THING?! NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE?! DREAM!" You want to build and strengthen associations like that.

So again, I think you're off to a great start, just keep doing what you're doing, and stay excited and never quit! If you keep at it, you will progress and improve steadily over time. Think of dreaming practice as a life journey rather than a fixed destination, and enjoy the journey!

So there has been a while since I didnt post here, but I have been really busy. Today a month has passed since I started my LD training (Yay!) and I have seen a lot of improvement thanks to all of you guys.

A couple of days ago I was chatting with gab on IRC and she told me this trick: Roll when getting HH during WILD, 95% sure that your dream body will roll instead of your physical one. That night I tried it and it worked! And not only one, but 2 times + another short LD I had, that night I had 3 LDs, I felt really happy, even if they didnt last more than 10 seconds, I accomplished 3 WILDs in a row!

Last night I had a very VERY vivid dream, it was so detailed that I filled 7 pages of a notebook (A4 size). In the end of the dream I did a thing that I used to do when I was a kid:
Apply dream control even without being lucid.

When I was a kid, whenever I had a nightmare, I didnt know consciously that I was dreaming, but I did in a subconscious way.
In these nightmares I could teleport by closing my eyes, or exiting the dream throwing my self into the void.

In this dream I had last night I was being pursued by some guys and I ended up in a place that was REALLY familiar to me and I felt really safe there, it was like a sanctuary for me (actually it was a large toilet) but I felt like I was there a lot of times. Suddenly these guys entered this place and what I did? I said to myself "I have to get outta here", I closed my eyes and woke up.

Why didnt I get lucid?

Anyways, after that I did a WBTB and tried a WILD. It did work and didnt, I was doing WILD and was conscious all the time, but suddenly I teleported to another place and instantly lost all my lucidity, any way to improve this?

Thank you guys for keeping me motivated, thank you guys for making me dream

Congratulations using Gab's trick! I think knowing that you are likely already dreaming (by way of that 95% seed) gives you the confidence you need to claim that dream.

On your questions at the end, it comes down to awareness. Working on self awareness during the day can help the awareness to be there in the dream plus at night reminding yourself that this is my dream can help you retain awareness and not lose lucidity. quickly finding yourself in a new scene like your teleport can be tough if you don't remind yourself right before and/or during the teleport. Doing an RC when you walk through doors or enter new rooms or places during waking life can also help with this but this is more of a longer term solution as opposed to reminding yourself during the dream to retain awareness. Wake back to bed also helps to raise awareness.

Thanks fogelbise, thats what I suspected!
But no worries, I'm working on it!!!

So, tonight I tried to do some meditation before going to sleep because I was really stressed. I stumbled upon this video: 8 hours Sleep Hypnosis. So I said, lets give it a try. (It was the first time that I went to bed, no WBTB)
I just wanted to relax didnt want to WILD or recall dreams because I had a really bad week.

So in this video this woman started to help me to relax a lot, until the point I really felt that I was floating.
At one moment she said, now you can choose, drift off to sleep, or keep yourself awake so you could experience Lucid Dreaming.

I felt so refreshed after the relaxation so I said to myself:
I choose the second one, obviously

She basically guided me through the steps of a WILD, but it was a lot easier than when I use to do it because I didnt need to think which step I have to follow now.
Then I got unconscious for a moment. I opened my eyes and I was sitting at a desk with a teacher of mine. He was talking to me, but I knew this was a dream, as I just entered into it and I said:
"Teacher I dont give a damn about what you are telling me"
- WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?
"Yes what you've heard, I'm in a dream, and I want to take advantage of this moment"
Here where the problem came, he answered:
- Thats good, but no
Right there I woke up
But I laid still and tried a DEILD.
The meditation audio was still playing on my headphones and suddenly I feel how someone grabs me by my ankles, I look and there is this woman from this meditation chanel.
She lifts me up and throws me against the wall of my room, right when she lifted me up I screamed, but in the air I realized: This is a dream!

So after I fell to the floor I felt that the dream was quite unstable, the things around me didnt have a sharp outline. I tried to activate my senses as much as I could. I touched the desk, the walls, my wardrobe, the floor, looked around me, smelled the smell of my room and at one point I said, I need to taste something! So I just looked away and I imagined that there was an apple on my hand. Looked into my hand and there it was, so I took it, I bit it and tasted it (Best apple ever). But right after that I woke up.

Any tips to improve my time inside?
(Sorry if I posted some part of my dream here, I know this isnt my DJ but it was to give some context)

No worries at all about posting your dream in here. That was a good result! Time inside the dream improves with time practicing lucid dreaming. Do you know how long you had been in bed when the LD started? The first REM cycle is usually short and you may have been dreaming even before you recognized the teacher dream. The best advice I can think of based on what you told me is to continue to do stabilization but don't worry about stability or think of it as stabilizing lest you start to think too much about stability. If that doesn't help you avoid thinking about stability you can go with the "carefree" option for a while where you just do what you want in the dream without stabilizing but the first idea is preferred and it is achievable.

Do you know how long you had been in bed when the LD started?

I'm 100% sure that it was in the first hour and a half since I went to bed, because for what I have seen, with this hypnosis audio It's like I enter REM directly, I dont know if that is possible, but these days I was really aware that I fell asleep and started to dream, even if I wasnt lucid. Last night I fell asleep aproximately at 00:15, I woke up at 00:45 and I had a really vivid dream where I told myself, If this was a dream it wouldnt be this vivid, after seeing some weird things I woke up and decided to try WILD again after looking at the clock.

I just got myself some sleep headphones (headband ones) so I can listen to this audio more comfortably as it gave me pretty good results.

Right now I do a RC every time I think about being dreaming so what happened last night won't happen again.

I'm really happy with the results i'm getting

Nothing is set in stone with regards to dreaming timing. It depends on your overall sleep schedule, if you're well-rested or not, and many other factors. I don't think I've ever had recall within the first 30 minutes, but I have had recall within the first 90 minutes, even though I usually don't notice that waking typically.

I'm glad things are going well, keep it up!

I'm 100% sure that it was in the first hour and a half since I went to bed

That could be the reason it wasn't long (shorter REM in first cycle is the norm) but what FM said is true also and what I said before as well about improvement over time.

That is great that it is working for you. Are the new headphones comfortable for sleeping?

Thanks for your replies guys!

fogelbise, I'm still waiting for the package to arrive, but I will write it here

How's the dreaming been recently, NickSeagull?

Agh, had some really bad weeks lately in my personal life.
But at least I had a free week for vacation and I'm starting again with Lucid Dreaming!

Will post progress here!

How did those headphones work out?

Still waiting for them.

Its really strange these days, I dont recall any dreams in the night or the time when I wake up, but I recall fragments of them during the day, I can generally recall like 2-3 fragments per day during the lunch time or later.
I dont really know if I should jot them into my DJ, because Im not 100% sure if it was a dream or some random thought that makes me think its a dream. What can I do guys?

Definitely write down any impressions you have. Are you spending effort every night but not recalling anything, or you're just not spending the effort or setting intention?

I think setting intention, and keeping dreaming on your mind as something really important to you is essential for maintaining and building recall. Review my dream recall tips (link in my signature), that may help get your recall going again.

Hi everyone again!

Fryingman, I was spending the effort and couldn't recall anything...
My life took an unexpected turn lately and I had, and still have, a lot of things in my mind during the day.

So I thought, let's start again, let's start to learn about lucid dreaming from scratch.
After reading some guides for beginners, I opted for practicing MILD, as I think it is the best one for busy people, and tried it last night.
I imagined myself in a forest, with a lot of dry leaves on the ground, and guess what?
After a while I was there in my dreams.
But I wasn't lucid, at least not until the dream turned into a nightmare.
I saw a dog in the forest tearing up another dog, and looking at me angrily. After that it started to chase me, and I started to run.
"This cannot be this bad, it's worse than a dream", i thought.

Yes! A dream!

I stopped right there, and straighten my arms as I was shooting energy from my chest into the sky.
The clouds disappeared, the sun started to shine bright and the dry leaves turned into green grass.

What I do a lot IWL (I dont know if its an RC or not but I do it) is to check that every object and every person has a shadow. In my dreams I dont see shadows generally, and if I look for them I must be RCing so more chances to be lucid.

Anyways, everything in the dream started to have shadows. The trees, the evil dog, me. The dream was so vivid that I woke up. I started to jot down my dream and guess what? I woke up again, it was a FA.

I always remember to do the RC like 30 minutes after getting out of bed, any suggestions for doing it first thing in the morning?


I think I'll keep on practicing MILD as I cannot lose some sleep during the night for WBTB -> WILD, and my mind is not stable enough for doing constant RC's so I can DILD.

Thank you all for giving me all this support, and incase some of you thought that I quit. I didn't.
I can Pause, I can Fastforward or Rewind.
But the Play is already pressed.


PS: Got the headphones yesterday, they are REALLY comfortable, and even better, the fabric is washable as you can take the earpieces out.

I always remember to do the RC like 30 minutes after getting out of bed, any suggestions for doing it first thing in the morning?

Set an intent before bed and at awakenings or use a mantra along the lines of "Every time I wake I RC" at least until it becomes a habit and then you can redirect your intention "muscle" to something else.

The headphones sound great. What is the brand/model?

Hey guys again, I seem to be recovering my dream recall.

The problem is that I cannot get myself thinking all the day about LDing. I dont know how to recover that skill I had.
I came up with an idea. I will make a map of a "virtual" world and I will try to go there every night.

The headphones sound great. What is the brand/model?

These are the headphones
There are other brands that make more expensive ones, but I tried these and they work great.

Hello guys, Nick Seagull here.

I made some progress with DILD and MILD, had 3 LDs these 2 weeks, the only problem is that when I'm LDing everything is clear and vivid, but when I wake up I remember just some details of what Ive done in the LD.

My dream recall just dropped after that "incident" and I dont know how to get it back

I set the intention, I need to remember my dreams...
But in the morning I just remember fragments of my dreams

I really need some help D:

I'll focus first on your positive results there! Congrats on the 3 additional LDs!

Originally Posted by NickSeagull

I made some progress with DILD and MILD, had 3 LDs these 2 weeks, the only problem is that when I'm LDing everything is clear and vivid, but when I wake up I remember just some details of what Ive done in the LD.

Some LDs come with better recall than others but let me know if you are experiencing this with a strong realization of exactly what's going on (your waking body is actually somewhere back there asleep and everything that is "happening" is completely within your mind). Basically, if the realization is a little weak, then you may want to try one particular focus, but if it is fairly strong, there is another focus or technique to help you out with that particular challenge.

My dream recall just dropped after that "incident" and I dont know how to get it back

Though I don't know what happened in the incident, I bet it will come back with practice and patience. Have you read FryingMan's dream recall tips? (link is in his signature)

I set the intention, I need to remember my dreams...
But in the morning I just remember fragments of my dreams

Even FryingMan, who I consider a King of Recall around here, has some nights of fragments or no recall so it does vary sometimes even for those who are great at recall and varies even more for the rest of us. Keep in mind that a good chunk of people that you ask would tell you that they don't dream at all (only because they don't recall their dreams at all). With that in mind, fragments are better than nothing, but you can definitely do better over time. If you like the advice you get anywhere on the site, don't forget to hit the like button.