Better stability for chained lucid dreaming?

Last night I had several false awakenings in succession, which made me realize that I was dreaming. These false awakenings became a chain of lucid dreams, all of which were brief and very unstable. This happens to me most times that I lucid dream, making it hard to accomplish anything before my dream ends. I've made attempts to prolong my dreams by feeling textures, looking at small details, rubbing my hands together, spinning around, jumping, stomping, and shouting, but none of these techniques have even the slightest effect on my dreams. My question is, are there any stabilization techniques that work particularly well with chained lucid dreaming and have you found any way to increase the vividness of your dreams to prevent them from fading out? Any help is much appreciated as I seem to have hit a rut in my lucid dreaming due to instability.

I would say just the ability to have chained lucids is quite good. Last night I had several chained lucids, and it stands out to me as particular cool to be able to do that.

Try to capitalize on things that exist. I recommend doing some sort of ritual each time you realize you are dreaming (I rub my hands together and said "I am lucid, the world is vivid", personally). This is like a cherry on the cake. It doesn't inherently make your dream longer, and honestly, the world isn't always very vivid for me nor does it often get moreso just by saying that, but, it does add substance and structure to my dreaming, and those things can help you get a foothold into the dreamworld.

Also, I recommend this to you for chaining: think about how the dreams come into being. In my chains, there are strong patterns of how the dreams begin, a certain something that often stands out for me, and I can only assume something similar will be true for you too. Sure, they don't all follow a pattern, but to start a new link in the chain, practically lucid from the beginning, well there are good enough cues for us to grab onto, and it's a wonderful skill. So yes, like people catalog dream signs, catalog your links intros. The reason I say this is again substance and structure. The more features you can notice and rely on, perhaps the more solid will become the environment. My chains last night (about 7 in total I guess) lasted about 20 minutes altogether, so I say.

And personally, I say it is better to have one or two very specifically observed experiences, than a long lucid, in many ways. If the dream is short, but you manage to just stare down a painting on the wall and take in it's details and take several mental photos of it, sure it's still short which lacks a certain satisfaction, but it's a real nugget of experience.

You can ask the dream to help you dream better/more vivid/more stable.

Also, just like there are dream signs, and common intros, pay attention to what it feels like to be losing consciousness. Recognize it coming. Recall what things seem to help and what things seem to just ensure it will end. For instance, as a lucid was coming to an end the past night or two, in an attempt to not let the dream fade I picked out an object and stared intently at it, hoping that it would be like an anchor. In that particular case, it almost seemed like it was counterproductive, like staring was destabilizing for me. So maybe next time I think I'll dart my eyes all over the scene and try to take in a lot more space rather than stare.

And for sure, rely on the chains if you often get those. As a dream is fading out and you recognize that, note to yourself that you will very likely either have another link in just a moment, or, given you history, can plant the idea right now. Try not to let the scene fade out without at least spitting out, "another dream is just around the corner". Then try to say like, "here it is" once the next one starts. This type of thing seems like wonderful fodder for learning good dream control.

Heehee, I'm totallly diggin' on chaining at the moment =) So cool, so cool.

What is happening to you also happens to me. I end up failing to stabilize my dreams. Most of the times are when I try to get up from my dream bed...

Last time I tried something different which I believe worked for me:

Instead of chaining while not thinking on nothing, I visualize where I want to go. That way I'm already on my feet and on a place with light, instead on my bed, in my dark dream room.

Then I just stared at my hands trying to make them form correctly while saying "clarity now". They were forming nicely this time. I don't know if it would last, because a friend's alarm woke me up when I was doing that...

So the thing is, maybe the place you enter your dream is not the best one for you (I always ended up in my dream bedroom).

That might help you =)

Hmmm... Are you waking from a lucid and then going back in? Because that is chaining. If you have a FA, then re-become lucid, then it is just a dream that you lost lucidity in and regained it.

Honestly, my personal way of stabilizing right now is Lind of just chaining. If a dream starts slipping I am confident that I can DEILD back in, and I dont worry at all about waking up. :P it is super effective. At first I just deilded a bunch of times. But then when I got really confident in my ability to slip back into a dream if I did wake up "prematurely" I realized that there is nothing to worry about.

Sometimes if the dream is already dark and unstable, it is just that you dont have that much vividness in your dreams, and you need to work on recall. Sometimes youjust gotta believe! Good luck. If this is something that keeps happening when you are having consistent lucid dreams, then it could be a problem, but if it has happened <50 nights, don't worry about it and keep focusing on lucids. Not stability.

If there is a specific definition of chaining I may not be using it correctly. You say it's waking up from a lucid and going back in, does that you mean you must literally wake up, as in, not be sleeping at some point? Because I wasn't referring to losing lucidity and regaining it later (something I've rarely ever done), I was referring to a dream that completely ends, some amount of time passes, a new dream begins where eventually it will not, and lucidity is gained again in a case where conceivably it may not have been -- but it didn't involve any true waking up, you were sleeping the whole time. The two dreams are experientially distinct though. I assumed this was pretty much what the OP meant.

I call it a DEILD chain. It starts with either a DILD or a WILD, which ends with me waking up. If I feel the dream was too short or otherwise unsatisfying, I lie still and go back in. I can do this a number of times before I wake up for good. I enter and exit each dream fully aware.

Though I doubt there is a textbook anywhere with a definition of "chained LD" in it: Yes, as BrandonBoss said, the general, if casual, definition of chaining LD's does indeed invlove waking up to some degree. Chaining LD's is generally a practice of using DEILD's to extend the length (and plot) of your LD across consecutive REM periods -- and REM periods tend to be separated by brief periods of waking.

[just noticed I steppped on Sybiline's post, which essentially says the same thing; oops!]

Well good to know about the casual terminology. For me, the chains I refer to specifically have no waking up between them, and in my case they are not WILD, in that I was not awake at any point, but I am aware I am dreaming from the very onset of each dream, down to the formation. This type of onset awareness is really similar to WILD, except in the couple rare WILDs I had, like seriously, seconds before the dream I was literally awake in bed and could have scratched my nose quite intentionally.

Usually when I have a lucid dream I can reenter that mindset after the dream ends and I wake up, which is how I have successive lucid dreams. However, on some occasions I get lost in that mindset and lose awareness, leading to false awakenings and even dreaming from inside my lucid dreams. When I have enough focus I can be fully lucid, but the dream usually fades far too quickly. I also have a big problem with dream recall unless I manage to become lucid. I know that I have many dreams, but they get lost in transition. I always seem to fall too deep into my dreams, and I mistake them for reality.

I think the OP is stuck in a FA loop, not DEILD chaining. I haven't yet found a good way to escape these. But to prevent it from happening in the first place, I think a sleep mask helps. Firstly because I think morning sunlight can trigger FAs, so blocking it reduces the chances of your dreams being interrupted. Secondly, a sleep mask makes for an easy FA/DEILD reality check: can you see anything through the mask?. So if a FA occurs, I'm more likely to develop a stronger lucidity instead of the weak kind that happens in the usual loop phenomenon.

^^ Agreed about the FA loop part, and that's good advice about the sleep mask as well.

I hadn't thought about it (I suppose I should have ;)), but I use a sleep mask specifically because light is the enemy of sleep, and it tends to find a way to interrupt my dreams if not kept out. By nullifying light with a sleep mask you do indeed remove a major obstacle to steady lucidity and, perhaps, you are also discouraging FA's. I don't use it as such, but yeah, a sleep mask would also be an excellent source for RC's as well!