Thread: Complete Stability (discussion)

Spinning has always greatly increased my clarity, and going to bed early makes longer lucids, for me at least.

You can try spinning as Higurashi said... and hand rubbing. They do not work for me though. What definitely works for me is focusing on something. I just stare at something every once in a while, if things get hazy I quickly go grab something in the dream and focus on it, see how it feels, what it is, what it says, etc.

Okay. So now we have...

Hand Rubbing
Spinning
Focusing on detail
Good sleep

More, more

Eh, I read somewhere If you shout "I'm dreaming", that might help.

Originally Posted by ca1um132

Eh, I read somewhere If you shout "I'm dreaming", that might help.

This is a major one used in emergencies!

Okay, that was good.

There is a video on youtube about lucid supplements, but they only help to gain lucidity. Does anyone have some sort of list of supplements which affect sleep? Hmm... Aint there a supplemental guide somewhere in these forums?

EDIT:
Found the supplemental guide. But keep telling the tricks.

For clarity/realism:
I've heard that shouting "CLARITY NOW!" or "INCREASE CLARITY" can improve your dream clarity. Another strategy is to ground yourself in the dream by examining objects and your environment with all of your senses. I've never really needed this, though. In my personal experience, clarity and detail increase when I look for clarity and detail. It's also possible that you just remember dreams with little detail, which was the case for me at one point. I forgot how real my dreams were and doubted them, but I became lucid and was stunned by the detail. I made a note to myself to remember that it was incredibly clear.
For length:
Dream length will probably increase when you get more skilled in lucid dreaming. However, I suggest reading this guide by BillyBob: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=45854
especially the part about restarting your dreams.
I also suggest learning to DEILD when you wake from a lucid dream to prolong your total lucid time.
For stability:
Probably some of the advice in my realism section should help you. Again, a good strategy is to ground yourself in the dream by examining objects and your environment with all of your senses, in detail. I haven't really experimented with my dream stability so I can't help too much here
For lucidity:
In the dream, when you become lucid (this is a strategy I use all the time with good results) is to stop what you're doing immediately and don't do anything impulsive. Just take a moment to fully comprehend the fact that everything around you is just a dream, and look around. While doing this, your mind has time to become completely conscious and lucid. Take the time to remember what you intended to do in your next lucid dream, and do that. If you can't stop for some reason, let's say you're being chased by a serial killer with a knife, just deal with the problem as fast as you can while reminding yourself that it's a dream.

Hope I helped,
-Pojmaster

So new things:

Just stopping and using senses
Commands

I think that those were the new ones..

So here is a somewhat raw version of a "Compelete Stability" program.

Supplements: (taken before bedtime and/or during WBTB)
B3
B5
B6
B12
Choline
Tryptophan

Tech:
Wake Induced Lucid Dream

In the dream:
-Look at something
-Touch something
-Taste something
-Smell something
-Listen to something

Note: Raw version

Spinning and hand rubbing keep you dreaming when you feel yourself waking up (and the dream fading).

They do this by forcing your brain to decide between your waking body and your dream body.

By inducing physical sensation your brain decides to stick with the dream body. However, this technique can and frequently does cause the dream scene to change. So maybe not such a good way of stabilising in the general sense.

But a good way to stabilise if a dream fades because you're waking up.

What does everyone else think?

Hm, in the dream sounds to me like "Use your senses"
Something that works for me, stop moving and close my eyes.

its all about the senses.

there is a part of the brain where all the senses come together , and a 'world' is constructed out of them and sent to our concious mind.

note: the world we see, hear, and touch is only a representation.

when we are asleep, our body is shut down to rest etc. so essentialy there are no senses being sent to this special part of the brain, so using your memory as a database, it constructs a simulated world (to practice what you have recently learnt, etc).

but in order to 'practice' these things, the concious mind only really needs sight (and somtimes sound) so only sight and sound are simulated, thus the dream is not very vivid/stable.

but when we become lucid we can command the 'dream machine' part of the brain to start producing other senses. we can do this to a point were we can produce all the senses we experience in real life, you just have to want them.

this will make your dream become very stable, (why, i dont know, but its kinda self explanitary).

to make these senses apear, you have to 'request' them from your memory by simply doing an action that produces one of these senses;

-smell a flower
-taste and apple
-listen to your feet on the ground
-feel the heat of the sun
-balance on one leg
-pinch yourself, feel the pain (no this will not wake you up , it will do quite the opposite)

we actualy have about 21 senses


all this can seem hard to remember and can be quite overwhelming, you need to practice.
so when lying in bed at night, imagine yourslef in a classic dream scenario, and use all your senses. the more you practice this, the more stable and vivid your lucid dreams will be, and it will make your normal dreams more vivid.

i have had one WILD, it ws a FA, i looked at my hand got out of bed, and it ended. 'humpf'
and looking back at it i only used sight.

i am currently not in a good situation to try LDing........STRESS......so let me know how this goes.

enjoy, and good luck

yes I agree with pond wood. Stimulating the senses is definitely the way to increase vividness/clarity and also to stabilize the dream. Once you realize it's a dream, go through your senses one by one and put your attention on that sense until it becomes bright and vivid, but don't strain, or force it, just allow the sense to become more and more vivid.

Just keep at it, and try not to be too discouraged while still learning. It took me months and months of two second blips of lucidity before I was able to sustain it for longer amounts of time, but now I can go for more than periods of longer than ten minutes.

I look at my hands. Hmm, 7 fingers. I realize I´m dreaming.

You shouldn't stop there! Try looking at every detail of your seven fingers.

Originally Posted by Mertruve

You shouldn't stop there! Try looking at every detail of your seven fingers.

will that work, the details (for me anyway) keep changing because my hands wave about aswell.

The tutorial!

This is a very good thread.

Here's what I have to input:

When I realize I'm dreaming, unless I foolishly decide to plunge headfirst into a lucid adventure, I usually sit down, close my eyes, reorganize my thoughts, take a deep breath as a calming effect (these help to prevent waking up from the realization, as well as granting increased lucidity and stability). I also rember to affirm to myself that I am dreaming.

<.<

And then I go have lucid adventures, like a power-hungry fool. One time I got in a "lucid power" battle with someone.

But that's another story.

>.>

Originally Posted by Shift

The tutorial!

Hi shift. I read the tutorial. Very interesting.

However, I'm still not sure that spinning and hand rubbing are best used for "dream stabilisation". I guess it depends on what you mean by this.

Both will help you remain in a dream if you wake up and the dream fades.
However, there is a good chance the dream scene will change.

Because of this, if your enjoying a nice dream location, and want more clarity, you probably don't want to be spinning/rubbing hands.
In this sense, having the scene change under you is not what I would call clarification.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

And if so, could the tutorial do with updating to reflect the difference?

Originally Posted by moonshine

Do you see what I'm getting at?

Why in the world would rubbing your hands cause a dream scene to change? I've done it a zillion times and done nothing but felt the texture and warmth between my hands while staying in the exact same location.

Spinning I adding grudgingly, because some swear by it while others don't. I don't. But it works for some, so it was included.

I completely support spinning and rubbing your hands, but you don't have to stop there. there are an almost infinite number of techniques you can use to improve your focus. as long as you honestly believe it will work, there should be no problem maintaining clarity. for example, I swapped eyes with a DC because i thought there was something wrong with mine. I've also tried pills which kinda work too.

If all else fails, end the dream, relax, and start again. I think its called DEILD or WBTB or something but i find it pretty helpful.

Originally Posted by Desert Claw

I completely support spinning and rubbing your hands, but you don't have to stop there. there are an almost infinite number of techniques you can use to improve your focus. as long as you honestly believe it will work, there should be no problem maintaining clarity. for example, I swapped eyes with a DC because i thought there was something wrong with mine. I've also tried pills which kinda work too.

The complaint with spinning is, if you stand up and do it right now you'll notice, while spinning you lose everything except maybe your sense of movement. Vision blurs, sound is hard to focus on since you're changing its origin so quickly. even scent might end up with localization problems. It's basically eliminating the scene around you, but focusing on a spinning sensation. So while it might help stabilize your OWN lucidity and awareness, it might completely destabilize the dream around you. Of course some people say to jump 180 degrees, others say to spin like mad. The truly wise say to bump into things while you spin. And even then I don't like the technique. But hey, for some it works, for others it doesn't.

And yea, there really are an infinite number of techniques. Some people just like to be told precisely what to do rather than figure it out themselves, which is why we end up with so many ILDs and etc.

Originally Posted by Shift

The complaint with spinning is, if you stand up and do it right now you'll notice, while spinning you lose everything except maybe your sense of movement. Vision blurs, sound is hard to focus on since you're changing its origin so quickly. even scent might end up with localization problems. It's basically eliminating the scene around you, but focusing on a spinning sensation. So while it might help stabilize your OWN lucidity and awareness, it might completely destabilize the dream around you.

Thats true, the thing is its not necissarily the same situation when you are dreaming. when you are awake, sure, you have blurred vision and you don't know where sounds are coming from, but when you've already lost focus in your dream it doesn't make much of a difference. I agree that spinning tends to change the dream, actually 50&#37; of the time it does for me... so its definitely not an appropriate technique to use if you want to see how the current dream turns out. otherwise, i think its pretty handy

Originally Posted by Shift

Why in the world would rubbing your hands cause a dream scene to change? I've done it a zillion times and done nothing but felt the texture and warmth between my hands while staying in the exact same location.

Not sure. I've noticed that whan I rub together my Hands During a lucid it disrupts the dream. Possibly because the brain power is focused in generating this feeling. Maybe its just me.

Laberges paper "prolonging lucid dreams" says this about spinning

How Does Spinning Work?
Why should dream spinning decrease the likelihood of awakening? Several factors are probably involved.
One of these may be neurophysiological. Information about head and body movement,
monitored by the vestibular system of the inner ear (which helps you to keep your balance), is
closely integrated with visual information by the brain to produce an optimally stable picture of the
world. Because of this integration of information, the world doesn't appear to move whenever you
move your head, even though the image of the world on your retina moves.
Since the sensations of movement during dream spinning are as vivid as those during actual physical
movements, it is likely that the same brain systems are activated to a similar degree in both
cases. An intriguing possibility is that the spinning technique, by stimulating the system of the brain
that integrates vestibular activity detected in the middle ear, facilitates the activity of the nearby
components of the REM- sleep system. Neuroscientists have obtained evidence of the involvement
of the vestibular system in the production of the rapid-eye-movement bursts in REM sleep. [5]
Another possible reason why spinning may help postpone awakening comes from the fact that
when you imagine perceiving something with one sense, your sensitivity to external stimulation of
that sense decreases. Moreover, and this is probably the most important factor, if the brain is fully
engaged in producing the vivid, internally generated sensory experience of spinning, it will be more
difficult for it to construct a contradictory sensation (i.e., lying motionless in bed) based on external
sensory input. When presented with two contradictory interpretations of the state of our body
or the world, our consciousness chooses one or the other, but not both models.

It also says that spinning tends to destabilise the visual component of dreams.
Which, in my mind, is why its good when a dream is breaking down, but not particularly good for "stabilising" the dream location your in.

So you could say it grounds a dream, therefore stabilizing it. I dunno, I don't do it. I woke up the first time I tried. Other people love it.