Getting up vs. dream recall
Since I don't want to oversleep on my naps again, I put my alarm far away from my bed. This really helps to get up and stay awake, but it also takes away my chance on dream recall.
Now I do remember having a dream in my 30 min. nap, but can't recall any detail. Well, I'm off to bed for my core within 3.5 hours anyway, so new chances for a good dream :)
*edit* Just thought of a very simple (and obvious) solution: use 2 alarms :-)
1 soft alarm in my bed, to wake me up but give some time to recall my dream. And the usual WAKE UP NOW! alarm set 3 minutes later.
YEAH! first lucid longer than few seconds!
This was great! A good improvement from last time, when I was struggling with missing feet, falling over and loosing lucidity within less than a minute.
Before going to bed, I read about 15 minutes in my newly received EWLD book. I'm playing 'the ultimate lucid induction' mp3 every time when I read about lucid dreaming and this time also on my speakers instead of on the iPod. It was around 3:20 that I fell asleep and less than half an hour later, I have this dream!
I was in a underground hallway (like in a deserted shopping centre). I had a skateboard and was trying to ride on it. But just standing was too difficult to accomplish, so I was just pushing the board forward, trying to jump on it and then missing. There was a group of skaters around the corner, they were doing some tricks, which made their board crack and a part of it flew in the air and hit me. They started laughing at me, because I was such a terrible skater. Then I thought 'ah, you can laugh, but I don't care, cause I am dreaming!
Some other guy walked towards me, he had a large cardboard box in his hands and as I was touching the box, I was saying out loud what I was doing 'I'm touching the box' 'I'm grounding my dream'. I had to act quick, because the dream didn't stop, it was like a flowing storyboard and I just had to act with it.
The guy who held the box, pushed me, so I could move :) I looked at my feet and they were there! I was wearing 1 white shoe and 1 black shoe. As I followed this guy, I was leaping into the air and kind of floating after him. We entered a small room, where his dad was sitting at a table. I was still holding the box and wanted to hit him on the head with it, just for fun. But as usual in my dream, when I kick, slap or punch someone, it feels like I miss or has no effect.
I was now floating around in circles around this man, really wanted to lightly slap him with the box on his head, so he would notice/respond to me, but I couldn't approach him. After 2 circles at 2m distance around him I gave up and was flying (involuntarily) towards the ceiling. I thought I could go through, but it all went black. I thought 'better wake up and write it down, before I forget!" So I forced myself to wake up, feeling my body being still in SP. I got myself to sit upright but something was not right... It was an FA and then I woke up for real.
This is the first time there were DC's involved. I didn't interact with them, they were acting like they had a business of their own, pushing me with them in the flow of my dream. I'm thankfull, because maybe if I would just stand still again, I would fall off my feet and wake up. The dream was rather soundless. No talking, no music, no sound-effects. Only my own voice when I told myself 'touch the box'.
I guess this time it lasted around 1 or 2 minutes, there was a strong 'flow' which didn't allow me to slow down, but a lot had happened :-)
This is SOOO worth all the 'effort'! I just can't wait to dream again. So, off to bed again for the rest of my core sleep :-)
First DV-member dream (very nice one)
OK, I've been procrastinating this too long, which only makes it harder to start.
First dream which has a title ;)
Kissing in Crocodile Creek
I'm on holiday with my boyfriend in an eastern European country with nice grassy hills and forests. Somehow I end up walking alone through the countryside, when I recieve an sms and arrange a kind of blind-date with someone from this forum (at that time, I don't know exactly who it is). He gives me a route description and when I'm allmost there, I can see him in a field. There's a watch tower next to the road, where I climb in and try to observe my blind-date without him seeing me. My vision is unclear and I start looking for my photo camera so I can zoom in and get a better look at him. I see that he saw me and he's coming toward my hiding place. I try to hide behind the door, so I can surprise him.
[real life interruption while typing: my Czech flatmate knocks on my door and brings me delicious palačinke (pancakes with molten chocolate, banana and whipped cream]
So, I was sitting behind the door, ready to jump forward and surprise him, but I don't get a chance, cause he already expected me to be there :P
Now he's so close, my vision is not blurred anymore and I take a good look on him. Wow, he is very cute! He has light-brown hair and very sweet blue eyes.
He's a bit younger than I am (2 or 3 years) but in contrary to what is seen as 'normal', I like it when a man is a bit younger than me.
All tension about the blind-date disappears and I feel I really like him! I want to be close to him and I think he feels that, because he takes my hand and together we walk towards a small creek. I feel both excited and mellow, walking hand in hand... that just-fallen-in-love feeling...:smitten:
We're heading for a forest, where no-one can see us (I still know I have a boyfriend somewhere, but I'm convinced he can't see us here). We reach the water and walk into it. Walking through the water feels great and he starts walking even closer to me, till his body is touching mine everywhere. Then he turns and kisses me, in the best way I've ever been kissed in a dream (which usually is already better than real life)
Unfortunately, the kiss lasts very short and suddenly there's a crocodile in the water, heading for us! We run out of the water, but there's a 1m high wall with a steep grass hill that we have to climb to escape. I can't get a hold of the grass, so he lifts me up before saving his own ass. How romantic, he's so sweet :-)
When I reach the top (by pulling myself up holding only to blades of grass) I look back and see the crocodile stays there, pfew! Now other little crocodiles are crawling on the field, but they are very small and I step on their mouth, so they can't bite us. There's other people walking around and my boyfriend shows up too. I don't feel embarrassed, I just continue my holiday with him, while my new blind-date goes with us on the trip.
We're travelling through Romania by train which costs only a few euro. Then we want to go back, but this costs 5000 Kuna (Croatian money, so we're probably in Zagreb now) and this is calculated as 120 euro. Way to expensive, cause we only paid a few euro to get there. We decide to get into the train without a ticket, but I don't know if we made it back, because my dream ends here.
I wake up, feeling very happy (but also disappointed because of the short kissing) and decide to screw my polyphasic schedule and fall back asleep, hopefully to see my blind-date again, so I can ask for his name.
A less congruent story, but with some nice details
Revealing of the blind-date
I'm at home, standing behind my computer (I have to leave soon, so I don't take the time to sit down). An MSN conversation screen pops up, it's Mark. He asks me about 'yesterday' and would like to meet me again. Ah, so it was him. I'm not surprised by this (although I didn't know who it was till I saw his name on the screen) Then a lot of pink pop-ups appear in the screen, which hinder me in answering Mark. Instead of the regular x in the top-right corner, there are strange symbols and I don't dare to click, since it might install a virus... He says these are his sisters fault, that's why they are all pink ;) yeah, there is some real-life-logic in my dreams ;)
I don't need to answer him, all I do is think about him and suddenly I'm on the back seat of a car (probably a taxi) sitting next to him.:content: He's the same guy, but now he has light brown eyes instead of blue. I don't care, I like him either way ;)
I would like to kiss him again, but he's a bit shy and refuses, saying we can't do this in a car where other people can see us (sounds more like what I would say IRL) and before I can convince him the cab-driver really doesn't care, my dream ends again :(
Wow, what a great dream to start the day :)
It took some time before I wrote it all down, but this is a dream I won't forget soon! Now, take some courage and press the submit button...
First nap WILD --> fought the pressure!
I was suddenly feeling very tired. It would have been another 2 hours till my core sleep, but I thought 'why not take a 20min nap and try to have some nice dream'.
For the dream part, scroll down to the blue text :)
I laid down on the couch, imagined a nice dream scene (Mark can guess what it was about :cheeky:)
First the usual 'sinking' occurred, falling into SP within 2 minutes.
Then the terrible noise/pressure started again. This time it was mainly noise, like you are in a low-budget air plane next to where the engine is or you are driving a car at high speed with the windows open.
I tried to see how much I could stand, pretending that I really was in a plane and that noise had a cause. Well, not too lucky, at a certain point it got too much to handle and I forced myself to wake up by concentrating on breathing and/or moving my hands. Pfew, that worked, but I really wanted to try again. So I went through the same process several times (falling, noise, forcing myself to wake up).
One of the moments was VERY odd: I saw images that could have been from when I was a little baby. I heard my mother talking to me in a sweet voice and saw flashes of images that I didn't recognise, but somehow reminded me of things when I was very young. As this crossed my mind, somewhere between waking and sleeping, the whole pressure/noise and muscle twitching experience started to feel like I was being born, but then backwards. That scared me enough to try and wake up! I don't know if these were real memories or something my brain came up with because I just read burned up's journal about his childhood dreams...
Then I remembered the FILD technique and since I managed to wake up by moving my hands, maybe I would be able to pass through SP by focussing on this movement. Great Idea!
I really focussed on moving my hands, suddenly they were moving a lot while the rest of me was paralysed and I didn't wake up from it. Strange! I thought, lets try to get down from the couch. It worked! I was struggling to pull myself out of my paralised body and onto the floor.
As in my previous WILD, I was crawling/floating around on the floor, very unstable and with a short sight. I could see my carpet and some pieces of furniture on the floor. Small chairs and tables which I tried to grab, throw or whatever. All with minimal result, cause I was very weak. I continuously bumped into things and could FEEL the pinching in my leg. Especially the feel was very realistic.
As I crawled around quite helpless, I called for clarity, stabilisation etc, but didn't work. Then I called for strength and I managed to float a little higher. I saw my window and thought that would be a good way to escape. I live on the 11th floor and my dream view was just as IRL. Nighty skyline, lots of little white and orange lights.
I floated through the window, reminding myself: you can fly, you won't fall down.
Still having little control over my movement, I started flying backwards, facing the ground, as if I was pulled by my legs. I was flying very fast, away from earth. This was getting too scary and woke myself up (took quite some effort) [I have 'space dreams' sometimes, in which I see the earth from the sky, or see the sky from 'the edge of the earth', but those dreams are both interesting as well as scary, seeing things so BIG you realise how small you actually are]
Total time guess would be 2 mins for the dream. Total 'sleeping' time was less than 15 mins.
It's interesting, how little control I have over my body when dreaming and how this relates to real life. IRL I can feel clumsy sometimes, I think I need to increase my balance in waking life. The crawling around could also be symbolic: I just started LD-ing and need to learn it like a baby learns how to walk...
I was talking in English in my dream. That's funny, because it's not my main language and at the moment, I only read/write English on this forum.
Damn, this is so addictive!