Pre-sleep Activity

Interested in what you guys all do before you sleep with the intent to have a lucid dream. Do you meditate? Mantras? Listen to soothing music or binural beats?

I've been trying to listen to hypnosis inductions, alpha/theta waves, binural beats, and relaxing music. Then I count my breaths to 100 and let my body fall asleep. Finally, I try to "see" my field of vision through my closed eyelids. I try to get to hypnagogia, but usually fall asleep and wake up the next morning with no recollection of my dreams. So, what do YOU do?

Drink three glasses of water, go to bed, hope for a DILD... Wake up later, try and remember my dreams, perform an RC, use the restroom, go back to bed, hope for a DILD. I occasionally use MP3's, but only if I want to. For me, plain old falling asleep is much more relaxing than counting and such, so when I'm not trying to WILD, plain old falling asleep is what I do (it is the most comfortable!). When I try to WILD, I relax each section of the body at a time, toe to head, and then back down. Concentrating on my breathing makes me want to swallow, or control my rate of breathing. So none of that. I need to try and WILD again. My first success was so crappy that I should remove it from my signature.

I'm planning on stocking my room with a LOT of water and drinking a bottle or so before I go to bed. That way, I'm hoping I'll naturally wake up during the night to pee and have some DR's and such.

I think you're both on to something, this is my new theory, I was just telling my Dad about this on Monday. He's always complaining about "at his age he's forever getting up to piss" in the night, it's no coincidence then that he's a frequent dreamer/sometimes lucid dreamer. I've noticed lately that I get up 2 to 3 times a night to piss as well, and go figure I'm usually remembering 2 to 3 dreams a night... so it's no real stretch to put 2 and 2 together and figure out that if you can awaken at 90 minute-ish intervals to go to the bathroom you're more likely to wake up during a REM period. So, to conclude, I used to not drink anything for a couple of hours before bed so I'd "sleep better" to dream, but now I've come around completely and drink 2 glasses of water every night before hitting the bed. So far it seems to be working.

http://www.vgg.com/graphics/creepout/peeFinal.jpg

I just think it makes it more memorable. You can only really remember dreams from your last REM cycle, if you wake up after one, go back to bed and have another one, you may have twice the recollection of dreams.

I drink a lot of water at night because I like water and I do find the nights that I get up to go to the bathroom I remember more dreams.


Is that a NeXtSTEP computer in that picture?:shock: I'm such a geek :p and haven't seen one of those in forever.

hmmm...all this talk about water is making me think I should try it. I rarely, if ever, wake up in the middle of the night. I literally can't remember the last time it happened. I'm also a notorious night-owl...should I instead try WBTB in the a.m.? (I usually goto bed around 2-3 am weeknights and 3-4 am weekends)

Usually I just fall asleep normally and then have 2-3 DILD's, but sometimes I listen to my own mix's and see if I can WILD easier to that. Sometimes I do sometimes I don't although I am interested in the BrainWave Generator so I am going to try that out.