Did it take you a long time to get lucid? Tell us about it.

There are many of us still trying to attain that goal of first lucid dream. It can be a frustrating undertaking.

I think it would be of great benefit to those of us that have been trying for a long time to hear stories of others that had success after a long battle trying to attain lucidity.

So if you tried and tried and finally achieved, tell me your story. Tell us how long it took you and any other details of your experience, such as what technique you used.

Mods - Not sure if this fits better to General or Attaining. Move as you desire :)

I did not have a long battle to obtain lucidity...However, I do have some techniques you can try to use in order to help yourself have a lucid dream...

Meditation before sleeping...There are a couple ways to meditate and so it would be your assignment to figure out which way is right for you.

Meditation is the act of calming your mind and focusing on an object, place, or thing. If you want to learn how to meditate, googling it is the best option to find out what works for you. I suggest googling something like, "meditation techniques" in order to pick the best option.

What works for me is listening to "trance" music. It is usually instrumentals and no talking in it.

Some other meditation techniques include:
1) Sitting in a cross legged position or comfortable position for 30min, focusing on a happy place or thing with your eyes closed...
2) Walking meditation:: walking meditation is where you focus on walking in a line back and forth and focusing on a "happy" place or thing. This is similar to paceing...for 30min...eyes open of course!
3) Listening to trance/instrumental music

These are the three different techniques I have tried that work for me. Try them and let me know how it goes!

Sincerely,
~Icy

Ah, for me it was a long battle indeed. My very first lucid was a nightmare as a kid (Around 5) I became lucid on it and managed to get out of the nightmare, later on I asked my brother about controlling dreams, to which he said it was easy.

Once he said that, I started trying to attain lucidity, since at the time I had no idea it was called a LD, or any idea on the techniques, had to work through logic. First thing I thought was trying to see some differencies between the dream and the waking world, but my dreams at that time, were based on false awakenings where I had to do normal stuff and go to school normally. Text was stable, I couldn't breath if I held my nose, my body wouldn't go through stuff, I tried tons of RCs without knowing their name, but none of them worked.

For 8 years, the only thing that kept me trying was the ocassional nightmare that would make me want to control dreams, and finally, I tried a WILD when first going to sleep, took 2 hours and several tries, but I managed to do it and had a lucid, in that lucid, first thing I did was to search for something different between dreams and waking, since I knew of nothing. Finally found that gravity in my dreams is messed up, and started working on a gravity RC, and then I was able to LD. Yup, I think thats the whole story in a summary.

My LD journey wasn't a hard battle really. When I was younger I would have occasional LDs but I didn't know they had a name. I thought it was cool though. Last summer I had a dream that sparked my interest in trying to attain my lucidity, and I was already at least semi natural. Oh and before this, about a year ago I was looking into LDing but wasn't really too interesting then I got back into it with this. Here was the dream. I was at my moms house, its an apartment town home place, I looked out of the peep hole and saw 3 old women, they reminded me of the "golden girls". One of them, in a teal sweater, pulled out a knife and killed the other 2, right there. Then I heard a knock on my door. The old woman had blood all over the sweater and she knocked at my door, then barged in, and had a gun or knife and was like "I'M GONNA KILL YOU. GIVE ME SOME HISPANIC BATTERIES OR I WILL KILL YOU" and I was like "OK I will look" and I knew I didn't have any, but I looked anyways, she then held a knife to my throat, and I pushed her and she ran out. I was so scared so I ran outside and went the opposite direction, I pulled out my phone and called 911, but it wouldn't go through and it connected me to my dad. I was like "DAD SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL ME. WHERE IS 911" and he was like "You are dreaming! you can do whatever you want" and I was like "AHHHGGGHH no! I am not dreaming! you are no help!" and I then hung up the phone and ran for help. I saw all of these little kids playing "vampire tag", they ran around with blood on their mouths and would tag people and then they would become vampires. One of my best friends was playing with these little kids, his name is Justin, and I asked him for help. He was like "okay" and we went up a hill back to my house. We ran inside and we were leaning against the door and somehow the old lady barged in again. I then woke up. But that is the dream that sparked my interest in dream control, the part that sparked it was when my dad (myself) told me that I was dreaming. I started researching LDing after that. I read up on WILDs, and SP etc. I lurked around on this forum a bit and decided to make an account. I did a ton of more research on methods, RCing, etc. So, after that, I started doing reality checks and dream journaling It only took me 3 days to have my first LD after doing RCs. The dream was me, and i was in my neighborhood, I was sitting by a tree and there was a spider on my head, I did and RC and I was amazed, I started soaring above the houses. It was great. I got on a really good LD mode, after about 1 month I was having 2-4 LDs a week. Then in October I hit a horrible dryspell. I ended up giving up on LDing and DJing all together for October, November and December. I only had a few in that whole time span. I pretty much forgot about it. Then in January 2011, I thought of LDing and started doing RCs and DJing, once again, just after 3 days, I had a lucid dream. Then I got back in it, it was a little rough for the rest of late January and early February, but then in mid Feb I was getting better and having LDs on a weekly basis. Now in March, I am at the best point with LDs I'm having 3-5 a week now. Since January when I got back into it, I have had about 20 more LDs only in about 2 months, which I am proud of :DThat is pretty much my whole story of LDing :) I am so happy that I didn't have to go through a TON of hardships trying to LD...because I know for some people it takes months to get an LD, which is unfortunate D:

I figured it out on my own, in the late 50's took me 3 nights. I started with a question, can one practice the modification of human behavior while dreaming? The eventual answer was yes.

Granted it is not a question a normal child would ask, however, no one that I know of has ever claimed that I was normal.

I look at my son, at his age, and I realize how much different we really are.

The technique that I used was to KISS, Keep it Simiple I am Stupid.

I would simply tell my mother in the dream that I was in fact dreaming. I focused on doing one and only one thing.

After I think... 3 weeks of reality checks I finally had my first intentional lucid dream.

I have never had an intentional lucid dream (As in WILD, or RCILD (Reality check induced lucid dream) I just suddenly knew I was dreaming. My first intentional took me about a month.

Well i would say it verys because ive seen people here go for months with nothing and a 3 days after i join i got a lucid streak from all different ways i did a rc, i felt like i was dreaming and im pretty sure i evern wild this morning so it all depends GL to all the people struggling it will come when u least excpect

Over the summer, I really focused on getting lucid. It never happened, and it got hard to write my dream journal because school started up again so I let it slide. The wierd thing is that last night, almost out of no where, I was did a dream check, saw that I was dreaming, and went lucid (and woke up probably five seconds after realizing this, but still).

Last year I was having trouble sleeping, it was around 3:00 AM and I couldn't fall asleep. I got on google,
Searching for ways to fall asleep, and stumbled upon Dreamviews(thank god I did.) I took hold of the DILD technique, doing tons of RCs, keeping my awareness up, dream journaling - The whole thing. My first LD came in 3 days. In the first month I had, probably around 5 LDs. But for some reason after that month, I haven't been able to LD. I'm now trying to find a good technique.

- Good luck mate.

I found out about lucid dreaming about 4 years ago, but was never able to get it to work until around Christmas of 2009. When I was first learning I kept trying WILD (like it seems all beginners do) and lost interest after a month of failure. Now I find that techniques like RCILD, MILD and chaining work pretty well for me. In the end I think it all comes down to finding the tech that works best for you.

Unfortunately, I never had an intentional Lucid Dream. How long have I been practicing? Well it's almost 5 years now since I started. I took some short breaks from it as many people suggested that trying too hard won't do any good. In those 5 years I had about 3 very short Lucid Dreams. All of them came randomly and were unintentional. I've had enough time to try almost every approach to LD-ing. I'm pretty sure that as some people are naturally gifted with the talent for LD-ing, like someone else might be gifted with math skills for example, I'm the exact opposite of that, the one who just can't do intentional LD's, no matter what. There is no other way how I could explain that. I find it interesting that some people lose their hope for it after a month or two, but I guess people's patience differ. I completely agree with you OwlDreamz, it is very frustrating.

It took me about two months to first get a lucid dream. Since then, I get lucid dreams whenever I want using DILD (where I realize that I'm dreaming). In real life, I'm a pretty observant person, so it's easy for me to realize that I'm dreaming.
Focus on the details of the dream, and try to find something that doesn't make sense. In a school or work dream that is repetitive, I would go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. Your reflection would be very distorted & you'll realize that you're dreaming.
Another reality check would be to try to walk through walls in real life (you can't), and in dreams try to walk through them & you'll see that you'll be able to.
Having a dream journal helps to make dreams more vivid (helps with hazy dreams) and also to remember dreams, so that you'll start to see that your dreams have the same patterns.

I'm closing this thread because it's an old one necroed with last post from 2011. And there is a new one with 3 pages of replies already.

@DieForMetal
@Tianara
Feel free to repost your replies in this new thread http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...-first-ld.html