Suggestions on Best Approach

I've had 13 times (I average close to once a week since I started working on LDs) where I have become lucid in my dreams. However, I THINK I could get Lucid a lot more but need your thoughts on how to handle my problem:

First of all, I'm married, and do not want to mess up my wife's schedule if I can help it, since she isn't that big on my LD'ing. We go to sleep around 11:30pm, and I USED to wake up around 6:30-6:45. Now that I am dream journaling and recalling dreams at night, I've found I will wake up around 1:30, 3:30, and 5:30 (give or take 15-30 minutes). I don't journal then but I rethink the dreams so that I get them clear in my mind and then journal in the morning). These appear to be my dream cycles. Unfortunately, I've now found that waking up after 5:00, I cannot go back to sleep. Once in a while I will, and that is usually when I have an LD, but 90% of the time times I cannot go back to sleep... sometimes that is true for awakening after about 4:15! My mind is too active then, I believe. I've gotten off caffine, and am trying some other things (light exercise before bed, minimize TV or computer, more exposure to sunlight during the day, trying some basic meditation techniques, etc).

I'm now thinking I better just work with my sleep cycle as best I can, and have several alternatives I'm thinking of. Any thoughts on the best approach?

a) doing a more active WBTB... and get up at 5:30 for a couple hours. My wife leaves at 7:45... would that be too late for me to try to go back to sleep?

b) Or I could get up for 15-30 minutes and read to get sleepy But then I might only have about 1 hour before I get up (might work on the weekends).

c) I also have an Isochronic Tones audio... So I COULD maybe plug on the headphones at 5:30am and maybe that would get me back to sleep.

d) Or, I work from home and could probably find a time in the afternoon to use the Isocronic Tones and go for a WILD or DILD in the afternoon (I asusme thats possible?). PS if you use Isochronic Tones does this improve your own "medidation" abilities over time? In otherwords, do you ween off the tones or do you just continue to use it?

e) I originally hoped I could just DILD at night and not change any of my sleep habits, but am now thinking that might not be feasible. But I was wondering if I could DILD in an earlier dream cycle (I did have at least a couple lucid experiences in the earlier cycles... 1:00-1:30am) but according to what I've read those are "low percentage" times... certainly my dream recall is much worst then unless I wake up right in the dream. Anyway, I've heard the 2 hrs before awakening are the best, which is my highest percentage time. But, are there people out there that can LD earlier at night, on a regular frequency?

Thanks for your insights.

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Originally Posted by Rothgar

But, are there people out there that can LD earlier at night, on a regular frequency? Thanks for your insights.

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Yeah, I've been LDing for a little over 12years now. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rothgar

I originally hoped I could just DILD at night and not change any of my sleep habits, but am now thinking that might not be feasible.

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DILD is a perfectly viable method of induction. You need to place more emphasis on gaining awareness rather than messing around with your sleep cycle. This means living your daily life with a higher level of attentiveness and performing reality checks regularly. If you pursue awareness, you'll soon find your dreams to be much more vivid and exciting; not to mention more stable as well.

In order to determine whether or not you are dreaming, it's necessary to develop a habit of performing frequent reality checks. A reality check simply involves asking yourself a question, such as "Am I dreaming?" or "Is this a dream?", and may also involve specific actions you can take to determine if you are awake or dreaming.

Because most of us are not in the habit of asking ourselves "Am I dreaming?" while in the midst of a dream, we must train ourselves to get into the habit of questioning our reality. By training yourself to regularly question your reality during waking life, the habit will eventually carry over to your dreaming life and you'll find yourself posing the question while dreaming. When that happens, you'll greatly increase the odds of realizing you are within a dream and thus increase the odds of achieving lucidity.

Asking yourself "Am I dreaming?" only whenever the thought occurs to you will not help you develop the habit. Instead, you must make a habit of remembering to perform reality checks at frequent intervals throughout the day. It may help to schedule your reality checks so they coincide with other events that typically occur multiple times during each day, such as every time you eat, every time you use the restroom, every time you walk in or out of your home, or even every time you walk through any doorway. If you make it a point to ask yourself "Am I dreaming?" whenever you perform specific activities, you'll eventually develop a habit of questioning your reality several times each day.

A common method of scheduling reality checks involves setting the alarm on your wristwatch to sound every hour and performing your reality check whenever the alarm sounds. I don't recommend this method because if it's the only prompt you use you'll eventually begin to rely on the alarm as your sole trigger to perform a reality check. If you do that and then never hear an alarm within your dream, you'll never be prompted to perform a reality check while dreaming. It's much more useful to incorporate a variety of separate prompts into your day so you are frequently reminded to perform your reality check without relying solely on one specific act or event to prompt you.

You should also begin to utilize your personal dream symbols as cues to perform reality checks. (Refer to the previous entry for methods to identify your own personal dream symbols.) After I examined my dream journal and discovered water was something that turned up in more than half of my dreams, I began to use water as my cue to perform reality checks throughout the day. Each time I encountered water in any form in waking life, I took note of it and asked myself if I was dreaming. This became a habit and eventually I found myself in a dream, encountered water, and asked myself if I was dreaming. It prompted me to become lucid.

Review your dream journal to identify your own personal dream symbols and begin using them as prompts for reality checks throughout the day. By doing this, you'll condition yourself to perform a reality check whenever you encounter the dream symbol” an object or event you've already identified as a frequent participant in your dreams. Later, when you dream again of that particular dream symbol, your training will have prepared you to ask "Am I dreaming?", providing you with an ideal opportunity to recognize you are dreaming and subsequently achieve a conscious dreaming experience.

In most cases, asking yourself "Am I dreaming?" is not enough on its own. Your dreaming mind is almost always firmly convinced of the reality of the dream situation, no matter how unusual or bizarre the situation may be. You may be sailing on a river of peanut butter while gazing at elephants with gossamer wings as they fly patterns in the sky above you, yet -- without performing specific techniques to prove to yourself you are dreaming -- your dreaming mind will be convinced the situation is entirely real. For this reason, it's necessary not only to ask yourself if you are dreaming but also to take other very simple steps at the same time to determine whether or not you are within a dream.