Thread: Couldn't hold a Lucid

Congrats to your first lucid

Just more practice and experience. And also knowing, that you will not wake up too soon. If you worried about waking up, you will most likely wake up, no matter if you stabilize or not. Happy dreams.

I agree that practice and experience are needed. One problem is that some LDs will collapse no matter your experience and skill. Here is why, and why it happens to beginners a high % of the time. Waking awareness and unconcious sleep are normally seperate, they naturally ross over a tiny bit when you are barely asleep. The most likely time to realize you are in a dream state is when you are barely asleep. If you become lucid during this phase, the chance is high that becoming aware will shift you to strongly towards awake. As you get better with LDing you can become lucid during deeper sleep. Use the first ones that collapse as practice and experience.
Another problem is that your brain will normally be a bit freaked out by the first lucid experiences. It seems unnatural and the brain may awaken out of fear that something has gone wrong. i encourage beginners to actually take the time to "talk" to your brain while falling asleep for a few days. Reassure your brain that you want this thing to happen, and that is is not harmful.

Originally Posted by gab

Congrats to your first lucid

Just more practice and experience. And also knowing, that you will not wake up too soon. If you worried about waking up, you will most likely wake up, no matter if you stabilize or not. Happy dreams.

Originally Posted by sivason

I agree that practice and experience are needed. One problem is that some LDs will collapse no matter your experience and skill. Here is why, and why it happens to beginners a high % of the time. Waking awareness and unconcious sleep are normally seperate, they naturally ross over a tiny bit when you are barely asleep. The most likely time to realize you are in a dream state is when you are barely asleep. If you become lucid during this phase, the chance is high that becoming aware will shift you to strongly towards awake. As you get better with LDing you can become lucid during deeper sleep. Use the first ones that collapse as practice and experience.
Another problem is that your brain will normally be a bit freaked out by the first lucid experiences. It seems unnatural and the brain may awaken out of fear that something has gone wrong. i encourage beginners to actually take the time to "talk" to your brain while falling asleep for a few days. Reassure your brain that you want this thing to happen, and that is is not harmful.

Indeed. The first few dreams are often the most unstable, for the reasons above, so I would advise you to use your dream wisely, to perhaps reassure your brain that the state it is currently in is harmless, and natural. Once you become more accustomed to lucidity, you should be able to control more of your dreams, and stabilize them more easily, to greater effect. Good luck!!

It seems to me that if you rush in and try changing things too quickly it collapses too. Like stopping dream characters and taking advantage of them or harming them. Maybe its just my personal morals kicking in..

On my first lucid dream I got too excited that I immediately woke up. You need to be calm throughout the whole time.

It sounds like you did the right thing. Don't get frustrated. Like Sivason said, sometimes it is easiest to become lucid right as you are waking up. Now that you have had one, the next one should last longer.