Thread: Tell me what you would tell yourself if you had to start it all over!

After reading this thread, I realized how important a good WBTB is. So last night, instead of doing my usual 5-10 minute WBTB, I did a 30 minute WBTB. I went on Dream Views the whole time to keep my mind on lucid dreaming. That extra 20-25 minutes did wonders for me. Not only did it increase my awareness throughout the night, but I almost had a WILD (without really even trying). Later in the night, I also went into SP. Now, I know that SP is not a goal, but it is exciting because you can use SP to enter a LD.

I never realized how much I underestimated the power of a good WBTB.

All this WBTB talk is giving me the idea to try it on Friday night. I shall report if I do.

Forgot to add...read your old DJ entries!..online or not. Reliving the excitement of your lucid dreams or even your interesting non-lucid dreams can provide a high level of motivation! I got this idea from the podcast mentioned above and it is very helpful

Another good WBTB this morning for 25 mins

Hit lucidity again but at a bad time I think, couldn't move and I heard a voice say "the king is free to move", I tried moving but I couldn't and woke up

( Lets keep the success and synergy rolling guys )

Guys, I am just loving all these success stories. Visiting this thread is awesome just to soak up all the positive energy.

The "if you had to start all over" question is a great premise, instructive even for the very experienced. We start each day with a blank slate, and good choices don't happen all on their own. Each day is an opportunity to do it right. To do things the way we wish we'd done them before we knew better.

Hats off to yost for kicking off a great discussion.

Why thank you, canis. I have a question now. I've been RC'ing regularly for the last three days. About 1/2 of the way through yesterday, I stopped wanting to do them. It's been tiring to force myself to do 1 set of 5 checks twice every hour. Especially at school. Did you ever encounter this? I want to RC but don't know what to do. BTW, it's 1. Check any nearby text 3x. 2. Glance at my hands for screwups. 3. Count my fingers on each hand. 4. Try to breathe through my nose when holding it. 5. Try to put finger through left hand, then right.

Originally Posted by yost

Why thank you, canis. I have a question now. I've been RC'ing regularly for the last three days. About 1/2 of the way through yesterday, I stopped wanting to do them. It's been tiring to force myself to do 1 set of 5 checks twice every hour. Especially at school. Did you ever encounter this? I want to RC but don't know what to do. BTW, it's 1. Check any nearby text 3x. 2. Glance at my hands for screwups. 3. Count my fingers on each hand. 4. Try to breathe through my nose when holding it. 5. Try to put finger through left hand, then right.

I just look at my hands and believe that it is a dream takes like a second. But my hands are screwed up in 99% of dreams so...

Originally Posted by yost

Why thank you, canis. I have a question now. I've been RC'ing regularly for the last three days. About 1/2 of the way through yesterday, I stopped wanting to do them. It's been tiring to force myself to do 1 set of 5 checks twice every hour. Especially at school. Did you ever encounter this? I want to RC but don't know what to do. BTW, it's 1. Check any nearby text 3x. 2. Glance at my hands for screwups. 3. Count my fingers on each hand. 4. Try to breathe through my nose when holding it. 5. Try to put finger through left hand, then right.

You are probably doing too many in waking life if you mean that you do all 5 of those RCs, one time each, every hour. If I were doing all 5 of those each time it would quickly feel like a chore and quickly lose any meaning which could translate to them giving you the same result in a dream that they do in waking life...namely, convincing you that you are awake. I recommend choosing one or two that perhaps you already relate to lucid dreaming so that there is a little excitement just thinking about the RC...even still, sometimes you may feel like a break from RCs during certain hours of the day or a change to a different RC.

Spoiler for my example:

For myself, yesterday I took a break from my normal RC and instead focused on perspective and Sageous' RRC that I usually do along with my RC. When I do those 3 different things, each one feels like a unique process. My process takes about a minute but if I am busy I try to remember to do it later and I don't stress over it. As a reminder to myself, I use a *random* alarm on an app called Awoken for Android...a random reminder makes a difference. I find myself doing it without the reminder fairly often as well and if I just did it and the reminder pops up I may ignore it until next time. I also picked a alarm sound that sounds dream like to me called "organic."

What I meant is that I do 5 checks in one series every 30 mins. I guess it was overkill. My two favorites are the text-check and the finger-through-hand. I'll do those once an hour and as often as I randomly remember. Thanks!

Originally Posted by yost

What I meant is that I do 5 checks in one series every 30 mins. I guess it was overkill. My two favorites are the text-check and the finger-through-hand. I'll do those once an hour and as often as I randomly remember. Thanks!

Once an hour seems like a pretty good frequency, but I think that you should get in the habit of the doing the mental reality checks paired with these.

I used to do just the reality checks alone and they became very tedious, making it extremely easy to do it without giving it much thought, which is bad. But if you think about it, in order to get lucid you're going to question something with your thinking. Mental reality checks force you to think and be self-aware, the reason I'd say prioritize mental is because you're going to have to think about it and say "wow, I have 13 fingers, I must be dreaming".

I would then recommend following those up with the physical reality checks for reassurance. I've honestly have stopped physically reality checking as much and I seem to be getting better results with the mental ones. Also, for whatever reason I don't find the mental reality checks to be tedious at all, I find it easy to do when I am moving around during the day.

This is all my experience and thought I'd throw that in, you should try it out and see how it works for you

Alrighty then, emptybucket! I will do so!

Another good, solid WBTB this morning and I had my second DEILD and one of the longer lucid dreams I've ever had. Awesome!

I did a solid WBTB (25 minutes, and ran through the states alphabetically) and couldn't go back to sleep (was trying to WILD though which at least for me keeps me more more awake unless I'm super tired). 25 is obviously too long for me or the states names thing is too stimulating. Alertness is probably the key, not the time involved. Gotta find that balance.

I fought with myself for the past two days, I was feeling too groggy and immediately went back to bed. Today, did a 22 min WBTB (plus 1/3 of latte) and had some trouble falling asleep, but eventually did and guess what happened?

Keep them coming guys!

ahhhhoamghafgkafd;asdf!!!!! I will try this tonight! But I don't know how long? 15mins sound good? Maybe some reading?

Personally I would start somewhere between 15-30 minutes and adjust up or down from there based on results. I seem to have a better chance of DILD (as I've said elsewhere, my WILD is pretty much non-existent no matter what but I'm trying to work on it) after about a 5-10 minute WBTB, long enough to jot down notes about my last dream and get my head in the right place. I have tried them longer but it doesn't seem to increase my chances, and anything over 20ish minutes will make it harder for me to sleep. I have heard of 40+min WBTB but not me if I can help it. Then again I've only done the longer ones a couple times just because most nights I don't want to risk being stuck awake.

^^ I know exactly what you're saying about wanting to avoid the stuck awake at all costs scenario. But as the experienced dreamers say here, being worried about getting back to sleep is the guaranteed way to stay awake. I got what felt like 99% of the way into a WILD this morning, and the progress all came when I stopped trying to "make it happen" and instead just "let it happen." It's the same thing with getting back to sleep: don't *try* to sleep, just relax and empty your mind, nature will do its thing then. Read up on different approaches on how to do this and find what works for you. Very useful for me was adding regular intense exercise to my schedule. Making sure the body *needs* sleep through the juicy morning REM periods, so it will sleep.

An almost WILD

edit: in dreaming there are not "musts," there's only what works for *you*. Make sure you do explore the boundaries (things like WBTB duration, and activities during WBTB), but tailor your approach to what you find works best for you. Just don't assume a priori that a certain WBTB duration doesn't work for you, it may instead be the key to the kingdom . Instead, make sure you develop good practices.

I'm finding it takes constant vigilance: we must ask ourselves constantly: "am I following all the basic recommendations? Regular sleep schedule? Enough sleep? Enjoy and value all dreams not just LDs? Recall/DJ? Positive attitude, expect that I'll LD every night? WBTB?" and so on.

There are two major humps on the road to LD goodness:

1) finding out what to do
2) DOING IT...regularly.

#1 takes effort to find good sources, ignore bad sources, and learn
But #2 is the meat, and is where the real work begins.

I'm stoked that I've had the successes I've had so far, but sometimes I wish I was farther along after 2.5 months. Then I honestly self-evaluate: have I even been getting to bed at a regular time? No? "Well, quitcherbitchin and DO IT!" As Dutchraptor noted in another thread, routine is very powerful for LDing and I totally believe it.

You're right, I'm sure with the proper techniques you could sleep pretty much any time you want. It's just a hard old habit to break that after being awake a certain time my body just doesn't want to. I'm willing to experiment with it and have before (mostly on accident) but not on my work days of course. The 5-10 and usually even 20 minute ones are just fine though. After all the WBTB I've tried, I've still only ever had one questionable WILD though (I can't decide if it was that or a FA that immediately caused a DILD because of the weird way it played out) so that's still a goal of mine because regardless of what really happened, it was awesome. I guess I need to adjust my technique on that

Did a WBTB for 25 minutes this morning and had my first planned WILD!
Stabilization Practice, Taking It Slow WILD - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

It also lasted about 10 minutes long, not bad for me.

I did it a bit differently though, instead of getting up and walking around I spent about 20 minutes lying on my back, because for whatever reason I have so much trouble falling asleep on my back, then got up for last five minutes for bathroom, water, etc.

This is the best week of lucid dreaming I've had to date, It feels as if I've found the missing puzzle piece, yet it was in front of me the entire time.

Originally Posted by seltiez

i would start first with increasing my dream recall and with that practising all day awareness and questioning reality time to time.

agreed to the full.

I will start this all soon. Thanks for the advice!

Well, I just stumbled upon Lucid Dreaming by chance, and most of them have been trough sleep paralysis, witch I also stumbled on by chance. And well I come far of actually enduring the sleep paralysis, as I'm very scared of the hear hallucinations and sometimes phantom pain I get when I'm in it. I even figured out really fast how I got deeper into the sleep paralysis (and thus getting a higher chance of entering a lucid dream).

The longest journey have been getting braver because of the hear hallucinations I get, and I probably would have said to myself 2 years ago: ''Don't be scared, it isn't real'' but that information I knew 2 years ago as well. Also, I can get out of the sleep paralysis by moving my whole body with effort, and this is what I did a lot in the beginning, thus missing a lot of opportunities of entering Lucid Dreams. It is simply something I had to train myself and nothing I would have said 2 years ago to myself would have changed anything.

But in the actual Lucid Dreams is probably don't try and force things, follow the general dream rule as with all dreams, never ever jump out windows to try and fly (never work for me) and don't try and Lucid Dream about a specific thing, they never hold as long as the onces you kind of stumble upon.

I got my first LD pretty fast. 6 Years now into lucid dreaming every day. I was thinking a lot how to teach someone lucid dreaming, I even wrote a guide on everything that helped me and everything that seemed to help other people.

But in the end I want to say that the only thing you need to do - give a person something that will excite him about lucid dreaming, as soon as he has honest desire to get lucid dream, he will do it. There is no need to make it over-complicated for anyone with all those techniques and methods. Simple reality checks, and expectation to have a lucid dream is enough to get started.