Thread: Staying Lucid for more than 10 seconds

What I've found that helps is to practice visualizing becoming lucid: I now work on developing a quick little just-became-lucid ritual: count to 5 slowly, rubbing my hands for 1-2, then patting down my chest/stomach/legs/feet while bending over for 3-4-5, looking at these parts of my dream body as I pat them with my hands, then "stand up" (this I've done in a dream and it led to my longest and most visually vivid LD yet), then count to 5 again slowly looking closely around at the environment, then say "goals" and try to remember particular goals for the dream (these last two I'm still working on). It only took a few times practicing in real life to get to performing this in my next LD.

Practice doing this even (especially) if you don't have visuals in the dream or when you lose the visuals. Many people report that shaking their body, grabbing anything nearby in the dream and holding on to it at the same time, stamping your feet quickly on the "ground", and expecting to start seeing your dream body then your dream scene again, can save and lengthen the dream. I've lost visuals in 2 LDs and had about 10 seconds of lucidity before the dream started fading, plenty of time to really focus on feeling your dream body to solidify the dream. If that ever happens again I'll be ready to start a crazy fast dance to totally engage my dream body and hopefully restore visuals.

LouaiB, I had the same problem as you before. I got lucid in my dream an then woke up in a few seconds. My advice to you. wich always works for me. Is just to calm down as soon you get lucid in a dream. Dont rush anything, just notice that you got lucid and then start to explore any details or things you like, with out thinking that wow this is a lucid dream. At least it works like this for me. I get lucid and just starting to look at some details or eating something. But what ever you do, keep your toughts away from that you are dreaming right now. Or the dream will start to fade away. Good luck LouaiB!

thnx, but I guess that is not my only problem, cuz in my second LD, I stayed calm, and immediately got distracted by a car and woke up. that's what made me so freaked out in staying lucid in the third LD :/ . Any advice? I really appreciate your help, also i am new and really lovin' dreamviews!

That is very good , thnx! I will definitely do it, and I think it's done with the Reflection-intention technique, right?

thnx, but I guess that is not my only problem, cuz in my second LD, I stayed calm, and immediately got distracted by a car and woke up. that's what made me so freaked out in staying lucid in the third LD :/ . Any advice? I really appreciate your help, also i am new and really lovin' dreamviews!

It's good that you try to stay calm, that's one good step towards staying lucid. I missed out to tell you a even more important thing. And that is to be, not to carefull about staying lucid. It's good if you try stabilize the dream, but do only play with those stabilize-techniques as an fun experiment, dont take it to seriously as if your about to lose anything. Because if you do take all this seriously, then do your goals of staying lucid getting under pressure. And as soon as your goals getting under pressure, you will start to get afraid to fail. Wich in this case is that you may risk to wake up. And this is so, because if you get distracted in your dream. Then will your brain immediately start to focus it's attention on "not" to wake up from this dream. And since the brain dosn't take NOT in consideration. The thought's will end up like this instead: "Wake up". It's the same thing as what you probably already heard of before, "Do not think of a pink elephant".. So what kind of thought do one end up with then? Well, as soon as you got lucid in your dream, the most important factor has already happened.. and that is that you got lucid. So since you already got lucid, start to notice and experience things instead of getting distracted or afraid to lose anything. The thing you felt that distracted you before, could possible be the thing that makes you stay lucid the next time. So your result will always be depending on, in wich way you face your goals.

Finally I did it, I had my fourth lucid dream couple of days ago and I stayed calm and lucid for 2 minutes.not much but a new record for me. what helped me was stabilization and saying "I'm dreaming", also that the first thing I thought of was not to stay lucid, but to tell that dream character to tell me I'm dreaming the next time I'm dreaming,which did not happen lol.