Enough?

I am a beginner LDer, and I feel that I am not devoting enough time to practice LDing:?. I tried all the techniques and found that the best for me are MILD WBTB. I exercise my prospective memory and dream recall. I increase my awareness(All Day Awareness technique and meditation) and do constant RCs(with Reflection-Intention technique).lol I know that sound a lot, but it barely takes an hour each day for these. My progress is slow. I had my first LD after 2 months and a week, and today I hit the mark of 3 months and a week with a total of 4 LDs only:(. Is there something I'm missing? Or am I just being unfair to myself:?? Thanks for any help.

Okay, let's run this down:

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I know that sound a lot, but it barely takes an hour each day for these.

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Reality checks don't have an estimated time expectation in order to work. You should be doing them with certain cues like:

- Because something is weird (why is your roommate already at home? Why is there so much traffic today? Why I can't find my shoes? Why is it so cold?)
- Because you remember to (oh....am I dreaming? Maybe I know, let's make a reality check to be sure)
- Regular habits (do a reality check every time you get out of bed, and soon enough most of all your false awakenings will end up in a lucid dream...same with turning your computer on...same as feeling sexually aroused....same with arriving home...etc etc).

The more targets you use the better. You want to saturate yourself (don't make one per second though) in order to get the habit ingrained on your routine. You want to do a reality check so naturally as you grab a tissue for when you want to sneeze, like you stop when the light is red, like you grab the fork when you want to reach the food. This may even sound mindless (we'll go there soon), but without the habit, you can't expect it to make your dreams. Lesson to learn: never reality check as an exercise, perform them for every reason you find, and then again more.

This is also truth for other exercises, like visualization. You don't want to visualize at 10am, and then again at 4pm...you just want to visualize whenever you can spare a few minutes. Our brain needs a healthy distribution of action/rest, and this refers as well to things like daydreaming, mindfulness meditation, cognitive challenging tasks, etc etc. So keep doing reality checks, when you feel like rest a bit (maybe some minutes of meditation, just try to calm your mind), then do some visualization, and keep trying to be aware of the moment: relax and absorb the reality around (and inside) you.

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My progress is slow. I had my first LD after 2 months and a week, and today I hit the mark of 3 months and a week with a total of 4 LDs only. Is there something I'm missing?

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Yes: patience. Since I've come back to practice I go easily over 200 reality checks per day, plus awareness (can't really time that), plus memory exercises, and my recall is still bad as hell and no lucids. This takes time, but there's hope for you because certainly you can get better results by distributing your "practice" more evenly throughout the day. And don't view it as a chore, view it as a challenge: at any given moment you might be dreaming, so live in the present and stop worrying about when the lucid is coming :)

Remember: be aware in your waking life as much as you want to become aware inside your dreams ;)

I actually do these like you said, but I cant help the feeling of not working hard enough. So the techniques are enough? Or I can do more? Thnx very much for your help

I mean, is there any technique to increase the effectiveness of these? Or am I ALL set?

Is playing 2 hours a day enough to become good at piano? How about 3? 4? How many hours should you spend practicing?

You can certainly work harder by doing those exercises in a more thorough and focused manner, but thinking about lucid dreaming every second of your waking life, although certainly helpful, won't necessarily give you a lucid dream right away :)
I know it sounds a bit frustrating, but you can't force your brain to develop new synapses and thus creating hard-solid habits in the blink of an eye. It takes time, quality sleep, preservation, positive mind-set....all the crap that we have to say but no one wants to hear about :P

If you a more quantifiable method of testing your progress, try the following exercises:

1. Reality check counting:

http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j0...ck-CR-603-.jpg

Every time you reality check, add one number, but only when you remember, it doesn't count when you do one 2 seconds after you've done the last one. See how many you reach at the end of the day, and try to improve on those numbers. Don't do them without thinking as well, really stop and ask yourself seriously "am I dreaming?". If you think you're not, then do it anyway!

2. WBTB

WBTB is a great way to improve recall. Get yourself used to getting up after 6-7hours of sleep, remembering your past dreams, then visualizing yourself getting lucid and then go to sleep/try a WILD. Do this every day and you're body will get used, which can account for something less painful to do in the future, while giving you loads of advantages.

3. Join us at the Lucid Dreaming competition #16 (think you still got time to do it). Competition will be an extra motivator, and lower league will put you with loads of other members that are also trying to reach lucidity. You can get inspired by other people's results, get to know experienced people (look at BrandonBoss and She scores, they could give you some tips ^^), and just have fun overall, since everyone tends to improve their results during the competition.

I'm certain there's more you can do, but also it's relevant to say that yes, simple exercises like reality checking/visualization should still grant you lucidity.

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Originally Posted by Zoth

I'm certain there's more you can do

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Like what? I'll be more patient and motivated, and do the exercises more thoroughly, but any specific technique you can recommend that works well with those I do? Am I working as hard as most LDers? You are really really helping me out, much appreciated