Thread: Need help with constant dryspells

Times of high LD frequency, along with recall, go through natural ups and downs. It's definitely challenging keeping up strong intention and diligent night work day in and day out. Lucid dreaming is a hobby where it's required to take a long-term view -- you're developing awareness and a critical faculty over long periods of time. Keep on building a strong foundation of dream recall, keen self-awareness, strong intent, and so on, and never give up. I experienced the same as you early on in this year. I would have one lucid dream or two, followed by 2, 3, almost 4 weeks once (!) of no lucids. Then I entered a few months where I was having a lot more than normal, multiple per night sometimes. The difference was I stopped really stressing about having LDs and getting down on the long dry weeks, and cultivated a more positive attitude. I also realized I was not doing all I could be doing during the night (I was more or less sleeping through every night, no WBTB, no real MILD practice). I had (and still have) good solid day work, but night work (and a regular sleep schedule) is my weakness.

A dry spell a good time to examine honestly your practice and to see if there's anything you can do to turn up the energy, or otherwise adjust.

LDing takes both day work and night work, appropriate timing, a healthy state of mind, strong intention, good dream recall, all coming together at once. Figuring out how to do this is the major challenge in LDing, so keep on working on it until you figure out your perfect combination!

Great advice, Fryingman! I think it's really helpful how you've highlighted the importance of both daywork and nightwork.

I'm going through a long dryspell right now myself, and though I've stepped up my daytime practice quite a bit to try to compensate, I've been noticing that my awareness and intention at night is conversely quite low, and that seems to be the sticking point. It's one thing to go to bed with great motivation, but that motivation isn't always so great after waking up in the middle of the night! And these days, when returning to bed after a WBTB, it seems like I can't maintain a state of awareness for longer than few breaths at a time before I lose focus. It's utterly bizarre, considering that when I was practicing much more successfully back in September or October, I could easily count up to fifty before my mind began to wander. This morning after a WBTB I challenged myself simply to count up to 10 (one count for each in-out breath) without losing track, restarting after every failure... I tried about a dozen times without being able to do it even once before falling asleep altogether. Usually I had to restart at a count of 3 or 4 because I couldn't even make it up to 5! I know there are a lot of insomniacs who would love to be able to fall asleep so easily, but this is really taking a toll on my dream practice. I've even been meditating daily for the last three weeks to try to improve awareness and focus, but ironically these faculties remain much worse than a few months ago when I was meditating hardly at all.

Every time I slip into a long dryspell, I start to get paranoid, like, "OMG, I've lost it! I'll never be able to lucid dream again!" And then a few months later I hit a highspell (or whatever we want to call the situation of LDing frequently and easily) and I'm like, "Awesome! All the practice has finally paid off! I've finally mastered how to lucid dream at will!" But so far, the real state of things in my own case seems to be that I keep slipping from the dryspells into highspells and back unpredictably, without any causal pattern that I've been able to discern.

What worries me more is that although sometimes trying out new techniques can end a dryspell, I get so rapidly habituated to new techniques (after as little as 1-3 attempts, judging from recent experiments with SSILD, FILD, and a vibrating alarm) that it often feels like I'm in an arms race with my own mind. And the reason for this seems quite straightforward: the consistency of this pattern across techniques implies that it was not the technique itself that made the initial attempts successful, but rather the attitude of excitement, expectation, and anticipation that goes along with trying out new techniques.

The natural conclusion to draw is that I all I would need to get lucid regularly is to somehow learn how to recreate the appropriate mental conditions at will, perhaps akin to the "beginner's mind" concept of Zen practice. But that's just the difficulty! I'm not entirely sure how to reprogram my own mind, which feels remarkably stubborn, uncooperative, and blasé, to exemplify the correct attitude. It's one thing to perceive the solution to a dilemma like this, quite another thing to figure out how to enact it!

Thanks for the advice so far. I definitley agree with Verre, creating the beginners mind could really help. The curiosity and excitement is what always gets people their first LD.

Many great insights, Verre! You've really hit the proverbial nail on its proverbial head.

Yes I too tend to alternate between dry and high spells, there doesn't ever seem to be some level, consistent lucidity frequency for me. What I found is that increased day work does not compensate for low or no night work. The day work may in fact be building strong self-awareness that is just sitting there patiently waiting to meet up with good recall and/or night work to produce lucidity. But as Sageous says, it takes a looooong time before the "hammer" of really strong self-awareness becomes strong enough to be able to punch through the fog/dullness of the dream state all by itself.

And yes, Verre, I hate you . I did some supps last night and was up at 5am to take them (4.5 hours into sleep), and never got back to sleep, not for ONE MINUTE, when I just gave up and got out of bed at 10am. I have noooo problem counting arbitrarily high with no loss of focus in sight . Your "problem" is *far* more preferable -- at least you have the chance to dream more and be well rested! The insomniac side of the equation is FAR inferior. Galantamine+choline is evil, maybe if I take it in the afternoon and load up on melatonin at bedtime will there be some positive dreaming effects left. I usually find that I have great dreaming still on the 2nd night after galantamine so perhaps this will work. The problem is the dreaming on that stuff is so awesome on those few occasions I manage to get back to sleep that I just have to keep trying it once in a while.

As for the psychological ups and downs, yup been there, too. Things got better when I stopped expecting "instant" results and stopped investing happiness into getting lucid. I now take a "what comes will come" approach, but it's hard to entirely dismiss the disappointment on nights without lucids where I'm really trying. Generally, I'm happy with good recall, whether lucid or not.

Strong intent, motivation, excitement, and goals absolutely have a measurable effect. The question is, as you implied, how to put that in a bottle and open it at will. I call this "the competition effect," where my LD frequency during the dreaming competitions two competitions in a row went through the roof. That sort of schedule, maximum effort for 2 weeks in a row, though, is exhausting and not sustainable on an ongoing basis, I've found. It's hard to maintain that level of effort outside of the framework of an organized community event, but I haven't given up hope of producing it on my own yet.

And how many times have we heard: "the very night where I just stopped trying to get lucid, I got lucid!" It's almost universal. So there is some sort of "relaxation" effect that is effective in producing lucidity.

You must be intent, yet you must be relaxed. You must be asleep, yet you must be aware. I swear, there is no other hobby so filled with paradoxes in order to reach success as lucid dreaming.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

You must be intent, yet you must be relaxed. You must be asleep, yet you must be aware. I swear, there is no other hobby so filled with paradoxes in order to reach success as lucid dreaming.

Haha, damn right. I'm currently in a dry spell too, but this morning I was this close to a DILD, and a RC induced LD, out of everything. I never liked doing reality checks, they seem boring and repetitive, but I've been doing several daily for the past 3 weeks, as often as I remember and whenever something out of the ordinary happens. In a dream a very short time ago, dad asked me about something on the computer that I didn't really understand and confused me. I left the place, and out of habit, I asked myself "what the heck, that was weird.. am I dreaming?" and just as I was lifting my hand to my face to do a nose pinch RC, my mom interrupts me and distracts me. Dammit dream-mom! Lol. But yeah, if this isn't motivation for doing more RCs and more awareness, I don't know what does. Do your RCs, kids, they're good for you..

Originally Posted by Verre

I get so rapidly habituated to new techniques (after as little as 1-3 attempts, judging from recent experiments with SSILD, FILD, and a vibrating alarm) that it often feels like I'm in an arms race with my own mind.

What sort of vibrating alarm.

I need to get some Tech

I want an alarm watch that will go off like every 5 minutes all night long and wear it on my ankle

but when I look at the manuals all of them go off for like a minimum of 20sec or some such

Where can I find a great review site for them, or does anyone have any that go off for like 5 seconds
or that have programmable delays etc.

The ideal would be a pair of watches where I could set them to go off like 1 minute apart every 5 minutes for just a few seconds each
and with a delay that I could set ahead. That way I could use them to trigger and keep track of time in the dream.
I dream in real time of course but it is good to know how much has gone by and to get a feel for 1 minute in the dream and to
remember to stabilize.

As for dry spells, As long as your remembering your dreams count it as success.
There is a guaranteed method for lucid every night. It involves going to Tibet, Climbing a mountain barefoot,
sitting down and shaving your head. The downside is that you have to sit there for the next hundred years.

I would rather have one awesome LD per 2 weeks, than 5 lame ones. I think having a good non lucid dream
and remembering it is just as good as a so/so or lame LD.

I agree with everything Verre and Fryingman have said, especially the concept of relaxing. If I've come off of a long week of good success, it is natural for that success to taper off--I'm not sure anyone has a "perfect" practice. On the other hand, I think some things to keep in mind would be:

--Be consistent with what you do during the day. Continue to build your daily awareness, even if it is annoying. And most importantly, don't judge yourself when you find that your mind has wandered for an extended amount of time; you're lucid now, which is something to celebrate.
--Pay attention to your NLDs. They will explain why you are not getting lucid, and will tell you how aware you are, and how aware you need to be.
--Combine MILD with some sort of anchor as you fall asleep. It will help you carry that intention across the barrier of HI and nREM.
--Get better at recognizing an awakening as it comes. Sometimes this can happen at the end of the sex dream, or a nightmare--something where the body's responses tend to inform us that what we are experiencing is not "real." Once you've recognized these awakenings, you can attempt to DEILD.
--Relax. Like Fryingman mentioned, just let it go. If you aren't getting lucid with working very hard, then try working not so hard, or not at all! You might begin the night with an autosuggestion: "I love lucid dreaming, and I would like to be lucid tonight." Repeat this as you awake and see what happens. Don't make it a mantra--just affirm it gently and go to sleep.

^^ Says the guy with an LD count graph that looks like an upwards hockey stick! Dayum, man, what's your secret sauce?!

But in seriousness, great points. I absolutely need to learn to notice wake ups approaching. Unless I'm close to lucidity or already lucid my wakings are like coming out from being under anesthesia.

Well dry spell broken last night, it's good to be temporarily back out of the "dry" club (again). Oh , don't worry, I'll be back soon I'm sure

Its really hard to say what to do when dry spells come since i cant tell what causes them excatly. For me if im too invested in something or stresses it seems to have caused these dry seasons. I just keep trying to wild,dild,self awareness and reality checks even if i have dry season and they always come back.

One thing I've noticed about my current dry spell is that it's not only my LDs that are affected. My NLDs have also been... it's hard to know the right word for this, but the best I can come up with is "distant." When my dream practice is going well, I wake up and feel the dreams I've just had, whether LD or NLD, with incredible clarity and immediacy. When the practice is going poorly, like the last few weeks, if I can remember having dreamed at all it feels like I'm trying to remember something that happened a long time ago, even if I know it was something I was dreaming just before I woke up. And lately I've often been having the experience of waking up and being unable to remember anything at first... then time passes, and twenty minutes or an hour into the day suddenly I have little a flash of recollection that reveals hints of some immensely complicated dream plot of which I can access only the barest outlines.

I've never found dream practice to be straightforward in the manner of, say, physical exercise. Physical exercise is wonderfully reliable (though I understand this can also vary from person to person). When I take the time to exercise regularly, I get stronger and fitter in ways that are easy to measure and observe. But dream practice has always felt like more of a crabwalk... two steps forward, one or two steps sideways or even back. I suspect this has less to do with anything inherent to the dream state and more to do with the perversity and recalcritrance of my own mind, but I haven't yet found a reliable way to harness my mind to my intentions. As my current dryspell has gone on I've been doing MILD, RCs, meditation and basically obsessing about dreaming more than ever, yet have nothing to show for it. Now I think I'm going to back off a bit and try not to think of it so much for a week or two, to see if I just need to "recharge my dream batteries" with some downtime.

Dream practice feels like trying to solve a math problem where the numbers keep changing. Everytime I think I've almost got it figured out, the terms change and I've got to start all over again.

Verre, I think the dreaming mind IS perverse to a certain degree, and that the more we stress or fear that something will or won't happen, the more likely these outcomes become. I think your decision to relax is a good one, and I would also suggest simply knowing that the dreams will return. May not be tomorrow, but it will happen. You're a lucid dreamer

Verre, I know exactly what you're talking about with "distance" from dreams. This is exactly how I phrase it as well. When dreaming is good, I'm "close" to my dreams. A "close" dream is one where I remember very clearly experiencing the dream as it happened, as opposed to a vague memory that may or may not have happened to me ("distant"). Another term I use is "being there." When dreaming is poor, I feel "distant" from the dreams, like they may not have actually happened "to me" at all, but just are this random memory that appeared in my head.

Thankfully, I'm in a "close" to dreams phase right now. I think this "close" feeling may actually be a very low level of lucidity, one that is still below the of full consciousness, below even semi-lucidity, but is pressing up against it.

I, too, have tried to compensate in dry times by "trying harder" during the day, becoming almost manic in my day work. Dream! Dream! Dream! Everything's a dream! RC! RC! RC! DAMNIT I'M DREAMING!

But I found that it doesn't actually help all that much, at least not right away. Remember the relaxation effect! Try it out for a while, like you say you're going to do. It's impossible to give completely up on day work for one who's been doing it for so long, I tried to do so the other day and still found myself mindful and doing RCs now and again, I just didn't obsess over them as much.....and I got a nice, epic non-lucid and a short LD that night!

Try cultivating quiet confidence rather than manic, panicked obsession. From one manic day-worker, I can tell it's not easy to "give it up" but I think it can help.....let us know how it goes!

p.s. love your analogies. Exercise, yes, the body responds to it instantly. Dreaming....nope. Results of "dreaming exercise" are *delayed*. That's why it's so hard to determine what actually works, the results come days, weeks, or even months down the line. You have to believe that the work will pay off and stay consistent with it. Only one thing is for sure: quit, and the goodness will fade and eventually stop. Never quit!