New Dreamers Story: Advice/criticism please

I initially found out about lucid dreaming through my cousin who told me about it after watching the classic “INCEPTION”. I kind of thought it was a crazy idea and that he had probably made it up. Skip forward 4 years, and I heard about it again through some random youtube video. It instantly appealed to me. My life recently has been less then picture perfect. Right before I began studying lucid dreaming I remarked to my friends all the time “life just feels like a bad dream I should wake up from”. I feel that this may have contributed to why I picked up lucid dreaming so quickly. Right after hearing about it, I had two lucids. Shortly after that I had a period of 7 days where I had multiple lucids every night. Every night that I go to sleep I have no doubt that I will have a lucid dream, if I truly want it… which I very much do.

My method has been relatively simple. I preform reality checks around 50 times a day, making sure to focus on the things that my senses are perceiving and question them and my existence as a whole (Descartes’ paradox). Before going to sleep I take 2mg of melatonin (I’m an insomniac) 5htp (for my low levels of serotonin) valerian and I’ve added hog wart since starting LDing. I’ve have also experimented with dream leaf—however I get very strange dreams with dream leaf supplement. Before sleeping I repeat the mantra “I am dreaming, I am dreaming, I am dreaming…”. I normally preform a WBTB at 2am and it takes me till 4-5am to fall back to sleep. If I could pick a word to describe my method, it would be obsession. I feel like the single biggest reason why I went from having no LD’s ever to having consistent LD’s is swamping my brain with LDing info.

However, I am no prodigy. I have some significant issues that I feel should have been resolved with the amount of LD time that I have had.

My first issue is that I always become lucid in my room. Besides my first LD, in which I realized I was lucid while talking to my mother, all my Lucids have started while laying down in bed… and a few strange things happen. It normally starts with me preforming a RC, the “breathing through plugged nose” usually (my room is pitch black). After becoming conscious in the dream world, I normally struggle to get up out of bed. Its as if I’m being sucked back into my body… every movement is extremely difficult and painful. Sometimes I won’t even be able to open my eyes at first. These strange sensations don’t stop after I get out of my body, they stay with me even after I have walked out of my bedroom and down the hall. I’ve tried waiting in my bed longer, ignoring them, hitting my face with my hands to focus on dream sensations and a bunch of other things that now seam pointless. On most nights, I will experience 2-5 of these “lucid” dreams before finally achieving a state of stable and free lucidity.

The second thing that I have realized is that I often have multiple layers of dreams. For example, I’ll wake up in a false awakening and then go back to bed soon after experiencing a WILD/OBE. After that WILD ends Ill wake up in another false awakening and and loose lucidity… I’ve even gone back to sleep from the second FA and become Lucid again! It can get completely tiring and confusing. This would be cool if I had any control over it at all…

Another issue I have been having is dream focus. I realize I am in a dream and even if I really want to do a particular thing like a TOTM (and remember it in the dream), I get side tracked by sex or flying. Speaking of flying and sex…

As far as flying… I can’t steam to consistently fly. Sometimes it works perfectly and other times I can’t do it to save my life. This confuses me because I honestly expect to fly when I try it—and isn’t expectation key?. When it comes to sex, I can never seam to stay stable… even just making out with a DC will destabilize me. The good thing is I have recently been getting better at reentering a dream/continuing a dream after I “feel” my sleeping body” not sure if it counts as a DEILD. I feel like my inability to do “supernatural” things comes down to my feeling of incompetency when awake. This brings up an interesting point. I think LDing has taught me how week my will actually is. Here I am, in a world where I literally can do anything yet I’m held back by some psychological barrier… its frustrating.

I realize this is a massive post, but if anyone would like to comment on a specific portion of what I have said and give me feedback/advice or just a comment or suggest something to try I would greatly appreciate it. I am also more then willing to answer any questions you may have. I’m here to learn and even criticism can be useful to fulfill this goal. :)

Your "problems" (I guess a lot of ppl here would love to have that kind of problem lol) most likely stem from underlying expectations. You subconciously expect to become unstable during LD sexy time... it doesn't have to be that way. For me, the more controlled it is, the less pleasureful it is... well just like in waking life, right? Make sure to achieve a good stability before going caveman mode. Connect with the dream world, touch walls, sniff trees, lick the carpet... whatever you need to do to involve your senses. That works wonders for me. The good LDs always had an extensive dream stabilization part to them.

Flying was a problem for me, too. I was only able to slide across the floor with my feet still sliding, or horizontally flying slowly in about 1m height. In one dream quite early into LDing I then "swam" through the air like it was underwater. This is still my best method for the first few metres, to gain some height. After that it is usually easy, but I somehow need this to gain height a bit. As soon as I have reached ~5m height I can just glide away, sometimes flapping to keep height. No Superman flying for me yet.

Hi! congrats on joining DV! Im new to lucid dreaming too, but your story sounds a lot like mine. Ive also experienced feeling "sucked back into my body". I haven't been able to get any advice on it yet. following this...