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Hi everyone,
I'm currently working with a lucid dreaming coach (Elliot Gish, 10 out of 10 recommend!), and I'm wondering how others got started out. What was your journey? What techniques did you use to get a handle on lucid dreaming? What were your challenges? What were your successes? I'm particularly interested in the stories of those of us for whom lucid dreaming doesn't come naturally, but all answers are welcome.
It is with some irony, but little surprise to me, that I can't remember how it began exactly...
I remember that it began as something on the side from wanting to improve my sleep, because of my illness (condition, syndrome... whatever it people want it to be called). I know I tried taking sleep supplements and that these worked in improving my sleep, and still do, though I have been without access to them for long periods of time before. I bought a book on lucid dreaming authored by Stephen LaBerge, and as I can guess by now, probably many others have, and followed quite a few of the exercises - some with a bit of "success", some with no "success" at all.
My sleep is inherently flawed because of my condition, and I'm in a state of constant pain and fatigue, so the dream world is very appealing as a distraction, and this has been one of my drives to wanting to know more about how to achieve lucidity in dreams. But as I read more about the subject I did start to realise that it would be quite interesting to "talk to myself" in a deeper sense. These are both my main motivations at present, and I feel that they work because they are very long-term goals for me, which I can't "fail" until I give up or pass away.
The WILD techniques almost worked for me but unfortunately the pain and difficulty in relaxing make it very difficult to cross the threshold into the dream state, even though I've been very close. I found that the environment had to be just right and that my mind had to not be too fatigued, so that I could focus.
All the times I've actually gained lucidity since I started the "journey", were initiated inside the dreams themselves. Either through reality checks or realising something was "weird". I know many of my dream signs, but I never notice them, presumably because during waking life I tend to not do reality checks around other people because I feel awkward about it: which defeats the point, so don't be me in that regard. :cheeky:
I can't remember how well setting an intention has worked for me in the regard of DILD. I do think I'm forgetting a lot about setting an intention before sleep, lately.
When I was most actively into doing practice however, I took a very good habit, but that I have since lost and have been trying to regain; of training my willpower. Because of my experience over the years with training willpower and actually using it, I have found at a personal level there is a big correlation between the basic quality of my sleep and my willpower to do things I would otherwise not feel inclined to do, such as getting my hands quite dirty in a literal sense, to fix or move something, etc.
Having only recently joined, I am curious about a lot of the content on these forums and have been slowly reading some older threads and looking at a bit of the suggested stuff, but I am taking it slow on purpose to not make myself too excited or obsessed about anything, since that is always the quickest path to my downfall, with anything.
One note, about those sleep supplements: let me add that even though they do help a lot with my sleep, they do not fix it; nothing is a panacea, regardless of what we'd like to believe, but they get my sleep to a state that is closer to how it was when I was a child, or how it is supposed to be for most reasonably healthy people. And if you have the sleep of a healthy person, you probably shouldn't take sleep supplements, but if you decided to do so, I would say read about the specific supplements you want/are taking and read about all the risks associated with messing with sleep hormones.
I hope that wasn't too long; I find it difficult to explain myself with a small amount of words and without context.
I only started out a month ago but this is the journey so far. Before I started I wanted to get into lucid dreaming but didn't really know how. Until I read a book on it by Robert Waggoner. I used what he used a variant of a MILD technique and had success. I had like 10 plus lucid dreams last month. I asked some questions and got some answers. Like show me something important and received a situation in which I was looking at a blank audio. That was about the biggest thing I have done. But now my objectives revolve around testing the limits of the subconscious mind. Hopefully I can end my dry spell so I can continue my work. The methods I use is a variant of MIlD if you want to know it dm me, can't say it here for technical reasons. I sometimes say in my head at night something like tonight I will realize that I dreaming. Personally I am not a very big fan of Reality checks but I have started to do it because I wear a watch and just recently my watch has started to show up in my dreams. So I said hey why not ask myself if I am dreaming when I check the time?
I read Stephen Leberge’s book in high school over 20 years ago and I remember trying to do the exercises then but was never able to learn how to do it. Then 8 years ago I bought some galantamine and tried again but again I was not able to. I only tried each time for maybe a week or so. Then 2 years ago I joined this site, read some new books, and really put in a good effort doing WBTB, MILD, and I took galantamine. It took 3 weeks to have one but then for the first year I had 2 plus a week. The last year I have averaged 1.5 a week as I’ve gotten a bit lazy. I’ve had about 180 lucid dreams in the last 2 years. I have had 1 or so lucid dream a year my whole life so I was familiar with them, I just didn’t know how to induce them. I wish I had put more effort into it years ago but really I’m thrilled to be doing it now. It is such an amazing new experience of consciouslness and exploration of reality. I wish more people did it. So far I’ve convinced my best friend to try it and after 2-3 attempts she had a long one. I don’t think she will keep up the discipline to continue though. I did send my sister a book and she was going to give it a try. I feel so lucky to have this experience.
Although you might still consider me as a novice to lucid dreaming because I've only had 23 lucid dreams so far, I could say that it all started with a lucid dream I had 6 years ago. For years I kind of forgot about it, until exactly 1 year ago from today, I remembered the strange dream and looked up "dream where you know that you're dreaming" or something along the lines of that on google. The subject of lucid dreaming came up. I had a very short lucid dream that night. That dream,even though it was very short, inspired me to start lucid dreaming. I have been lucid dreaming on and off ever since, with me having about 70% out of my LD's to end quickly, 25% where I don't get to do much/where what I did didn't work in some way and 5% where I actually get to do something mildly amazing. I still haven't had that ONE lucid dream. I'm still trying.
Hello there IsabelB50! I’m going to give you some insight to what I did on my own personal journey with lucid dreaming, let it help you and see into a new perspective
My journey was very hard to say the least. The main motivation to me to get into lucid dreaming was to go to this special place i had within my heart that i’ve always daydreamed about since i was little, about 3-4. Back then of course, it only occured to me that I could only daydream about it, and that it was just an imaginary place. Then around 2011, i heard about lucid dreaming, I couldn’t tell you from where, probably some friends that heard it from the internet with memes? That’s my best guess since back then I was only 10 or 11. I tried it for a few weeks, I only did it to try and have sex with an ‘NPC’ if you will. Then I gave up because it was too hard. I didn’t bother looking it up online because well, the interest had died already, so I moved on.
Then around 2016 I decided to pick it up again, but this time, with 100% seriousness and determination.
For a while, I would get the occasional lucid dream every month or two weeks. It would only happen through sheer luck as I decided, but really it was just me figuring out what worked and what put me into the zone of lucidity. Then is where I tried all sorts of things. I’ve basically tried every single one of the mainstream lucid dreaming techniques, and they didn’t work as well for me. I went from DILD, to WILD methods, and then back to DILD. it was very, hard and frustrating. I did this for 9 months on end, I even did this despite having depression.
Then I met this dude named “Gram”, he was a natural lucid dreamer. He told me that all i needed to do was control my mind and he showed me how with doing things like affirmations, belief, shadow work, law of attraction, things like that. It was at that time I decided to ditch the techniques that people have been telling me, and i decided to give this a try. I did it for 2 weeks and I got omnilucid (made all my dreams lucid), i was so excited, I was just amazed at how by controlling your mind, you can guarantee lucidity.
The story doesn’t end here, but this was just a quick summary of getting through that learning curve at first, as how it was for me. :)
I've first heard about lucid dreaming from browsing funnyjunk in 2012. It was about how you can paint dots on your fingers with pencil and when you'll look at your hands in dream they will be gone. I let that idea sit for few days and then I just started looking up more about lucid dreaming.
I've had my first lucid dream in about a month with DEILD method. I still remember is to this day. The excitement, the realization that you're inside a dream was amazing. I've never had WILD work for me, although I was close once. DEILD is probably my favorite method cause I had more stable lucid dreams with that. Don't think I had luck with DILD with dream signs and all, but I could sometimes become lucid from seeing something illogical or out of place. FILD didn't work for me so far but I have only few attemps in that. I used to do a lot of WBTB when I started but I tend to avoid it these days to get enough sleep.
I've got about 310 dreams recorded to this day and roughly 14% were lucid(nearly 50). (Yeah I know, pretty low number for 6 years, FeelsBadMan)
I know I was super active when I first started doing lucid dreaming but after a while it's been on and off. I'd get motivated for 1 month and then give up again. Although unexpected lucid dreams where I didn't put any effort to attain them were really nice (I've had maybe 3 of those). All this time I kinda stayed fairly novice. Don't think I've ever made a major breakthrough like other people did (except that time I became lucid for first time). Also never directly worked with other people to improve lucid dreaming. Always worked alone.
Nearly 1 year ago I've started up new dream journal that is more tidy, with date stamps and goals. I've even checked off few goals like creating a pill inside my pocket or running in lucid dream.
And now about a week has passed where I'm putting real effort to lucid dream. Multiple reality checks, more awareness, trying to get mind conditioning to work for first time. I don't know how it will go. It might just snap in this time and I'll become consistent with lucid dreams.
Elliot is Awesome!