Thread: InvisibleO's Workbook

Day 21

0 LDs
4 recalled Dreams (2/2/0) -> I think this is my personal record although I did not even fall asleep in the nap and although I did not put too much emphasis on recall, rather I wanted to make a DEILD attempt, which was too unprepared. Still I need to wait for some more days to confirm that this is because of the new alarm.

Some more details on my CRC:
- difficult situations for me are doing something monotonous/unchanging for long (even while walking too long I tend to zone out for some time), talking to others, eating, calculating or working on difficult problems (that one is hardest I'd say) and there are a lot of micro situations where I loose focus for a moment because something else needs focus, e.g. crossing the street
- regarding these microsituations, I tend to anticipate them naturally sometimes in the sense that I see the street, know it will be difficult to do the CRC while crossing, and then I can put more awareness on it and place a small intention to remain aware. I think this has helped me quite a few times. I don't want to push myself too hard trying to anticipate, but I will see if I can develop more awareness about it in the next days naturally by nudging myself. i think it will come partially when I work particulalrly on those difficult situations as I will recognize them earlier.
- a big positive sign of progress compared to 1-2 weeks ago is that know CRC is my default state when returning to a calm moment after any action, e.g. already at the end of crossing the street, I get back to CRC most of the times if I was zoned out during crossing. I think it is because the feeling is already in the background and I have a subconsious sense that it is missing, but it is not strong enough to become conscious during more demanding tasks.
- main focus remains making the distinction normal = waking, unnormal = dream, but i think soon I will put more attention on those difficult situations

Another interesting thing: In my naps, I use to remain a slightly higher level of awareness than in normal sleep, as afterwards, I dont have the feeling of having been 'gone'/blacked out for some time, instead it is a smooth transition of waking thoughts to dreaming thoughts (often I also have the feeling afterwards that I retained awareness of my body sensation on the bed, but I am not sure, it might also just come shortly before waking up). So far I mostly woke up naturally at some point of the dream, but most times not lucid.
Might be a a good chance for WILD? in the REM core, i also think that I go straight into dream state after falling asleep, as I woke up from a dream only 5-15min after falling asleep several
times already.

Day 22

1LD (REM core in the morning), (0/2/0) dreams + fragments recalled (did not wake from the auto-shutoff alarms)

Today I decided to stop the JGL-routine, because I dont want to focus on too many things simultaneously, and the DEILD efforts are also directed on the same moments, so this is somewhat redundant. i practiced and visualized the DEILD routine a lot (visualizing how I would roll out of bed instantly after the NoseRC). I like the approach of DEILD to create a FA, because I think it would fit perfectly to my situations where I have high lucidity, but drop out of the dream, but I have some doubts whether it really is the best option for me, because as I said I am conditioning myself on dropping out of the dream immediately ^^. It is not as bad as that because I only directly condition myself to drop out of NoseRC induced LDs, but still the version of DEILD where one awakes and tries to reenter the dream might be a more wholesome approach. Would very much appreciate your opinions on that. Reason why I would rather like to do the FA version of DEILD because it seems better fitting for my dream exit and i hypothesized that once I get to know the feeling of a stage 3 LD, I would have less problems with DILD, too.

I have a feeling that getting lucid is not a major hurdle for me anymore, at least under the current conditions where I spend some hours per day researching on and reading about LDing which already sets a positive intention. And I think the polyphasic sleeping is a big advantage compared to Mono (at least without WBTB), because I can retain a quite high level of awareness in the beginning of the sleep. For example today, I was quickly semi lucid for some time in the dream, before I "pulled myself together" to perform a noseRC to face the challenge. Got to explain that more: In the beginning of falling asleep, I had some hypnogogic sensations (have no experience on that but description of hypnogogic sensations fits), but I was on a low level of consiousness so I drifted into sleep and became semi lucid soon after. In the semi lucid period, I constantly had the "impression/feeling" that the dream was to unstable and if I tried to get fully lucid in it, I would wake up again, so I decided subconsciously to let the dream continue and hopefully build itself. Would love to hear your opinion on that too, but my take is that I am afraid of dropping out and it has been a vivid, full dream all the time and I create the sensation of the body on my own, because I am so used to it and maybe also afraid of it because if indicates waking. Then at some point I did the RC and dropped out again and did not think about doing the DEILD.
Sounds a bit worse then it felt, I was still happy to see more confirmation that getting lucid is not the problem for me anymore (especially since I was somewhat tired because of missing the nap on the day prior). However, I wonder what part CRCing plays in this compared to the raised awareness from poly sleep and the reading about LDing, because obviously I did not directly realize the feeling of clothes - but it may contribute to the semi lucid knowing that I'm dreaming...

A point I forgot to mention in the posts before: currently, I am making several breaks a day from CRCing, mostly rather short breaks (~15min) just lying on the couch or sitting there, because I want to perform every meaningful action with CRC. Not totally happy with these, because I dont feel fully refreshed and ready for more CRCing after it, maybe I will come up with longer breaks or something in that direction...
One problem of this particular day has been that I did not prepare myself in the sense that I had a rough anticipation of the difficult events to come in the day and rushed the morning, wihch transferred into the whole day. Will create a rough plan for tomorrows events + make sure to start the day with meditation and create long and refreshing enough breaks (better to long than too short).

Looking forward to my next dreams this night

It seems, InvisibleO, that you are doing great on your own (your LD rate is likely the envy of many a LDer who has been at this for months, even years), and I can't begin to responsibly answer all the questions you've asked, but I do have a few thoughts/suggestions that I hope might help:

* First, be very careful of doing too much. Your success rate is excellent, and surely comes partially from the fact that you are spending so much time, in day and night work, focused on the goal of LD'ing, but piling all that stuff into your head could eventually erect a sort of information wall that holds back the flow of true lucidity. You may find yourself analyzing events instead of enjoying them, or expecting things to happen that you read about, and then being disappointed because they didn't happen to you as prescribed by all those "experts."

You have an excellent LD frequency right now, and have certainly attained enough experience to relax a bit and just enjoy the ride. Try to remind yourself every day why you're doing all this work: keep your long-term goal at the forefront, whether it be fun, exploration, enlightenment, or something else altogether -- that is, after all, why you're doing all this stuff, right?

If, as you say, you are comfortable with your ability to be lucid, why not exercise that ability for a while, with the tools you already have in hand, and just enjoy your dreams? You can always go back to piling on more information and activity later, after you've accumulated enough lucid experience to hopefully keep that information/activity wall low enough that you can see over it without effort.

* Next, a note about DEILD: I don't know what tutorial you are reading about DEILD, but I think you've been given a bit too much information there, too.

DEILD is a wonderfully simple transition that can be achieved in seconds with very little effort. The entire technique for inducing a DEILD comes down to two simple steps: Notice, during your dream, that your physical body is waking up, then hold onto the dream you are exiting while you allow your body to return to sleep without disturbing its transition (aka, hold still, and keep your thoughts clear of things like waking up). That's it; there is no more. On a personal note, the vast majority of my DEILD's occur without my ever waking up at all -- I simply feel waking-life approaching, and choose to stay where I am, before my body begins to really stir, and keep my current/last dream present in my mind as if I never left it... that's all there is to it. Really.

Here's something you might consider: you cannot in good conscience create a FA, because then you would know what it is and it would no longer be false -- and that "creation" would be just another step you don't need, and a step that is counterproductive because you are abandoning your "exit" dream, which is your best connection to your dreaming mind and easy reentry to sleep and dream. FA's, in my opinion, occur because you are still lucid during moments when your dreaming mind/unconscious has stopped delivering dream imagery (either because you are "supposed" to be waking up or entering NREM), and it scrambles to give you some imagery to satisfy your conscious desire to keep dreaming -- that imagery is generally the easiest thing your mind can grab onto, which tends to be the ready memory of the place you were when you fell asleep. So, because you are still lucid but left your last dream, and are aware of both, FA's can be used in a DEILD (or WILD, or DILD) as a starting point that you mentally stumbled into and can leave with little more than a thought, but there really is no need to create an artificial one.

* Finally, though it is a fine technique, that rolling out of your body move comes, perhaps ironically, after your DEILD is complete. If it didn't then you would still be physically awake/awakening, and your effort will likely find you on your bedroom floor! This technique is a fine thing to do, because it helps you reestablish your presence in the dream state, but in my opinion it really is not part of a DEILD transition; rather, it's just another step someone has stuck in the process to further complicate what is a remarkably simple transition.

* This bit caught my eye:

In the semi lucid period, I constantly had the "impression/feeling" that the dream was to unstable and if I tried to get fully lucid in it, I would wake up again, so I decided subconsciously to let the dream continue and hopefully build itself. Would love to hear your opinion on that too, but my take is that I am afraid of dropping out and it has been a vivid, full dream all the time and I create the sensation of the body on my own, because I am so used to it and maybe also afraid of it because if indicates waking.

If you can do this, and remain lucid in the process, then you are well on your way to a successful career in lucid dreaming. Subconsciously recognizing your dreaming mind's role in producing stable imagery, then allowing it to do so, and then keeping yourself from lapsing into non-lucidity in the process, and doing it all calmly is, in my mind, central to developing and maintaining your presence in a dream.

You might ask yourself this question, though: why do you need to "create the sensation of the body" at all? Given that the entire dream is You, and you seem to know that, creating a sensation of a body seems like unnecessary work; work that might just lead to a loss of lucidity because you are purposely making "real" something that isn't there... just a thought.

* I can't think of any outside reading sources for you (my God, you have enough already!), but I do suggest that you take a look at Sivason's DVA Dream Yoga class; I think it might help, and you are certainly ready for it.

* I also have an odd technical suggestion, InvisibleO: You might consider changing the title of this thread. A notebook is a specific thing here at DV, one that is generally attached to a DVA class. Being that, they tend to only be looked at by the teacher of the class -- so if your notebook is not attached to a class, then it may well be overlooked by the folks who you would most like to see it. But if you call it something general, like, say, "The First Steps of My Lucid Journey," your words might attract more interested eyes.

tl;dr: You seem to be doing fine, even exceptional, work to date, InvisibleO, but be careful of doing too much work, to the point where you lose the forest for the trees!

I enjoy reading your progress. I don't have advice, so this is really a "keep at it" post but I have some questions.

Are you doing that poly-phasic sleep thing because of your other goals in life (to sleep less) or are you doing that only because of LDing? Is it a transition from 8 hours to 6:20 or is it from 6-7 hours to 6:20 (or otherwise phrased, are you lowering your amount of sleep or just changing the structure)? Do you feel you are getting enough sleep? Is it easy/quick for you to fall asleep?

Other than that. I also think you have the tendency to over-study, over-complicate and over-analyze, simply because I recognize it and I have the tendency of doing that too. But sometimes, it's better to gather the experience and analyze later.

Hey,

sorry for the late response, was busy. First of all, thank you for your advice, I took several valuable pieces of information from it.

Actually on the day you answered, I had the same thought that I need to relax and step back a bit more, but reading your post was when it "clicked" ^^ I think I did two things not so good: 1. Was thinking a lot about improvements in my practice, but rushed the decisions, so. I changed something every day (mostly details, but still not helpful). And 2. I was to eager in the CRC-practice which *diminished* awareness rather than improve it.
So regarding CRC, I took 2 days "off" (only doing it whenever it occurred to me) and now I am following a more relaxed approach: I set a strong intention to do as many and long CRCs as possible (and some more specific goals) at the beginning of the day and refresh it occasionally over the course of the day, but other than that I only put in minimal effort, nudging myself in the moment to keep up the CRC longer, but I dont *try* to do it and I am ok if I forget it for some time. Basically this procedure follows the premise that as long as my intention is trong and I am putting in minimal effort, I will improve and eventually make it my second nature. I dont know if that approach is really the best, but currently it feels vitalizing, because I felt somewhat exhausted. This also applies to my MILD, so far I really saw my best results with a simple "enjoy your dreams" and nothing more.

You have an excellent LD frequency right now, and have certainly attained enough experience to relax a bit and just enjoy the ride. Try to remind yourself every day why you're doing all this work: keep your long-term goal at the forefront, whether it be fun, exploration, enlightenment, or something else altogether -- that is, after all, why you're doing all this stuff, right?

If, as you say, you are comfortable with your ability to be lucid, why not exercise that ability for a while, with the tools you already have in hand, and just enjoy your dreams? You can always go back to piling on more information and activity later, after you've accumulated enough lucid experience to hopefully keep that information/activity wall low enough that you can see over it without effort.

I think I only mentioned it briefly: Yes, I am pretty happy with my ability to attain lucidity and I find the semi-lucids fun, but all the stage 3/"fully" lucids collapse instantly. I think I might get to thrilled or maybe also afraid of the dream collapsing, so then it colapses. I want to do specific things in the dreams, so semi lucid alone will not do for my goals
That was also why I wanted to learn DILD. I have read about two people (I know Minority of DEILDers) who described how they felt themselves waking up and felt their body and one said that as long as he is still in the dream, the body sensations are a dream / simulated, too, in order to smoothen the transition to waking. But if while still in the dream one immediately rolls out of the body, this is supposed to create a false awakening as the body is still a dream at that moment. What are your opinions on that?
Anyway, I will keep this for later, i decided, I dont want to make it too complicated know, so I will rather just try to DEILD your way in case I wake up from a dream. Do I understand correctly that your basic "self fulfilling belief" is that as long as you dont open your eyes after awakening, you are still in the dream? From your description, it sounds a bit as if your mind stays in kind of a middle layer between dream and waking (might haven't understood this correctly), but in my experience, after my dreams collapse, I feel awake. But I suppose that doesn't change the procedure.

In the semi lucid period, I constantly had the "impression/feeling" that the dream was to unstable and if I tried to get fully lucid in it, I would wake up again, so I decided subconsciously to let the dream continue and hopefully build itself. Would love to hear your opinion on that too, but my take is that I am afraid of dropping out and it has been a vivid, full dream all the time and I create the sensation of the body on my own, because I am so used to it and maybe also afraid of it because if indicates waking.

After your words, this sounds really pro ^^but I meant it in another way: I suspect that because of the many dream collapses, I am subconsciously afraid of the next dream collapsing, which is why I subconsciously "deceive myself" or rather create the excuse not do an unambigous RC like Nose RC (that the dream is too unstable and would collapse if I did the nose rc), because I fear the collapse. As that feeling that the dream is still to unstable often comes from a distinct sensation of the body / knowing that I lie in bed, My (maybe too over-thought) suspicion was that I only dreamt of that sensation in order to have an excuse not to make the Nose RC.
Still a complicated explanation, please ask if it is not clear.

I will see if I can change the threads title and sub.

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@IndigoRose main reason for polyphasic was LDing, but I have been interested before, too. Before, I usually slept 8-8.5h fairly regularly. The sleep reduction is common for polyphasic schedules and as far as I understand the fundamental reasoning behind it is that it is observed that the body will repartition the remaining sleep in order to get full SWS and REM requirements, cutting only NREM1 and NREM2, which are supposed to be less / not so important for most people.
I am still on adaptation as my sleep is still in the process of repartioning. That's why I am still somewhat tired and think that I have not even tapped into the full LDing potential. Recently, I have talked to some poly sleepers who are also regular LDers, and although it might be confirmation bias, it seems that poly sleeping boosted their LDing greatly. Again this would explain my high LD rate. Great recent article about it: https://www.polyphasic.net/blog/lucid-dreaming-part-2/
Thanks!

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Brief results of days 23, 24, 25

recall 1-2 dreams per night, 1 stage 3 LD (collapsed) on 25th in morning core

I will make an update when I will continue focus on improving CRC, currently I am more focussed on keeping the progress I made before and moving forward in the poly adaptation. Will update soon! My internal goal for the first >=10s long stage 3 LD is 30th of April

Thanks for the response re polyphasic sleep. I think most people who get into it actually want to sleep less and still feel rested (and I know it works for some people). But the question is, if you don't want to sleep less and if you don't have to sleep less (i.e. can afford to sleep 8-9 hours), wouldn't it be even better for LDing purposes to sleep even more? Like a 4.5-hour phase + 3-hours phase + 1.5-hour nap? Assuming you can fall asleep and sleep that much. Usually, any bonus sleep is the perfect time for LDing (unfortunately, I can't nap, I wish I could).
Regarding your response to Sageous, I just say that feeling awake and being awake can be two different things. But my own fight is fake insomnia/sleep state misperception, and while it isn't uncommon, it isn't the majority experience.

Sorry forgot to say that I fall asleep within 5-7min usually and it is getting better, so i expect <5min after adaptation.
Yes I have been thinking about this, too, but have not yet come to a conclusive answer. I think there are some people who sleep non-reducing Tri-Phasic (Dual Core 1 is for example triphasic). However, it is very unusual, more usual would be a non-reducing biphasic like Siesta or Segmented (= WBTB with longer break). I like Tri-Phasic, because with morning core + nap I get at least two chances to LD.
Non-reducing has some disadvantages like less/not repartitioned sleep and it can be difficult to fall asleep in the nap as you say... But I have to admit that when I chose my schedule I non-reducing didn't come to my mind, probably also because I was interested to find out if the whole concept of sleep reduction was right. The community just says that 6h20 should be easily enough, so I did not think about doing even more.
In the article I linked, the author attempts to evaluate the LDing in many schedules, maybe you want to have a look at it. I might consider going for a longer schedule some time in the future, but now I want to adapt and then enjoy my adapted sleep first.

Reading FryingMans Workbook, I got the idea (may be wrong) that a big factor contributing to good LDing progress is not only consistency of efforts, but also consistency of surrounding factors like health and sleep. In his example, I saw that often he had to fight with insomnia, illness, bringing kids to school instead of sleeping, etc. which derailed him from his LDing plans. This might be another big reason why polyphasic sleepers are good LDers, because polyphasic forces a very rigid schedule upon you.

Originally Posted by InvisibleO

I think I only mentioned it briefly: Yes, I am pretty happy with my ability to attain lucidity and I find the semi-lucids fun, but all the stage 3/"fully" lucids collapse instantly. I think I might get to thrilled or maybe also afraid of the dream collapsing, so then it colapses. I want to do specific things in the dreams, so semi lucid alone will not do for my goals
That was also why I wanted to learn DILD. I have read about two people (I know Minority of DEILDers) who described how they felt themselves waking up and felt their body and one said that as long as he is still in the dream, the body sensations are a dream / simulated, too, in order to smoothen the transition to waking. But if while still in the dream one immediately rolls out of the body, this is supposed to create a false awakening as the body is still a dream at that moment. What are your opinions on that?

My opinion on that is that you may be listening to the wrong two people on how to DEILD...

I already noted my point above about the fact that you can't create a FA, so I won't go into that again. But I had to wonder about how exactly you "roll out" of a dream body in the first place, since there is literally nothing to roll out of, and you would somehow have to lay your dream body down to properly do the rolling (which in itself would be a neat trick) and then, apparently, create a FA scenario -- all during the few seconds it takes your body to wake up and your exited dream to potentially be left behind. None of that makes sense to me and, even if I just don't get it, it seems an awful lot to do in place of just hanging onto your exited dream and returning to it as you fall back asleep.

I think your two sources might be trying to create a variation of a very good technique that I think LaBerge came up with, where you "roll out" of your physical body at the moment of a WILD transition (when your body falls asleep but your presence is still awake) in order to swiftly separate yourself from your physical body in order to more firmly establish your lucidity. But that technique involves rolling out of your actual body, and not an imagined one. And, because your dreaming mind might not be prepared with a fully detailed dream just yet (as often happens with WILD) you might just wind up in an easily grabbed scenario -- like your room; but this will not be a FA, because you know you are dreaming so you cannot be "tricked" by the familiar surroundings.

I guess my advice here is to keep this plan away for good; it might not be very helpful.

Do I understand correctly that your basic "self fulfilling belief" is that as long as you dont open your eyes after awakening, you are still in the dream? From your description, it sounds a bit as if your mind stays in kind of a middle layer between dream and waking (might haven't understood this correctly), but in my experience, after my dreams collapse, I feel awake. But I suppose that doesn't change the procedure.

I'm not sure where you got that "self fulfilling belief" quote from; I never said that, and never would. There is no "belief" going on in a DEILD, nor can you believe yourself into staying in the dream. Imagining that you are still asleep because you kept your eyes closed makes no sense at all, because, eyes open or not, you can't trick yourself into believing that you are still asleep when you know fully well that your body is beginning to awaken... however, you do want to facilitate a quick return to sleep, so keeping your eyes closed (and keeping still) is still very important. Otherwise, you understood me well; that middle layer image is a good description of that "holding onto your dream" that I discussed.

Speaking of self-fulfilling: You might want to avoid the finality of concepts like "collapse." Yes, your dreams might end quickly; they certainly have a tendency to do that. But their ending does not imply that they are gone for good; simply remembering them during a DEILD (another way of "holding onto them, BTW), can be enough for them to restart after you go back to sleep. So your dream can still be with you, in some form, even if its imagery has faded at the moment of waking during your DEILD, and you can return to it once back to sleep -- but if you awaken feeling that your dream has collapsed, left behind for good, and you are sure you can't get back to it, well, then you won't get back to it. I suggest you try to develop a point of view that your last dream is still with you in some way, even as just a memory, as you awaken (which it likely is), and perhaps also that dreams fade out, retreat from your awareness (which they do) rather than "collapse." You might find that if you remove such finality from your perspective, your dreams will linger in your mind for longer periods of time.

Also: Of course you will feel awake during a DEILD. This is because, hopefully just for a moment, you are awake. Just because you are awake for a moment does not mean you are awake for the day, though; the micro-awakenings during which you employ DEILD usually include a quick return to sleep. Welcome the wakefulness as part of the process and calmly allow it to occur and pass as your body returns to sleep. And yes, dreams do tend to fade (not collapse!) as wakefulness approaches; that is their nature. But remember that the first step of DEILD is noticing that your dream is fading, that wakefulness is approaching; so you are using your dream's end as a tool for successfully returning to it .

Once you have all that firmly in place in your mind, (that it's okay for dreams to fade, because the fade can warn you of a waking; that waking briefly is OK; and, above all, that your last dream can be held onto even after it fades, if only through memory), and you learn, with practice, to remain calm and positive, your DEILD's should occur easily, quickly, and often.

I think I get your points, thanks for clarifiying.

It's been some days since my last update. I have been pretty tired, because I think the missed nap really hurt my adaptation, and a bit sick, so I reduced my efforts even more.

My recall has been relatively bad, maybe averaging 1-1.5dreams per night. Although I can't remember any details from LDs, on ~50% of the days I could distinctly remember becoming lucid. So unless these are not past memories or wishful thinking, it appears my ability to attain lucidity has not suffered that much, which I am very happy about.

Also I read the recommended class about Dream Yoga from sivason, it has been full of gems, thank you very much for that recommendation Sageous!

I think I will take a few more days to recover and will come back with another update. Looking forward to it!