Thread: Pickman's Workbook

I turned in at 1am and my dream recall was a little patchy when I woke up at 6:30am. I got up and attempted WBTB after ten minutes of writing my dreams down.

As I lay in bed I did start having more of those hypnagogic images play out in front of me, but they seemed to fade pretty fast. I relaxed and let them play out instead of trying to influence events too soon, which is what I did a few nights ago. It didn't seem to make much difference. I fell back to sleep again and my dreams were incredibly vivid, and I was very active and mentally switched on in them, but there was no lucidity. I woke up again at 8:30am.

I'm going to have to have another look at those WBTB tutorials, see if I can perfect my technique.

That sounds good. I think you are doing pretty well. Good luck with further refinement of the tech.

Thanks NyxCC. Last night was not so good. I made the mistake of eating too much rich food and it gave me indigestion. I think this may have hampered my efforts.

I turned in at around 12:30 and woke up again a 1:30am. Even though it was a bit early, I decided to attempt a WBTB. This made no difference, and my dream recall was more patchy than usual. I woke up at around 8am. I guess I need to lay off the rich food.

Another mediocre night. I turned in slightly later at 1am, and woke up at around 5:30am. I attempted a WBTB, but it didn't seem to help with dream recall. My recall was still patchy. I think the reason for this is the amount of crap food I've been eating since Christmas. All the more reason to detox in the New Year.

Sounds familiar. Everytime there's a holiday and lots of food and celebrations, my recall suffers. This time I still managed some lds compared to before, but lucidity was lower than usual. My normal dreams have become more disorderly too.

Hope we will be back on track soon. In the meantime, enjoy the NY celebrations and lots of lucidity in the weeks and months to come.

Originally Posted by NyxCC

Sounds familiar. Everytime there's a holiday and lots of food and celebrations, my recall suffers. This time I still managed some lds compared to before, but lucidity was lower than usual. My normal dreams have become more disorderly too.

Hope we will be back on track soon. In the meantime, enjoy the NY celebrations and lots of lucidity in the weeks and months to come.

Yeah, I'm starting to develop my own theory on the link between diet and dream recall/lucidity. Last night my dream recall was patchy as well, even though I did everything right - turned in early, no PC or TV use for an hour before bed, no junk food, I even meditated.

I turned in at 12:30 after trying to get down the above good habits. I woke up at 6:50am and struggled to get out of bed to do a WBTB. My dream recall was fragmented. I went back to bed, reaffirming my personal mantras, and I got the beginnings of some hypnogogic imagery going, but none of it led to anything besides more sleep with patchy dream recall. I got up at 8am feeling like crap.

I think my body is still processing the rich, sugary foods I've been indulging in for the past week. One thing I've noticed in the past whenever my diet turns to junk is that my mind doesn't seem to function as well as it should - I'm not as sharp and my memory isn't that great. Also, I feel rubbish when I wake up in the mornings. I think that the mental/physical impact of a crap diet extends to our dreams too. I don't think I'm going to be back on track until I clean up my diet in the new year. I plan on doing a modified paleo diet over that period, which I did quite well on over the past year, and should help me to get over the excessive sugar in my diet.

It's good that you are getting to figure out the effect of different foods on dreams and overall energy levels, brain function, mind sharpness, etc. It will be great to share around more of these foods to avoid. Sugary foods are definitely on the list. I also find take aways rather exhausting. Lots of fried food with little fiber as a combination has been damaging to recall too, unfortunately sometimes it's hard to explain to relatives why you don't want to eat what they are serving you.

Good luck detoxing and a Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you too NyxCC. For me, it's mainly sugar. As someone who successfully cut out excess amounts refined sugars from my diet last year, I can really feel the difference when I go on a sugar binge now.

I didn't post an update yesterday because I knew there would be no point. I knew that the junk food and alcohol I ate on New Years Eve would mean crap sleep, so I didn't even try. Funnily enough, despite this, my recall was pretty good and what I could recall was in vivid detail.

Last night I turned in earlier at around 12:30 and slept right through until 7:40am when I was woken up by other people in the house. I can barely remember anything I dreamed, so not much to report.

Still no luck on the lucidity front. I seem to sleeping right through until about 8am when I wake up, and my dream recall is still very patchy. I guess my body needs to process all the junk I ate over the holidays. Thankfully my going to bed routine is going well.

I think it's about time I looked at the next lesson in the course. I had been on part 3 since early November (I think). I'll get onto that over the weekend.

Some very unexpected success last night - two lucids, despite going to bed drunk in the early hours of the morning!

Last night I overindulged a little with alcohol, so as far as lucidity was concerned, I wasn't even trying. I didn't think I would even bother updating my logbook today because that night would be a write-off. I would be lucky to get any decent sleep with the booze in my system.

So I turned in at some point in the early hours of the morning - not sure when. Not only was my dream recall pretty good when I woke up in the night, but I even managed to be lucid for a brief period. I remember leading a group of people (and some robots) around a rubbish-strewn building.

When I woke up, I allowed myself to enter a daydream-like state. I wasn't trying to re-enter the dream like in a DEILD, I just lay there and allowed a dream to emerge in my mind's eye. I ended up seeing the lobby of a building - possibly a train station. It was busy with people, most of them security guards. Knowing better than to get excited and enter the dream too soon, I lay back until I felt myself "within" the dream, if that makes sense. I ended up interacting with a few of the DC's for longer than the last lucid.

This turned out to be the most seamless transition from waking to dream state I have ever experienced. Does this count as a WILD? If so, that would be pretty amazing considering how drunk I was.

The dream turned into a non-lucid, and I woke up at around 8:30am.

I need to look at Lesson IV. I won't have the time to do that today, so maybe tomorrow instead.

Hey, that's absolutely awesome! Congratulations!

Yes, that is a WILD, well done Pickman! Very nicely executed, like a pro!

Thanks Nyxx! I would run my own little experiment on the effects of alcohol on dreaming, but I'm supposed to be detoxing in the new year and I don't think that would help.

Last night, no such luck. I turned in at 12:30, and slept through until 8:15am. My dream recall was patchy, but what I could remember was pretty vivid.

I took a look at Lesson IV. So basically, all I have to do is wait until I have another lucid and practice the dream control and stabilization techniques. I'll see how that goes. Hopefully I can increase my lucidity once my diet improves.

I have read that alcohol initially surpresses REM sleep, which is later followed by a rebound. However, I wouldn't rely on it to get lucid for obvious reasons.

There are supplements that have similar effects - 5-htp, st. john's wort, melatonin. You can also try with blueberries which are high in all sorts of nutrients (and may also boost serotonin production).

As far as dream control is concerned, I think it is really helpful to have a particular goal/task that you want to do in a dream, something to look forward to. That way you have extra motivation to ld and the expectation might help cross over to lucidity.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll experiment with them soon. I have already tried St John's Wort as a tea, but only once, and it didn't work. It probably needs more time.

Last night however, I did have a weird experience using brainwave technology and hypnosis that resulted in a near-LD experience. A while back I found a Lucid Dream Induction audiobook on iTunes, and I thought I would give it a try while drifting off to sleep. It used a combination of binaural beats and hypnosis. As I went to sleep, I actually felt a series of vibrations throughout my body, and I wondered if I was about to WILD.

Before I went to sleep, I ate dinner at 11pm (because of the hours I work), and my meal was a high fat dish of mackerel fillets. My body seemed to take a while to digest this, and I think it influenced my dreams.

My dreams that night were almost lucid. I wore the T-shirt and boxers that I normally wear to bed, but I felt tired and thirsty, and there was a constant buzzing in my head (the binaural beats?). I could barely walk straight, I was so tired. I was in my parent's house, downstairs while my parents were in bed upstairs. I have two people over visiting - they are "protestors". They use the household PC. My Dad comes downstairs and shouts at me because the protestors came upstairs while he was in bed and made him connect an ethernet cable from upstairs to the PC downstairs so they could play games on it.

This was followed by a series of false awakenings, where I woke up in the night, but I was so tired and incredibly thirsty that I spent the whole time slumped against my wall, chugging on water from a bottle near my bed.

For once I actually bothered to report my dream in this thread because it is quite interesting. "Upstairs" resented having to get up and connect to "downstairs" because of the "protestors" who may have been my difficult-to-digest food that my body was struggling with. So perhaps "upstairs", possibly being my brain, did not want to be lucid that night because it had other stuff it needed to do, which is why I felt like crap throughout that dream.

I think if it wasn't for the heavy food I had last night, I would definitely have had a powerful and long lucid dream experience using the binaural beats/hypnosis. This is one to try out another time, perhaps after a lighter meal - maybe during the weekend when I don't have to have my evening meal so late.

It's great that you have gotten close to lucidity, maybe with a lighter meal things would click? By the way eating late may not be totally bad as long as it isn't something very heavy. I've read that food that takes a while to digest, like slow carbs may help release energy later on, giving you a boost just when you are trying to ld. I'm also excited about the binaural beats and the brainwave tech!

Yeah, I'm also getting into the whole binaural beat thing - I might have another go over the weekend.

Last night, no lucidity although my dream recall was pretty good. My dreams themselves were vivid and interesting enough for me to remember them in detail. I turned in slightly later at around 1am, and woke up at 6:40am having had a very vivid dream. I got up and wrote it down before turning in again, and my dreams went crazy until I got up at around 8:20am.

I tried the binaural beat/hypnosis thing again last night after a lighter meal, but there was no such luck this time. I turned in at around 12:40, and kept waking up in the night. I can't remember when, but I woke up at least twice, so my dream recall was pretty good. I finally got up at 8:20am.

No binaural beats last night, and I turned in slightly later at 1am. Dream recall was pretty good when I woke up at 6:40am. I got up and attempted a WBTB, but I had no luck. I woke up again at 8:20am, and my dream recall was still good.

Turned in later at around 1am, and I managed to get around 2 hours sleep before I woke up at 7am. I had to get up early, so no real attempts at lucidity were made. I kept waking up in the night, which might be why my dream recall was pretty good.

Again, turned in a bit later at around 1am, and I tried listening to the binaural beat/hypnosis recording. I ended up seeing a lot of hypnagogic imagery that I thought might turn into a proper dream, but that never happened. It might work with repeated use, I hope. According to the author of the recording, it should be use for 21 days straight, so I'll see how it goes. I slept through until 8am, and dream recall wasn't that great either, probably because I was so tired.

Maybe you could try listening to those during a wbtb?

Not much luck last night - I turned in at around 12:45 and slept right through until 8am. My dream recall was good although patchy.

Originally Posted by NyxCC

Maybe you could try listening to those during a wbtb?

So you mean after waking up and spending ten minutes or so doing what I do during a WBTB, I listen to them as I drift off to sleep? Or straight after waking up I put the earphones in and listen to them? I might go for the first option.

Yes, I think you could try that. The first option sounds a bit better to me. Good luck!

No luck last night. Dream recall seems to be getting patchier recently, and I'm not naturally waking up in the night like I used to. I have no idea why that could be.

I turned in at around 1am and slept through until 8:30am. I remember some of my dreams but not much. I have been a bit lazy with the dream journalling recently, as it was generally something I would do during WBTB moments.