shayne233's Workbook

Reality Checks:
- Squeezing my nose and attempting to breath
- Check my watch and attempting to make sense of what time it is
- Making sense of my current location

Dream Signs:
- Camp Woodward West
- My mom's red Beetle
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Short-Term Goals:
- Have a lucid dream long enough to get past the initial excitement and to calm down to analyze the dream
- Talk to a dream character while lucid
- Practice skating at my local skatepark from within a lucid dream

Long-Term Goals:
- Ask to see my pure Id self
- Attempt clockwork
- Establish a relationship with a consistent dream character

Lucid/Dream Recall History:
- Once I have started my dream journal, I was able to remember at least one dream in pretty vivid detail a night. However, I've only become lucid on 3 occasions, all of which were very short and very spread apart.

Current Technique:
- WBTB has been the cause of all 3 of my lucid dreams

I have 8:00 AM classes Monday-Thursday, so I am almost always in bed by 10:00 and wake up at 6:00. Friday-Sunday really varies depending on what's going on, however I am going to try to avoid becoming exhausted since that has terrible effects on my dream recall.

Lucid goals:

1. Have sex (just gotta get it out of the way)
2. Practice skating within my dreams (to see if I can improve my skating while lucid)
3. Study for a test
4. Meet my pure Id self
5. Establish a relationship with a consistent dream character.
6. Attempt clockwork
7. Play a piano (I am learning to play piano in my waking life)
8. Really analyze my dreams and compare/contrast them to my waking life

My most reoccurring dream sign/s are aspects of my experience at Woodward West Camp (an action sports camp in California) where I spent 3 weeks as a video intern this past summer. I could either be completely at the camp and realize that I am at the camp and possibly skating/interacting with a fellow intern, but sometimes the dreams just include people from the camp. These Woodward references happen extremely often; they are in more than half my dreams. Both of the dreams I had last night included Woodward to some degree, especially the 2nd where I was definitely at the camp and skating with someone I skated with this summer.

Other than that, I don't seem to have many more reoccurring dream signs. My mom's red Beetle car has made an appearance from time to time, and was featured in my first lucid dream, but it doesn't seem to appear often enough to be deemed a dream sign.

I've decided to work on the DILD, with a mix of WBTB method for Lesson II. Being a beginner, one that is extremely inexperienced, I believe that it would be better for me to try to get a feel for lucid dreaming before attempting an advance induction method like WILD (which what I hope to work my way up to eventually). I also recall OpheliaBlue mentioning that a lot of beginners try to jump right into the WILD technique and come up unsuccessfully and thus become unmotivated. WBTB has caused my only 3 lucid dreams so far, so it seems like a natural choice. I will update my workbook each night with thoughts and notes about what is resulting from my efforts.

I just read KingYoshi's ADA tutorial and have decided to start undergoing the 'awareness sessions' he prescribes. I will do as many as I can without feeling stressed.

Hi shayne233 and :welcome: to the intro class!

It's good to see that you have a consistent sleep schedule and try to avoid exhausting yourself too much during weekends. A good sleep schedule is indeed very important for lding and recall. You can also time your wbtbs better this way and your body may even get used to having them at certain time which will make it easier to wake up.

I think your choice for DILD + wbtb and ADA is an excellent one. It is very reassuring that this tech is also working for you. Congrats on having your first 3 lds! The majority of my lds are also DILDs and as time has progressed, I have found that wilds can also spontaneously occur during too long wbtbs. This is not something that I have aimed for, but rather a side-effect. I share the opinion that it is much easier to start with DILD and with more experience one can move on to other techs.

Are you planning on posting your dreams here? If so, you can use the tags to help you identify more dream signs. Have a look at some members' journals and their tags to get some ideas of other items that might be reoccurring to you. If you are keeping a paper based DJ, then you can also tag your dreams or simply highlight certain words. Remember, DS need not be something extraordinary. Your school, parents and friends are among the most common DS. Then you might have things that are out of place, weird objects, animals or special skills that only manifest in dreams like flying or TK.

Looking forward to your updates. Sweet dreams! :)

Thanks for the feedback!

I forgot to mention that I recently thought up a way to time out my WBTBs. I live in a house of 5, so setting an alarm to schedule WBTBs would be unfair to then. However, since the other 4 members of my family tend to go to bed later than me, I listen to the same 10 hour 'rain noises' track every night to fall asleep. The track works wonders to just put me to sleep, but I realized that I could record the sound of my alarm clock going off, and insert the recording into the track. I did this, putting the alarm recording 4 hours into the track, but have yet to wake up to it the past 3 nights in which I've tried it, usually because my earbuds fall out of my ears sometime before.

Thanks for the reassurance of my technique/s choice, and confirmation that I could move onto to more advanced techniques from these. I'm hoping that I will be aware enough in some recent lucid dreams to be able to really hone in on increasing my awareness/studying the dream in hopes that it will increase the chances of me being able to WILD.

I do plan on posting my dreams here. I have a somewhat extensive physical DJ at the moment, but haven't looked over a lot of them after writing them, so I am going to type out a lot, if not all of them into this digital DJ. Thanks for the tagging/looking at other people's DJs suggestions! I definitely plan on spending a solid hour before bed on this site, looking through other's dreams and such.

I probably was more close-minded about what a DS could be, so thank you for clarifying. I can't think of anything else to add to my list at the moment.

Again, thanks for the feedback! Sweet Dreams! :)

ADA update 1/14:
After reading up on ADA and practicing with 4-5 awareness sessions yesterday, I was able to remember to have awareness sessions about 5-6 times today, and feel more aware in general. In hasn't lead to an increase in lucidity, but I doubt it tends to work that fast.

DJ Entry: (non-lucid)
I was at Woodward West Camp (as usual) and was filming a highly renowned rollerblader named Alex Broskow, except instead of skating the parks he wanted to make an 'off road' edit, where I would film him doing tricks as he skated down a mellow hill of grass. We began filming, and I was using a large 3CCD camcorder with a Raynox fisheye, and he was holding a Canon HDSLR with a Tamron 17-50mm and told me that he'd rather have the 3CCD camera so we switched. I started filming him doing tricks, and that was about all I can remember.

Wow, I like your idea of using the track to help you with your wbtb. Living with many people can be a bit challenging at times, yet it's great that members always find some ways around these constraints. Any techs that you find are working can then help out others with similar problems. I think you already have listened to the Podcast with the natural wake tips where CL talks about pee water. Another tip that was given was to set your intention to wake at a particular time. I've also heard from people irl that they use this tech instead of an alarm. I guess it takes time to develop, but you might want to play around with it as well. It works best if you have a regular sleep schedule and are not too sleep deprived. (otherwise you may be sleeping too deep so might not wake up that easily).

Also, we usually tend to shortly awaken at the end of each REM. Most of the time we are unaware of these micro-awakenings as we are too sleepy and just roll over BUT we can learn to acknowledge them and use them as wbtb. For me they usually start after getting 3-4 hrs of sleep and continue every hour or so (apprx) which is quite convenient.

Woodward West Camp again huh? That's a fantastic opportunity right in front of you. It took me a few months to fully sink in my subcon but using DS mantra is very effective. You can say a mantra like "If I am in WWC, I realize this is a dream", repeat 5-10 times a day and before bed. With time you internalize this and you may find yourself acknowledging this in the dream, your subcon will say it and bam! Lucidity!

Sweet dreams! :)

I haven't listened to that podcast yet, but will surely get to it since I have them all on my iPod to listen to while making dinner, but the pee water reference you made may be similar to a technique I thought about trying. I have a really difficult time setting intentions such as that, or at least having the intentions take effect, but I can stick to a pretty strict schedule to the point where I will wake up at regular times without an alarm. Thank you for the suggestions though!

I am very aware of the numerous awakenings we have during the night. During my strongest period of dream recall, I could recall about 3 or 4 of my wake ups per night.

Yeah I am slowly started to grasp that the Woodward DS may be of great help to me, although only 15-20% of the WWC dreams actually take place at WWC or emphasize that it is referring to WWC, when most of the time my DCs are just people that I met at WWC or other familiarities such as living in a cabin, and it's only upon waking and analyzing the dream that I associate it with Woodward. Hopefully my practice with ADA will strengthen my ability to recognize the WWC aspects.

Thanks for the reply!

ADA update 2/14

I slacked a yesterday on the awareness sessions. I probably did 3 at the most. It was a strange day that kind of promoted me to lose myself in thought, but I am going to try to be more persistent.

DJ entry: (non-lucid)
Me and my 'friends' (I can't recall who they were, just that they were friends) were into doing tricks on trampolines in this situation, and we were practicing on some home-setup ones. Something caused me to want to start a fire, so I did so in a trashcan because I recall my family doing the same thing before (IRL I have not). I accidentally put the burning trashcan in the middle of the trampoline as my friends were jumping, however, it did not fall over. I removed it and placed it to the side of the trampoline. My dad appeared and put out the fire with a skateboarding-filming camera setup (GL2/MK2 for the film geeks) which could apparently spray water like a hose. He told me that it was a new trashcan. I was shocked because I thought it was the regular burning trashcan, and sincerely apologized and offered to buy him a new one, but he said it was fine and didn't seem angry at all.

ADA Update 3/14:
I improved a bit on my awareness today. Not substantially, but a noticeable improvement. I am going to read up more on it tonight because I found myself wondering what I should focus my awareness on during my sessions, and a more clear cut procedure would probably make it easier for me to make it routine.

DJ entry: (non-lucid)
I was Bender, the robot character of the animated TV show Futurama, to some extent (as in, I might have just felt like him or actually been him, and all I know is that I associated him with myself in this dream in some way). I was in the middle of the ocean on a sunny day, and a black fishing boat drove by and sucked me in with its propellor, but I was holding a shirt which got caught in the motor and ended up jamming it. However, I knew that if I let go of the shirt, the propellor would unjam and kill me, but a doctor of some sorts wearing black clothes somehow made me appear in his office on the boat, and the propellor was now just an electric tooth brush with the shirt jammed in it, and he just took at the batteries.

I remembered this faint snippet from another dream that night: My mom pulled into our driveway in her Ford Flex, and when she opened the door I noticed that the floor of it was covered in dead/wet grass, and I contemplated offering to clean it up for $15.

Quote:

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I am very aware of the numerous awakenings we have during the night. During my strongest period of dream recall, I could recall about 3 or 4 of my wake ups per night.

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Oh, that is really good. You will learn to take advantage of these as time goes on. For starters, you can use them to do WBTB or even micro-wbtb. It never hurts to say a few mantras as one rolls over and falls back to sleep.

Nice practicing ADA, I think the hard part about it or RCs is remembering to do it. Once you get used to doing it, it becomes kind of a habit. I like to think of the way Sherlock Holmes looks around, noticing all kinds of details. You certainly don't need to go into deep analysis like he does, but simply acknowledge something is there. Btw, I know that can be hard when a pressing matter is happening, but we are usually not really in a physical kind hurry, so noticing even one tiny detail before reacting is a bonus. Hope that makes sense.