Wanderingoak's Workbook

Hello! This class looks interesting. I hope it'll motivate me to procrastinate less and sleep more :)

Reality Checks:
- Pushing thumb through palm
- Pinching nose
- Counting fingers

Dream Signs:
- Red vs Blue vs other random colors (e.g teams/armies/etc)
- Conflict
- Seeing old friends/relatives

Short-Term Goals:
- Have a lucid dream
- Recall more dreams
- Fix sleep schedule; lately I've been sleeping < 5 hours a day on weekdays.

Long-Term Goals:
- Flying/teleportation
- Float/wander around the neighborhood

Lucid/Dream Recall History:
- I used to remember my dreams in great detail (about a year ago or so) but since then school and homework has prevented me from getting enough sleep :/ Now I just remember fragments, if any at all.
- No lucid dreams yet :/ Working on it!

Current Technique:
- DILD/MILD

Success! I think I figured out how to end my long dry spell of horrible dream recall. All I had to do was write on paper.
(I really should have figured this out sooner, but once I stick with something, I tend to stick with it stubbornly. Unless it's dream techniques. :/
When I write on paper I have the urge to write in full sentences, while when I type on my ipod I type in fragments. Who knew?
It also might have to do with the fact that I slept almost 12 hours, but I usually sleep in on weekends anyway, and the past school week I've maybe gotten around ~22 hours of sleep. I really have to stop procrastinating.)

DJ Entry

Looks like I haven't posted here in a while. Time for a much-needed update.

I've been making slow but steady progress so far. Currently on winter break, so more time for sleep... although I have only 3 days left. Oh well.

LD Stats:
Sep 2013 - 0
Oct 2013 - 1 (FA/DILD)
Nov 2013 - 4 (FA/DILD)
Dec 2013 - 3 so far (1 DILD, 2 WILD?)

Dream Signs/Themes (as of 12/24/13):
Robotics/Robots: 15
School/Friends: 30
Doctor Who/Sherlock/Fandom etc: 18
CS-related: 4

Current Progress and Notes:
- Had my first LD on 10/30/13, a month after I started seriously practicing. (Was practicing CAT, though due to an irregular sleep schedule, I stopped early)
- Had a few more lucids after that. Most were only a few seconds, or not vivid. I do remember to stabilize before doing anything else, though.
- I usually become lucid when RCing during a false awakening.
- Dreams almost always start in my bedroom, and I usually stay indoors for some reason.
- Had my first (and maybe second) WILD today, though they were really short.
- The "feeling" of being lucid in a dream and just visualizing while I'm awake is almost tangible. It's like a whoosh, and then I know I'm awake, even though I'm still imagining I'm in the dream world.
- Dream recall is okay (1+ dream per night with adequate sleep); waking up in the middle of the night helps.

Notes on Stabilization:
- Best RC for me is looking at hands, plugging nose, or checking if I need to breathe.
- Pushing finger through hand works most but not all the time.
- Saying 'clarity now' etc helps.
- Touching the walls and ground helps.

Current Techniques:
- Writing daily in dream journal.
- Brief meditation in bed before sleeping. (+ MILD)
- RCs when I remember
- ADA/Mindfulness (I keep forgetting this... I should put it on a post-it or something)
- Multiple alarms throughout the night. Helps with dream recall. (+ WBTB, WILD)

Hmm... looks like I'm really bad at updating my workbook. Oh well. These past few months have been kind of dry. My sleep schedule's been really bad and hectic lately because of school (3-5 hours every weeknight, usually, and then 10-12 on the weekends). I really, really need to learn to manage my time.

On a positive note, I'm pumped to start practicing seriously again. Kudos to /r/LucidDreaming for some great posts, heh. (This post and related ones, for example.) I've also bought Robert Waggoner's Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self and am slowly getting through the whole thing. And one of my friends is apparently a natural lucid dreamer. So lucky. Going to use that as motivation (if she can do that, then so can I!)

(Which reminds me, I really need to finish ETWOLD sometime. I'd blame school, but my poor time management skills are at fault :/ )

Anyway, my current LDing progress isn't very good. My dream recall has been really spotty, partially due to lack of sleep. My recall on the weekends is getting worse, though. Usually I can write about a paragraph or so per dream, but lately it's been 0-1 sentence each. Today was slightly better, but I remember going through my dream and "typing" it up (as in imagining myself taking out my iPod touch and writing it down as opposed to actually moving). I was afraid that moving would make me forget everything (which it did). And after going through one of my dreams, I thought, "eh, I wrote it down already, no need to put it into my dream journal" and went back to sleep (even though it was all visualization and not actual writing).

I've been jumping around methods, lately, too. I really need to pick one or two and stick with it. Right now I'm thinking of meditation before bed, and MILD/mantras and visualization. Nothing like WILD, because that never works for me. Only results in wasted time. No alarms either (or maybe just one), because they jolt me out of sleep, which isn't very good. I'd like to be able to wake up after every dream naturally, so I guess I'll work on that first.

I also need to work on my sleep schedule. Some days I get home from school at like 9 or 10, so not much I can do about that. But the days when I have a medium amount of homework and get home earlier... I have no excuse for sleeping past 11 those days. Now if only I can get that into my head.

Finally, my waking life routine:
I've been slacking on RCs these past few months. In the past few days, though, I'm doing them more frequently, and questioning my surroundings more as well. (At least, I think I am. I usually do an RC, and think, "Am I dreaming?" And then think "Oh shit what if I am dreaming? It's possible," and look around as if I were in a dream, admiring my brain's ability to render things in detail. I should probably switch those two around, because after I do an RC I pretty much know whether I'm dreaming or not.

I'm also working on awareness. It's sort of a mesh between sensory awareness and self-awareness. I'm still unclear as to what self-awareness is (is it just being aware of what you are doing at the moment? Like being aware of yourself walking down a street instead of just mindlessly walking back home?), but I'm trying. I tend to get really focused on what I'm doing and lose track of time (when I'm reading, browsing on the internet, writing something, daydreaming, or just plain thinking), so I think I need to snap out of that trance more.

Okay. This is really long. I have some thoughts on lucid dreaming as a whole that I'd like to write down, but I'll leave them for later. Maybe in another post. ...I hope this is the right way to use a workbook.

Finally remembered a dream in full! Whoo! Don't know if it's because I finally have some semblance of a routine down, or because I got around 10 hours of sleep... No LD yet, but it's a start.

Notes on Last Night:
- Set alarms for 5:30, 7:30, and 9:00
- 10 min meditation before bed
- Went to bed at 12:45* (should sleep before 12... :/ )
- (Should have tried MILD but went directly to sleep instead)
- Woke up naturally a little before the 5:30 alarm. So my best time for a WBTB might be around 4 1/2 hours or so, since I take a while to fall asleep.
- Wrote down a few sentences, went to the bathroom, read a bit of Waggoner's book, and went back to sleep. I think I might have tried MILD/WILD then. Not sure. Mantras were "I realize I am dreaming a stable dream" and "I wake up after every dream and remember"
- 7:30 and 9:30 alarms wake me up. Little to no recall. Might have tried WILD, but failed.
- Woke up for the last time at 10:16. Remembered a dream vividly, wrote a few paragraphs down. Might have imagined the ending (I tend to continue dreams in my mind after I wake up), but I'll take what I can get.
- While writing down that dream, I remembered bits and pieces of previous dreams. Nice.

*Last night I stayed up late reading about lucid living. I'm not sure whether I grasp the concept fully yet, but it's an interesting topic, and I'll try to keep it in mind throughout the day.

What I should work on now, I think, is getting a decent amount of sleep during the week and keeping up with MILD, since I never really tested it out before. Maybe the mantras helped me with recall, who knows?

I decided to make it a goal for the week to sleep before 12. That's still only 6 1/2 hours of sleep minimum, but it'd be better than sleeping at 1 or 2 in the morning every night. At least I'm remembering a dream (or part of one) every weeknight so far. Meditation before bed is helping a lot, too. I can see how it'd be helpful for WILD... passively observing the sensations and images but not particularly focusing on them.

No lucid dreams yet, but mantras before falling asleep seem to help with recall/waking up after every dream.