Thread: Camdave's Workbook

Lesson 2 - Placeholder

1) Find a technique that suits you.

After having read through over 100 pages of tutorials on the site (from the links) and trying to distill things down to their essence, I think that the technique that best suits me is DILD/MILD - I'm not entirely sure what the exact difference is between the two methods, as at face value they seem pretty similar in concept.

An important part of this that I have discovered that I wasn't aware of was the need for awareness (no pun intended . . .). I began to practise meditation last week to help to build awareness and also as a way of de-stressing and relaxing after lunch at work; I do a 10 minute session at lunchtime and then a 15 minute session in the evening before bed - I find that this helps me to relax and get ready for bed. I'm historically a light sleeper who takes a while to fall asleep, but I've found that meditating and clearing the mind of thoughts works well.

I have started to incorporate some visualisation during meditation or general daydreams to try to reinforce what lucid dreaming is like (from the couple of times I've managed it) and how I will realise that I'm dreaming. I still need to build a greater self-awareness, however, as I'm still missing things in my dream that seem obvious when I wake up. I find that I quite often realise that I'm dreaming - I even told myself last night in my dream that something I did in my dream was OK as it was only in the dream world and not the real world - presumably this counts as a lucid dream in which I am not controlling the dream.

Over the next few days I shall be performing WBTB. I've experimented waking up 4.5/6 hours after going to bed and staying up for 30/45 minutes - at the moment, the best combination for me seems to be waking up after 6 hours for a 30 minute wake-up session in which I note that night's dreams, go through previous nights' dreams and read through some DV forums. I'm going to try 15 minutes tonight as I need to be up fairly early for work tomorrow, as the Monday traffic is awful around the London area, so the earlier I go in, the better.

2) Choose a second induction technique

I think WILD could be a useful technique for me in the future, when my wife returns home on Friday. WBTB is going to be impractical when sharing a bed, but my wife quite often wakes during the night to go to the bathroom and thus this could serve as a good "jumping-off" point for a brief WBTB/WILD.

General to-do over the coming week(s):
- Practice waking awareness by engaging all the senses and focus on the details. Try to do this approximately once an hour to develop a second-nature for doing this. I should also think about how I affect my surroundings and how I am affected by them; how I got to this place and where I am going afterwards (with visualisation). This will be accompanied by a couple of RC's (nose-pinch and one that is relevant to the area, such as mirrors, digital clocks etc.). Start to question everyday things such as conversations people are having, the warmth of a tea-cup and environmental sounds.
- Visualise dream control and performing it when daydreaming. Perform dream incubation before sleep to reinforce dream scenes and the sensation of becoming lucid, imagining obviously lucid behaviour.
- Keep recording waking times and recording in dream journal (I have a book for this).
- Develop own mantra for repetition when sleeping.