Regulator's workbook

Hi everyone. Excellent forum. Just getting started at taking advantage of the terrific resource!

Reality checks:
Thinking about whether the current situation makes sense. My dreams tend to be very surreal with lots of things that just aren't realistic. The odds that I'll be dreaming and nothing unrealistic is happening are slim.

Dream Signs:
Used to be that in a good portion of my dreams I had to urinate, and was searching for a restroom. Lately that hasn't been the case. I haven't found a new reliable dream sign yet. Am keeping a journal to the end. I regularly remember 1-3 dreams per night.



Short-Term Goals:
To get to where I have around 3-5 lucid dreams a month.
And to make them more stable. I've had about 6 (it's been a while), and most of them ended shortly after I realized I was dreaming.

I have been able though to exhibit significant control over the world every time, from bending telephone poles with my mind, to stoping an aircraft I was traveling in and having it hoover motionless, and stuff like that. Control isn't a problem for me. But stability is.

And I think my recall for the LDs has been good.


Long-Term Goals:

Have 3-5 LDs a week.
Good stability and recall.


Lucid/Dream Recall History:

I've had a total of around 6 I think. In two I had a 30-60 seconds of lucidity and control before waking up, and managed to do some cool things. In the rest I woke up either immediately, or within 5-10 seconds of achieving lucidity. The most recent was about a year ago. It was a time when I was reading about lucid dreaming and keeping a journal, and I had most of my LDs. I stopped journaling, and the LDs stopped. I am planning to start again and be more persistent this time.




Current Technique:

DILD, though once I get a bit more experienced I wasn't to start trying DEILD.

A little more detail to add to the short-term goals: when I have my next LD, (hopefully within a week or two) I want to try to stabilize it. I think for me this is the next most important skill to develop, after inducing LDs to begin with. My strategy will be to focus my attention on something in the dream that I can both see and touch, and try to see how much detail I can experience, with the goal of remembering as much detail as possible when I finally wake up. My hope is that this way, the focus on sensory details in the dream will keep the dream stable, but the goal of trying to notice details so that I'll be able to write them down after I wake up will keep me lucid, since it will reinforce the idea that I'm not currently awake.

Hey Regulator, welcome to intro class!

Good plan for your next ld, looking forward to seeing how much detail you can bring back. :D

Enjoy your lucid journey and let us know if you have any questions.

Not much news. I'm reality checking probably 5 to 7 times a day. Each time I'm spending a decent chunk of time trying to convince myself that I'm not dreaming. I'm pretty sure my RCs are solid. I do several things - count fingers, look at clocks, hold nose and breathe, and also think about the current situation explicitly and try to recognize if anything is unusual. It's a pretty rigorous RC protocol. I'm trying to be careful not to half-ass the RCs.

While I'm mainly focusing on DILDs, I think that I'm also WBTBing, since I just spontaneously get up a few times during the night anyway for a bathroom visit. There is variation, but about 1 hour after bed, again about 4 hours, and again about 6-7 hours. There is a lot of variation, but that's probably an average.

thanks! Will do!

Oh, you definitely take advantage of the natural wakes - they are excellent for wbtbs. And wbtb is super helpful for both dilds and wilds. :)

Update: 2 weeks into my attempt to start lucid dreaming. So far no luck. Closest I came was one dream where I did a RC, but I did it in a half-assed way and failed to realize that it was a dream. Still doing RCs several times a day. I've been using a voice recorder on my phone to record dreams. I'm recording at least 1 every night. Been a little lazy because most nights I could record 2 or 3, but I am often really tired, and I think (correctly) "Well, I'll have another one later and I can record that one." Which is true almost always, so I rarely never go a night without a recorded dream. But maybe I should start recording them all.

The dream RC is a great progress, Regulator! What kind of RC did you do? If you wish you can do more than one RC during the day, that way you have more assurance to catch the dream. Also, whenever performing it, expect it to work. Say RC counting fingers, expect having more fingers. If so - dream! If not, then try reading a text, expect it to change...

OK, I'm back on track (hopefully) after an absence from LD practice. I've been keeping a journal the last week or so, and I'm going to start using the journal here again. Woo-hoo!

Welcome back! :)

I tried to WILD this morning for the first time ever after a WBTB. And while it wasn't ultimately successful, the initial stages went off without a hitch. I was still, listening to white noise. I quickly got what I think was sleep paralysis. Not sure. I wasn't actually paralyzed I don't think. Rather it was more like a feeling that my body was disconnected and would be unresponsive if I tried to move it. I got a little hypnogogic imagery with the sound. And then, very quickly, I enter into a sort of visualization state that is very dreamlike. It all moves along really efficiently, except that every single time (and I did it like 4 times) the onset of the actual dreamlike state comes along hand in hand with a loss of conscious awareness that I want to stay lucid. Everything works great and is actually pretty easy for me except that last crucial step. Gonna have to work on that.