hotchip's workbook

Hi everyone! So i've known about lucid dreaming for a while now and I have had a few without actively trying to induce them. I really would like to actually try these technique, improve them and progress on!

Reality Checks:
- Question myself am I dreaming? Look at my surroundings for anything strange going on. Retrace my memory what i've been going and just deeply question myself.
- Try and float up. I notice a lot of the time in my non-lucid dreams, I can easily float and usually my most common mode of transportation.
- Look at my hands, count them.

Dream Signs:
- Often find myself floating in my dreams

Short-Term Goals:
- Record any dreams in my dream journal every day consistently for a month
- Have a lucid dream at least once a week
- Consistently perform my reality checks
- Take more effort in performing ADA
- Be successful in grounding a lucid dream, anchoring myself to it

Long-Term Goals:
- Improve the length and vividness of my dreams. There more experienced lucid dreamers here say that their dreams are as realistic as real life and I want to reach this point!
- Be able be recall more dreams per night
- Have multiple lucid dreams per week
- Better control of my dreams (I have trouble speaking and walking when i'm lucid)
- Longer dreams

Lucid/Dream Recall History:
- About one dream per night

Current Technique:
DILD (MILD + WBTB)

I find that whenever I don't sleep well, I can't even recall my dreams. My dreams are so much more vivid during the weekends because I get to sleep in when I would usually be awake. So one of my main priorities right now is get a good sleep schedule. I woke up late today so i'm not going to feel sleepy till about 1am. I'll wake up at 6am next morning. That's about 5 hours of sleep. I definitely won't get a good recall of my dreams with 5 hours but just for tonight...

Hey there! I'm still learning myself, but I might have a solution to enhance the vividness of your dreams. The more tired your body is, the more time you'll spend in deep sleep. That also means that you usually won't sleep right into a REM phase (which is where most vivid dreams happen) at your regular bedtime.

I would recommend trying WBTB or napping in the afternoon - these techniques worked really well for myself, for both enhancing vividness, and to increase the chance to achieve lucidity.

As for WBTB - if you normally get up at 6AM, try getting up at 4:30/5:00 or so, remain awake for 30 mins without doing any mind-straining stuff (like watching TV or solving math puzzles), because you still want to keep your sleepiness, rather read a book, maybe an article about lucid dreaming, or a fantasy book you'd like to dream about. After that time passed, you lie back down, and your chances of sleeping right back into REM are significantly increased.

If you want to try to go for a nap during the day, then your body doesn't need deep sleep at that point yet, which might just lead you right into a REM phase - and vivid dreams.

[EDIT]: If you only have like 5 hours to sleep anyway, drawing time for a WBTB attempt is probably not the best idea. Maybe try napping instead for this day, since you could use the extra sleep time anyway :)

Hi Vaiaphraim! I woke up at 6AM today and as expected I couldn't recall much due to only 5 hours of sleep and you're right, I didn't think WBTB would have been a great idea just for last night but I am definitely going to do the WBTB next morning! I should be feeling pretty sleepy early tonight with the lack of sleep I got last night. My sleep schedules is slowly getting back on track!

Thanks for the advice Vaiaphraim, I'll get up at about 4:30-5:00AM to perform WBTB and will update on how it went!

Hey hotchips, welcome to intro class! :) Indeed, not getting enough sleep can have a negative impact on recall and dream practices, so I recommend to try to get a much shut eye as possible. Going to bed at approximately the same time is also important for recall.

Thanks NyxCC! I got a solid 8 hours of sleep last night with a very vivid dream but unfortunately it wasn't lucid. I think I also just discovered a new dream sign as I look back in my dream journal and that is that I dream that i'm in the city a lot. I used to travel to the city every morning to get to university earlier this year. So I think that would go well with the mild technique - I should think to myself to make sure I reality check when I find that i'm in the city

Update: So I've started taking more time in doing all day awareness. Whenever I have some quiet time like on the bus, walking home, doing some errands, I practise the ADA. Hopefully I see some increase in clarity of my dreams

Those are indeed really good times to practice ADA. :)

Gosh it's been some time since i've posted here. I've just finished my exams and my bad habit of leaving studying till last minute made me lose a lot of sleep as well as the time to practise lucid dreaming. They are over now and I have made a promise that I'm going to stick to it. (And to improve my study habits lol). My sleep schedule real bad now. I only get sleep at like 4am, waking up at 2pm. So first things first is to fix my sleep schedule.

I plan on waking up at 7:00am tomorrow morning. I know it will be extremely hard waking up at that time as with my current sleep schedule, I have been waking up at 1-2pm but I will persevere and make this happen. Wake up, record my dreams and then perform the reality checks throughout the day. I then plan on getting to bed at about 11:00pm after going through the mild technique. I think I will spend the first week not performing WBTB because I think it will make my sleep schedule worse.

I already have a hard enough time getting to sleep in the early hours of the morning so for this first week, I will just focus on sleeping right, recording all my dreams and performing my reality checks. Then once that is all settled down, I will begin performing WBTB.

I successfully woke up at 7:00am!! I'm tired as hell at the moment but I can't nap now or I'll end up sleeping for 8 hours and not feel sleepy tonight. :P Not only that, I had a productive morning. Had a healthy breakfast, meditated, reality checks, read a little, practised ADA, some cleaning. So, I feel like i'm going in the right direction. I haven't had a lucid dream in so long, hoping for one soon. :)

So I went to bed at 11:00pm as planned and fell asleep within 5 minutes as I was so tired. Woke up at about 7:00am today. I dreamed that I was walking home from school in my school uniform and I should have became lucid as that would have been impossible as I had already graduated from school 2 years ago. There were people in my dream that I had not even seen in over 4 years. I just gotta continue my reality checks, improve my awareness and soon I will realise these oddities.

On a good note though, my sleep schedule is on track. Again I plan on getting in bed by 11:00pm tonight

Well done with getting back on track with the sleep schedule! Keep up the good work, you're next ld is very close! :)

Thanks NyxCC! Man it's been so long since I've had an LD. Like 2 months now. I dreamed last night that I was reading through dream views forum and was observing my surroundings as if I was practising ADA but still did not get lucid. :(

Also I had a question. I read a lot of times here that as soon as you wake up in the morning, you should perform a reality check to prevent false awakenings. I do this, but then after I do my reality check, I forget what I dreamed about. When I wake up, I have to just stay there and and immediately think about what I dreamed about which can take up to 5-10 minutes if I had a particularly vivid dream. Is it still effective to prevent false awakenings if I first retrace my dream, write it down and then do a reality check?

I had a dream last night where I was planning a trip to travel over seas and that country was prone to a type of deadly disease and I should get flu shots or some sort of vaccine to prevent me from catching it. So I was headed to the doctors and I had to get two shots. I have extreme anxiety and stress when it comes to needles. I absolutely hate them lol. So I was stressing out a whole lot in the dream and I asked the doctor, "Will it hurt?". I don't remember what he said after that. He took out the needle, only it wasn't a needle. It was a plastic surface with a thin nail/pin sticking out of it. He said, "It will be quick, I will just stick this in for a second and take it out". I looked away, and he stabbed the nail into my arm and took it out. I didn't feel a single thing. For the second shot, I felt like a small tingle and then I woke up with my arm tingling in real life also. I found that I slept on my arm and it went numb with pins and needles.

So this led me to think about pain in dreams. You can feel pretty much every sense in dreams so what about pain? I assume it's all about expectation though. If you expect it won't hurt.... it won't hurt right? :P :P

Hey hotchips! The main point of doing RCs in the morning isn't to prevent false awakenings, but rather if you are prone to these, it may help you catch them and turn them into lds. So, it's a good habit to get into, especially if you get a lot of false awakenings. However, you may still do it even if you don't have these - all RCs are beneficial for lding. :)

Regarding pain, yes, it is possible to feel equally realistic pain in dreams just as you are able to experience anything else.