Hello - introducing myself...

hello fellow lucid dreamers,

I thought I would introduce myself and tell folks that host/moderate this site that it is incredible! I started reading about lucid dreaming when I was 16 (I'm 37 now). I went to Stanford, due to a dream where Joe Montana told me to go there. At Stanford, I wrote my freshman paper on Lucid Dreams. I interviewed Stephen LeBerge for the paper, which was pretty cool.

I can't BELIEVE how many people are on this site! It really has captured the minds of many people, for good reason. Lucid Dreams, if you could bottle them and make them a dot.com it would be worth millions, if not billions. Think about how much time people spend on FB and its worth 50B. imagine if you could log into a site and lucid dream for 15 min a day.

My only question (it is probably posted somewhere but couldn't find an answer) is how many lucid dreams per month people can realistically hope to attain. Without focus on it, I only lucid dream once per year. However, over the last 4 weeks I've been reading this site and doing a 30 days to LD book. I had my last LD early January. So, hopefully I will have another one in Feb and start averaging once a month instead of once per year!

It sounds like Reality Checks are really the way to go from reading a number of newbie posts and people's advice. I will focus on that more. I've been getting up at 3/4 with the WBTB approach and doesn't seem to be working or worth it! So, I think I'll focus on DILD with better reality checks. I use a totem (a lighter, I don't smoke) and hopefully this will start showing up in my dream.

Anyway, cool to meet you all and hope to post more LD in the future.

Cheers,
Joach (from the book Witch Fire, he was a Dreamshaper, being able to shape dreams into reality...)

Awesome to greet such an enthusiastic new member! Welcome to DreamViews! I only recently got back into LDing, but at one point I was having around 20 LDs a month. My goal was a LD every night, so I got pretty close. There are other members in my time who, while practicing lucid dreaming, LDed literally every night (Naiya and Walms come to mind). Often times, they had multiple LDs a night. Let me note that a totem can be used to help you obtain lucidity, but unlike the movie (Inception) it could also fail sometimes. I'm not sure how you are using it to incorporate it into LDing, but a few suggestions... 1. Don't use it as your only reality check. Always have multiple RCs, because even the most reliable can fail occasionally. As for the lighter, every time you notice you have it in your possession/see it throughout waking life, take a moment to do a reality check. That way, if it shows up in the dream you'll do a RC and become lucid. If you carry it around with you everywhere, it will definitely show up in your dreams.

People can have hundreds of lucid dreams a month if they have the experience and time. I myself average around 7-10 but I'm not very experienced. It's all about the amount of time and dedication you put into it. The more you put in the more you get out. Welcome to the forums and if you need help with anything feel free to post.

thanks guys! very inspiring to see how many are possible. when i was in college and taking naps, I had the WILD experience, but I didn't know what to call it. It is very entertaining to read people's experience of it. I learned to overcome the fear...the sense of falling, the loud noises and then BOOM into the dream world. I had no idea it was a common experience until I read something about WILD much, much later. I agree about the time being crucial. If I could screw around between 5 - 7 AM every day, I would think I could have a lot more. Since I get up at 5 AM on work days, no chance of getting up earlier.

Couple more questions come to mind:
1) Have you found the amount of sleep you get on a regular basis important? With young kids, I might be a little more sleep deprived than normal. Important to manage sleep debt when Lucid Dreaming?
2) Any good books written recently you would recommend? Or are books pretty much a waste of time given the resources on this site and others? I read Stephen's LeBerge's book awhile ago and am reading the 30 days to Lucid Dreaming. It seems like the actual focus on LD, via forums, websites, movies, is the most important part. But just curious.

1) If you are going for WBTBs then good sleep patterns/schedules can help you as far as following through with the WBTB and not saying, "Eh, f*** this I'm too tired to even bother." Sleep deprivation can cause REM rebound which is actually helpful for lucid dreaming (not suggesting you purposely deprive yourself though :P). I haven't had a balanced sleep schedule for years.

2) I'm not 100% sure, but I don't know of any recent LD books with up to date information. I never think reading/learning is a waste of time, but anything you find in the books can be found here. Its always good to get several different perspectives on LDing though. I read one of the LaBerge books when I first started and it was helpful. I did find that most, if not all, of the information within was on this site.

Hi, I am Julia from USA just join this community need your welcome hope that i ll gain so much from here