Thread: How long did it take you?

I'm new-ish to lucid dreaming, I tried it about a year ago, achieved lucidity only once and then gave up. Now i'm back and i've only got a few layer 0 lucid dreams. I'm just curious, how long has it taken you guys to achieve fully fledged lucidity, like without waking up when initially becoming lucid and having some sort of control or vividness?

DB.

I've been having DILDs naturally since I was really little, so I can't really give you a personal timeline. Everyone's different though; some people pick it up really quick and others will take a long time to get any LDs. It depends on natural ability, yes, but I think it's mostly about how much work you're willing to put into it. If you dedicated the rest of the day to practicing RCs, meditating, thinking about having an LD, researching different techniques on the site, etc., then you would probably be able to have an LD tonight. If LDs are constantly on your mind, you will have a good chance of having a DILD.

From there it takes practice to learn dream control. Vividness depends on your diet (peanut butter helps), and your ability to use clarity techniques.

edit: oh yeah, and welcome to the forum

Thanks for the advice! I was just thinking about what you said about your diet having an effect on vividness, but I usually have quite vivid, non lucid dreams without eating anything specific. And I heard that it can also increase dream recall, but I already record at least 2 - 3 on an average night; sometimes more. Is there any other food to increase vividness, because i'm not the biggest fan of peanut butter.

I have *had* lucid dreams before I joined this forum, but if you look at my join date, I had my first lucid using RC's ten days ago. I have had two more since then

Welcome to DV

I got a false awakening the night I found out about lucid dreaming. Probably the scariest thing ever for me because the thought of them freaked me out, plus there was a monster in my room, and the room was upside down and distorted like a mirror.

But my first proper one was about 1-2 weeks after that I realised that there are no snakes where I'm from, RCed and became lucid. It was awesome I basically spent the time doing crazy shit, laughing, singing and jumping about being happy.

Throughout my life I have had numerous dreams, usually nightmares where I've realized, at least partly, that I have been dreaming. Usually my mind would then attempt exercise control over the dream, to poor effect, but still making things a little better off as far as nightmares go. They were never true "lucids" though. I found this forum and started reading about lucid dreaming. Tried MILDing. Got my dream recall to about 1 every other day (although sometimes I'd have 2 or 3 in one night). Now I can't seem to recall anything but I did have one real lucid dream. I had a nightmare. A bad one. One that started over immediately after it ended, over and over. Finally my mind did the silent, dream version of screaming out in rage, "NO MORE." In the dream I reached my hands out and, seemingly as a defense mechanism, warped the dream around me, changing it. It was at that moment I became lucid. It was like setting foot on a new planet or being birthed into a new reality. I was there for maybe two minutes before the dawning realization of what I had done and what was happening caused me to wake up, from the sheer excitement.
Since then recall has been way down. That kind of eliminated MILDing. So I've been trying the WILD process.
/sigh

I think it took me less than one week after discovering the concept of lucid dream and reading tutorial, before having my first LD.
Then it was intense practice, with dream journals (I even woke up with an alarm every sleep-cycle = 1h30 to write them... nights were not really resting then ), trying DILD and WILD, doing RC all day long... and it was quite productive, with a few LD every weeks.
You'll have more luck if you are very motivated (dreams and lucid dreams are driven by what obsess you in the day); and try different techniques, don't pick just one at random: everyone is different, and some techniques will suit you better than others.

Since a few years I stopped praticing "full time" (other interests, and not enough sleep to do proper LD, unfortunately) but the LD still occur occasionnaly.

Ever since I was a small child. I didn't have to try. But when I came to this site it took me about a month to get a full fledged lucid dream.