New to Lucid Dreaming

[BamaDreamer]

Hey guys, I'm glad that I finally found an active community on Lucid Dreaming. I recently "stumbled upon" an article on lucid dreaming and it peaked my interest. After a few nights of research into the actual science behind it and the different methods used to induce lucidity, I finally had my first purposeful lucid dream. (i.e. I went to sleep attempting to become lucid and it worked) To introduce myself, I'm almost 20, live in southern Alabama and am currently attending college in the field of chemistry, hoping to go to medical school in a few years. I have only been able to successfully go lucid once in the past 5 days of attempting, but every single night I did recall a dream after I awoke, just only knew I was dreaming during the dream a single time, and after I opened a hole in the wall with my mind, my excitement woke me up so it only lasted a few minutes. I'm glad I'm here now and hopefully I will improve my skills and eventually be a veteran LD'er, I'm sure this community will help me achieve that goal.

[Somniloquist]

Hi BamaDreamer, welcome to Dreamviews Some people try for months before they can get their first lucid dream. I've been trying for years, but haven't had that many. It's pretty good that you got your first LD after only five days, and even managed to take control of it. Good luck having more LDs!

[mrdeano]

Welcome to Dreamviews You have had a lucky start with Lucid Dreaming, maybe you are a natural!

[BamaDreamer]

Thanks for the quick responses! I think I'm going to like it here. And about my quick first encounter, I didn't realize it was such a rarity. Is it possible to train yourself to increase your LD frequency? Maybe even to the point that you can LD every night, or at least at will when you want to? I'm really excited about doing this, and so far even though I have only successfully gotten into one LD, I have noticed that my recall improving drastically, usually naturally I would remember only 1 dream a month on average, but I have remembered dreaming around 3 or 4 of the past 5 nights.

[Somniloquist]

The more you practice, the more frequently you'll have lucid dreams. Keep working on dream recall and reality checks and maybe try some different techniques to see which ones work best for you. If you haven't already, you should make a list of things you want to do in a lucid dream, and check them off as you accomplish them.

[BamaDreamer]

The only current methods that I've tried is when I set an alarm to wake up about 2 hours before I have to actually get up, and then usually when I wake up I recall the dream i was in the middle of pretty vividly. Then I try to go back to sleep with lucid dream intentions, attempting to allow sleep paralysis to set in while I remain conscious and drift into the lucid dream directly. When I had my only lucid dream using this method, I simply sat up and turned around and saw myself sleeping. Are their better or more effective methods to use? I have been thinking of getting some type of piece "yes like in inception, haha" that I keep with me and constantly use as a reality checking device, does this make my "dream self" check for reality as well and I will just all of a sudden become lucid in the middle of a dream because my dream self checked reality with my piece and it failed?

[Somniloquist]

I guess the totem idea is similar to other reality checks... I just use a few different ones like counting fingers, plugging my nose to see if I can breathe through it, double checking numbers to make sure they don't change, etc. You just want to use the reality checks to get in the habit of doing simple little tests to confirm that you're awake instead of blindly accepting it... then hopefully the habit will transfer over to your dreams and when you consciously question it, you'll become lucid, and you can do a few reality checks to confirm it and stabilize the dream. Results vary from person to person, so for the first little bit you can experiment with different techniques, and then settle on something that works best. There are different techniques explained in the wiki section of this site, so you can browse through that a bit.

[BamaDreamer]

I am about to go to bed and attempt 2 methods tonight. One is something I found on another post on here that includes listening to a loop of a calming sound track someone has created. It is very soothing so I know I can go to sleep with my headphones on listening to it, but it also has a whispering voice telling you that you are in a dream and to do RC's. If I listen to it all night it should play during all of my REM cycles, and although I'm aware my brain will disguise it as something in the dream, that's hard to completely mask since it directly states, "hey, your dreaming". I will also try the technique of setting a single burst alarm, so that I do not have to actually move at all to turn it off, hoping that I can remain in a sleep state and enter a lucid dream immediately upon lying still and returning to REM, as if I never consciously woke up. Thank you for all of your help and guidance. First impressions are my favorite thing to analyze and this community has already made me feel right at home, although I'm very new. I hope you all have good luck tonight, and to be very cliche, SWEET DREAMS

[Somniloquist]

You're welcome I want to try that soundtrack technique sometime. How did it affect your dreams last night?

[BamaDreamer]

Just woke up, I'm definitely going to try the soundtrack again but maybe in a different way. Last night I attempted to go to sleep while the soundtrack was still playing but I believe It was a bit too loud to allow me to transition into the dream state. It was VERY freaky though, I know for a fact I was in sleep paralysis because my entire body was non-responsive to my small attempts at movement and it all tingled. I felt small vibrations now and then and I stayed in this for about 20 minutes. I laid perfectly still and tried to only think about the want to lucid dream and dreams that I had from the night before, but I just couldn't seem to go further. I am also going to try to set an alarm to wake up after about 4-5 hours of sleep and THEN put the soundtrack on, because I may have a much more likely chance of slipping into REM with the soundtrack going. I was going to do that last night but forgot to set up the alarm to try it so I woke up after my usual 8 hours naturally and after that I just couldn't make myself go back to sleep. I laid there for about 30 minutes with the soundtrack going, no sleep so then I just laid there like natural but I always get 8 hours of sleep every single night so I couldn't go back to sleep. Hopefully I will have more luck soon!

[BamaDreamer]

So last night I successfully got to sleep with a binaural beats and ambient mix going from my ipod. It may have made my recall better, I'm not sure but it was still going when my alarm woke me up about 5 and a half or 6 hours later. This is when I switched the soundtrack to the "lucid mix" which has some ambient noises as well and a voice telling me to do reality checks and that I am dreaming. Again, my recall was very good all night but no lucids sadly. My question, am I doing something wrong? Last night I successfully entered sleep paralysis 3 or 4 times. I tried focusing on the soundtrack, I tried counting things such as sheep, or my own breaths. When I tried to count my breaths that seemed to increase my heartrate so I stopped. I thought of previous dream scenes, of the want and will to become lucid, and even started picturing myself walking in a storm and "feeling" an umbrella in my hand since the ambient noise that was in my sound track was a storm. It seemed that I was so close but how do I transition. Most guides I read say that once you are deep in SP, you just kind of transition over if you imagine your dream scene or something in your hand all of a sudden you will be there or you will truly feel the object, signaling you that you are now in a dream where it is possible to materialize say an umbrella. I was in and out of sp at one point for about an hour, switching my position ever 10 to 15 minutes as I've heard to do if one cannot attain the dream state, and every time I wait for sp to re-initialize, I attempt to keep my mind off my physical feelings and focus on something to keep my mind awake but I never transition. Has anyone else ever experienced this block from sp to dreamstate and what did you do to bypass it or to "jump" into your dream.

[Somniloquist]

Which soundtrack are you listening to? I experimented a bit with binaural beats last night, but I don't have good enough headphones to use them. I've only tried WILDing a few times, and failed. I'm not sure how to do the transition from SP into dreaming either. You'll probably find some good answers if you post this in the Attaining Lucidity forum.

[ninja9578]

to DV, if you have any questions, let me know.

[Mancon]

Hi, welcome to dreamviews! Don't give up after just a few attempts, keep it up! I think your focusing too much. You have to relax and don't focus on any thoughts you have. Just let it come to you. The trick is to be relaxed enough for your body to fall asleep but aware enough so you will realize your dreaming. Remember to be confident and keep it up! Good luck

[BamaDreamer]

I was using the iPod touch app "BinauralBeat" I had a combination of the concentration binaural beat at full volume and the ambient sound of hard rain and thunder at around half volume. As for ninja and mancon, thank you for the welcome! I love how this community is so accepting of new members and helpful, mancon if you don't mind, what DO I think about when I'm deep into SP and want to finish the transition to full on dream? I mean no matter what you do, you have to have something in your head whether it be a place or an idea or even just a feeling. If you have any suggestions or can you tell me what YOU think about to enable the transition, I'd love your advice. =)

[dakotahnok]

I was using the iPod touch app "BinauralBeat" I had a combination of the concentration binaural beat at full volume and the ambient sound of hard rain and thunder at around half volume. As for ninja and mancon, thank you for the welcome! I love how this community is so accepting of new members and helpful, mancon if you don't mind, what DO I think about when I'm deep into SP and want to finish the transition to full on dream? I mean no matter what you do, you have to have something in your head whether it be a place or an idea or even just a feeling. If you have any suggestions or can you tell me what YOU think about to enable the transition, I'd love your advice. =) If you are deep into sp then just visualize the dream you want to have. Everything else should just happen naturally. Good luck. Also on your question about being able to lucid dream every night the answer is yes. I have taught myself to lucid dream every night and you can too!!

[Robot_Butler]

To finalize the transition into the dream, I will normally try to vividly remember a recent memory. I try to make it a memory that involves touch and movement, so my body will be engaged with my environment. I find that a memory comes easier than an invented scene, but you can use either one. The trick is to just nudge some sort of dream to begin, and then go with the flow once it starts to take over. Try to engage with whatever scene or narrative materializes.

[BamaDreamer]

Thanks for the replies! dakotahnok-----WOW, I hope one day I can achieve the consistency that you have in lucid dreaming. I have thought of so many things to do in them that will be fun, but I have even thought of some applicational experiments to possibly even help my waking life self. I might even do my thesis on this material that is due in 2 years if I can get good enough at the methods and do my homework. Robot_Butler-----Thank you for the explanation, the exact motions to transition to the dreamstate have eluded me so far. I appreciate your instruction and I am sure it will help me in my future attempts, I can't wait to get to sleep tonight! Also, I think I may try sleeping more before I wake up, hopefully that will allow my REM cycles to be even easier to re-enter.