Thread: Hello

Welcome to the forum Andy.

If you find having a lucid dream via intention quite difficult then this community will definitely help you, but you must remember that you don't have to train your mind to lucid dream at will. It's common for someone who's new to the concept to unintentionally have a lucid dream one night, because they commonly happen when you are relaxed; trying to force anything can be quite stressful. If you want to train your natural ability to lucid dream, I recommend starting a dream journal. The forum should automatically link you to what that is from this post, but basically it will train your ability to remember your dreams, as a bonus it will motivate you to dwell deeper into the experience and emulate the feeling of being inside a dream.

I also recommend reality checking, which is the practise of asking yourself if you're dreaming via habit. When you do daily activities, your mind registers it as the norm for something to dream about, and asking yourself if you're dreaming is vital to becoming lucid if you're already dreaming. An example of a reality check is looking at your hand(s) and taking notice of what they look like. If your hands are alien in any shape or form, then you're most likely dreaming, this is because your brain can't process hands and the dream environment will try its best to make that obvious; your hands will not appear to be visible or human, the creases might not be there, they might be hilariously replaced with a knife and fork. Another example is that a light switch won't work, or any device for that matter. I don't know why, and I don't think anybody else does, but light switches don't work in dreams, so you can simply regard that as a hint to you being asleep. The point of a reality check is to ask yourself if you're dreaming and to determine where you are, so making that a habit is quite useful.

When you're sick of them and want to move on, then you can move onto the induction techniques. There's a sub-forum for that and I don't really want to be telling you what you should try, because everybody's different and will find their own working technique.

Have fun, and good luck!

Hi JdeadEvil,

Thanks for your response and for the warm welcome .

Some great advice there, I have started the reality affirmations, I have an alarm set that goes off (quietly ) hourly (until it becomes natural) so that I remember to do them when I get caught up in work and much less interesting things.

So when that happens I hold my nose and try and breath and then look at my hands and try and stretch my forefinger. Hopefully this works. Generally I can achieve lucid dreams most often at the weekend when I can afford a longer lie (often purposefully to lucid dream).
Occasionally it works but I am not doing anything other than having that intention when I drift back off after intially waking at the weekend.

I'll have a read through the induction techniques also - thanks for that.

Looking forward to reading more about other people's dreams and experiences.

Andy.