Thread: introduce myself

Hi, I'm Jester.
I've had a very casual interest in lucid dreaming for many years, but finally I decided to take it seriously. I've been preparing myself for a week and had my first fully lucid dream last night, it was the best thing that has ever happened to me even though it was really short cos I got woken up by an external stimulus. It blew all my semi-lucid experiences out of the water.

I have a couple questions.
1. Does anyone get REM during naps? If so can you tell me your nap schedule?

2. How do you block out external stimuli? music? ear plugs?

Usually you are in REM sleep during afternoon naps. You could consider it as the cycle from the previous night continuing. After about 8 hours of sleep you will almost always be in REM sleep, so during afternoon naps you will also be in REM sleep.

I wouldn't suggest music for blocking external stimuli. The music will enter your dream and it can be very annoying because you can't control it, or so I've heard. Ear plugs might work. Try to sleep in a quiet location or during a quiet time.

awesome. I'll start taking naps from tomorrow then. I'm guessing I'll make them 20 minutes each?

hmm yeah I definitely don't wanna have a lack of sound control in my dreams. I think, before I try using earplugs, I'll practice trying to weave external stimuli into the dreamscape although that might take a lot of failed attempts.

To block external stimuli you could try using isochronic tones
www.iso-tones.com. They are like binaural beats, but I prefer isochronic. You could download the Lucid Induction ones, I think there are 3.
There are also some lucid induction mp3s here in the forum.

Congratulations on your success and keep the LD coming!

Originally Posted by JesterKK

2. How do you block out external stimuli? music? ear plugs?

It kind of depends on when I'm sleeping I do two night shifts a week, so if I'm sleeping in the morning, I have to wear ear plugs.

During the night, I sometimes experiment with other things, like ocean waves and such. I just got those isochronic tones that undeadjellybean supplied, so it'll be interesting to try that too. Generally, sounds keep me awake, so I think I'd only use the Lucid Spike track (20 mins silence before the sounds start).

When I have time, I like to nap around 3:00. Sadly, I can't do this as much as I would like due to work and life. Aquanina was just telling me that she has a lot of luck with late morning naps.

I both take naps and wear earplugs. I take my naps anywhere from two to four in the afternoon. When I get home from work.

Yes, I get REM during those naps. Sometimes it's really hard to recall dreams from that sleep period though. But when recall is at it's best I can recall them and sometimes get Lucid too.

My favorite Lucid this year so far took place during a nap.

What Hot Chocolate said about nap REM is actually the opposite for me. My naps help my night recall for basically the same reason as he mentiomed, only in reverse. The down side of naps, though, is that it can make it more difficult to fall asleep at night. Especially if you have any insomnia problems.

thanks for all the feedback guys. can I just clarify how long a good nap should be? I tried 20 mins today and started almost drifting off towards the end so that it was sorta hard to get back out of bed.