New User with Questions

Hello. I'm 16 years old and have never had a lucid dream before. I saw something about a lucid dreaming article on Wikipedia, and have been dying to get more information ever since. The whole thing sounds so cool, I have tried some of the techniques discussed for the past three days with basically no success. I know it is a bit soon to hope for a result but, it is hard not to get excited about something that sounds so cool! Anyways, I have a few questions that perhaps the vets here can answer for me:

1) How long do you have to lay still to get into a lucid dream? Sometimes I feel like I lay there for an hour and nothing happens… Is one position better to lay in than another?

2) How often do you have lucid dreams? Once a month? A week? A night?

3) Is it like you are in the real world, like you see things now, only without the physical restrictions? It's not like some 3rd person thing, right? That would be OBE? I have a vague idea of what it might be like, but until I experience it, my enquiring mind is dying to know!

4) Is it possible to slip into a lucid dream with some noisy thing like a heater going on in the background? It isn't that noisy but when I try to sleep the sound seems to permeate throughout the room, and I can't seem to fall asleep. I also seem to get itchy after I lay awhile and my hands go numb.

5) How long does it take for paralysis to set in? I tried that one users technique, the HILD i think they called it, where you wiggle your fingers. I tried that last night for a while, but everytime I got numb my body started to itch a lot and I couldn't help but scratch. Drove me insane!

Anyways, these are my questions. I hope tonight I can induce one of these dreams, they sound so cool!

Welcome, Lucretius!

I'll try to answer your questions:

1. All you have to do is go to sleep. Lucid dreaming is simply having a dream, and at some point during the dream, realizing that it's a dream. It sounds like maybe you're attempting the WILD method, which by all accounts is the most difficult. Also, it won't usually work unless you've already had several hours of sleep. I would suggest using the WBTB and MILD methods -- they seem to work best for me. Check the tutorials section for more info on these. The best position? The one in which you're most comfortable, and are most likely to go to sleep.

2. This varies from person to person, and I think that other things happening in your life will have a big effect on how often you can LD. First of all, you have to be getting enough sleep. Personally, I usually have 1-3 per week, but often go a week or two without any.

3. It's pretty much like any other dream, except that you are aware that it is in fact a dream. I always dream in the 1st person, though others report 3rd person dreams. I don't know for sure if I believe in OOBEs, but I assume they would always be 1st person.

4. Again, it sounds like you're attempting WILD. If there's some noise that would disturb you enough to prevent you from sleeping, then that's a problem, WILD or not. I usually wear foam earplugs when I sleep. They muffle sounds enough to prevent most such noises from being a bother.

5. This is another WILD thing. I've never done WILD, so I'll let someone else answer this one.

Glad to have you on the site -- hope you stick around, and good luck to you! If you have any other questions, just ask -- there are plenty of folks here willing to help.

I am drunk so I will only answer one of the questions of my choosing..... And it will be the one about the heater and noise being made while attempting to lucid dream... I love to have "white noise" while I am trying to fall asleep, otherwise it is too quiet for me and I start to think about all kinds of annoying things that tend to keep me awake and distracted from my goal. A fan or A/C or heater going often helps me to fall asleep and after a while you should be able to ignore it all together.. Its the other "random" noises that fucken annoy me, like birds chirping, or my dog barking, or telephones ringing, I hate that shit, but a constant noise that doesn't alter from its patern is music to my ears, it just really depends on the individual.

1) How long do you have to lay still to get into a lucid dream? Sometimes I feel like I lay there for an hour and nothing happens… Is one position better to lay in than another?

ummm u have been laying still doing nothing for like an hour waiting to have a lucid dream?