Thread: RC + alarm DEILD experiment: would you join me ?

Hi, i would like to make a simple research about the effectiveness of using a continuous alarm during the night to be able to DEILD/WILD, coupled with daytime RCing triggered by alarms, phone rings, doorbells, and the like

I would like to do it for a minimum of 90 effective nights ( that is, attempts that meet the inclusion criteria*) , but if it proves effective early in the experiment, we might want it to last a little bit longer...

I was thinking to make a presentation, paper, or scientific poster with this research. I would be glad to put your name on the list of co-authors/collaborators, and i would do it for the first 3 persons to finish the study.

So, anyone would like to join me ?



*

Spoiler for study criteria:

Inclusion criteria: 18 or more years of age, alarm app ( customizable to 15 min interval autosnooze**), a minimum of 4 effective atttempts ( that is, 7 hours of sleep minimum) per week and no more than 2 nights in a row without attempts or ineffective attempts ( less than 7 hours of sleep)

Exclusion criteria: less than 18 years old; sleep disorder, other than mild insomnia, nights with less than 7 or more than 9 hours ( if more than 9 hours is still considered an effective attempt but doesn´t count for the study); aplication of other techinques like WBTB longer than 5 minutes total per night, SSILD or MILD ( dream journalling is fine ), etc.

** i can suggest an android app

I've tried something similar before and wasn't very effective, personally. But what do you mean "continuous alarm"? Would it be an alarm that shuts itself off in a few seconds or that you must turn off every 15 minutes?

Originally Posted by mimihigurashi

I've tried something similar before and wasn't very effective, personally. But what do you mean "continuous alarm"? Would it be an alarm that shuts itself off in a few seconds or that you must turn off every 15 minutes?

The alarm starts working after 4,5 hours or sleep ( or from the outset if you like) and then every 15 minutes and it shuts itself off in a few seconds, exactly

Originally Posted by VagalTone

The alarm starts working after 4,5 hours or sleep ( or from the outset if you like) and then every 15 minutes and it shuts itself off in a few seconds, exactly

I see. But it doesn't sound very healthy to me, I get that it's not every day in a row, but still 90 days of disturbed sleep is a long time. For those who do hear the alarms, that is, there are some heavy sleepers who could sleep through anything.
I'm not sure about it at all, to be honest, I'd kinda want to, but I hate waking up tired and sleepy due to unrestful sleep.

Originally Posted by mimihigurashi

I see. But it doesn't sound very healthy to me, I get that it's not every day in a row, but still 90 days of disturbed sleep is a long time. For those who do hear the alarms, that is, there are some heavy sleepers who could sleep through anything.
I'm not sure about it at all, to be honest, I'd kinda want to, but I hate waking up tired and sleepy due to unrestful sleep.

I think it doesn´t mess up too much with sleep, at least it didn´t with me. It can be annoying though,but by comparison dream journaling is much more dificult.But if you want to try it, you can do it of course, without joining the study. I am only setting these inclusion criteria to make the evidence more robust, and to understand the power of consistency

I'll try it once in a while when I can, I'm doing other morning techniques atm. I hope more people join you and if you begin, keep us posted, I'm curious how it would go.

Once i was a big fan of this method (using multiple alarms with auto-snoose ability and trying to DEILD).

90% of the time, they were successful. in fact, it is an LD method in hand.

it had some benefits:
- As we are not too sleepy after waking up several times, then we remember not to move our body after we wake up.
- also chances to hit the REM sleep is high in this method. out of 5 alarms i used in a day, one of them led to LD (on average).

but they had some bad effects on me=

- headache (because of using lots of Alarms).
- i couldn't have much dreams when using this method (i don't know why).
- i was very tired as the sleep cycle did not end its complete rotation. so i needed one extra hour of sleeping.
- sometimes i annoyed my neighbor and when i heard she said: "that b*itch doesn't allow us sleep with that f... alarm.....GOOOOOOOD...." then i stopped using this method.

but if you are OK with that negative effects, then i swear this is one the best LD method on earth!

good luck!

You guys should check out Daniel Love's FATE technique (believe that is the name?). Involves setting alarm to go off randomly during the night, so as to induce FAs that one would accustom themselves to catching. Might up the chance of DILDs while constantly being interrupted by an alarm. Would make it much easier to DEILD as well.

EDIT: yaya, did I read that correctly? Are you not going to try this technique for 30 days!?!?

Originally Posted by ThreeCat

EDIT: yaya, did I read that correctly? Are you not going to try this technique for 30 days!?!?

Ahahah... that's because i am already trying another 30 days technique (Erin Pavilina method)

i am on day 2 of that method (i will only report LD not fails in that thread)....maybe after these 28 days, i try this alarm method again (with a gentle alarm sound which doesn't interrupt my neighbor).

but...wait a minute...can i combine Ervin pavlina method with this alarm method? because the first one is done before sleep and the second one is done after waking up...so they don't interrupt each others...

however, VagalTone told we should not participate his project if we do other techniques.... now i do DILD, SSILS, dream yoga and WILD...so i think they have huge impact on this Alarm method...but if that's ok, then i am in...but if not, then i can't post here.

The good thing about this study is the consistency and discipline building effect.
I will do it myself, i will update my progress on my DJ. Hope some fellows join me to make this a well tested technique

Originally Posted by yaya

Ahahah... that's because i am already trying another 30 days technique (Erin Pavilina method)

i am on day 2 of that method (i will only report LD not fails in that thread)....maybe after these 28 days, i try this alarm method again (with a gentle alarm sound which doesn't interrupt my neighbor).

but...wait a minute...can i combine Ervin pavlina method with this alarm method? because the first one is done before sleep and the second one is done after waking up...so they don't interrupt each others...

however, VagalTone told we should not participate his project if we do other techniques.... now i do DILD, SSILS, dream yoga and WILD...so i think they have huge impact on this Alarm method...but if that's ok, then i am in...but if not, then i can't post here.

Just stick with your current research..If you decide to give up your current techniques, then your more than welcome to join the study

I've always held out great hope for a technique like this but never quite got the motivation to really put it to practice, to the point of perfectly tuning the alarm volume and length and the time for it starting to go off.

I do have a remee, and I'm likely to really start trying it again purely for DEILD. It just doesn't work from bedtime, it's too hard to hit REM that is hours away with any accuracy. The way remee is designed, resetting it to "nap mode" takes too much fiddling and touching and waiting, but putting it on after WBTB on the "main" setting may be just the right way to try.

I can't use an audible alarm because of my wife.

Really? Woke up 6 times and not a single LD?! At least I can't remember..
But you guys are right, the alarm, length, volume, and other options must be tweaked until you find a good balance. This morning I did not have a good balance, the alarm was too loud, a bit too long, so it startled and irritated me every time it woke me up, I even forgot to try WILD or DEILD because of it, I only fell back asleep.

Strangely enough though, I actually woke up with more ease than I did before using 1 alarm for WBTB and another one for waking up for real. Dream recall was a bit tricky, but I managed to pull 3 shortish, and 2 average length dreams. Which again is strange because I've been struggling with recall these past weeks and this is better than what I've had in many days combined, I expected waking up multiple times to wreck my recall, not help it!

Ok I'm totally into this, let's do this again *game face on*

I would reserve the first attempts for the sake of experimentation and fine-tuning. Once you can have your first LD by this method, the study started and i will ask you to record your data, taking note of the following factors

Hours of sleep / subjective quality of the practice during the day (RCing to audio cues) from 1 to 5/ Alarm settings ( interval time, ringing duration) / DEILD method / number of lucids (and the time you woke up from it)

Originally Posted by VagalTone

I would reserve the first attempts for the sake of experimentation and fine-tuning. Once you can have your first LD by this method, the study started and i will ask you to record your data, taking note of the following factors

Hours of sleep / subjective quality of the practice during the day (RCing to audio cues) from 1 to 5/ Alarm settings ( interval time, ringing duration) / DEILD method / number of lucids (and the time you woke up from it)

What do you mean RCing to audio cues? What cues?

And also

Originally Posted by yaya

i am already trying another 30 days technique (Erin Pavilina method)

I wanted to try that one too yaya but I find it really difficult, how about you do that one and I do this one and we both post our results? xP The more experimenting, the better.

Originally Posted by mimihigurashi

I wanted to try that one too yaya but I find it really difficult, how about you do that one and I do this one and we both post our results? xP The more experimenting, the better.

sure! that's a good idea!

ummmm...maybe this can help you... previously, I have tried many timing with this method with different alarm length.
- alarm every 5 minutes
-every 15 mins
- every 20 mins
- every 30 mins

the length of the alarm for each trial was from 3 seconds to 15 seconds.

of all of these combinations, 5 seconds alarm length (simple beep sound) at every 20 minutes, gave me guaranteed LD (number of intervals was 5 times).
shorter alarm sounds didn't wake me up and longer length made sleeping hard and it made me too much aware.

i also made variations of sleeping from 5 hours to 7 hours before attempting and you can guess which was was better.

WBTB times had a very important role on success rate in this method and being awake for at least 30 minutes is great.

of course everyone is different and i am sure with a little adjustment, you can find your best timing.

i hope you best, guys!

Originally Posted by yaya

of all of these combinations, 5 seconds alarm length (simple beep sound) at every 20 minutes, gave me guaranteed LD (number of intervals was 5 times).

Cool, that's exactly how I set mine even before you posted this. Gonna test it out for a while, thanks for the tips.

Originally Posted by yaya

sure! that's a good idea!

ummmm...maybe this can help you... previously, I have tried many timing with this method with different alarm length.
- alarm every 5 minutes
-every 15 mins
- every 20 mins
- every 30 mins

the length of the alarm for each trial was from 3 seconds to 15 seconds.

of all of these combinations, 5 seconds alarm length (simple beep sound) at every 20 minutes, gave me guaranteed LD (number of intervals was 5 times).
shorter alarm sounds didn't wake me up and longer length made sleeping hard and it made me too much aware.

i also made variations of sleeping from 5 hours to 7 hours before attempting and you can guess which was was better.

WBTB times had a very important role on success rate in this method and being awake for at least 30 minutes is great.

of course everyone is different and i am sure with a little adjustment, you can find your best timing.

i hope you best, guys!

That´s also something i have figured out before, although i am trying to leave it out of the equation now. I achieved a success rate of 2/3 with WBTB.

I hope you best too !

I think there must also be a psychological habituation/expectation factor at work here -- if you hit on a winning combination of settings, with repetition you just "know" when it goes off that it means "OK now I'm going to have a lucid dream," which may be the most powerful effect involved.

In the OP i am asking to RC whenever you hear a doorbell, phone ring and so forth in the hopes of better recognition of the alarm cue

Oh, well, I use a custom alarm noise which consists of a creepy robotic voice saying "do not move, start counting" which I made some time ago in an attempt to DEILD more easily. Alarms that sound like normal alarm clocks annoy and scare the hell out of me. I also don't have a doorbell (I live upstairs in my room, wouldn't be able to hear any doorbell from downstairs) and my phone ringtone is also customized. So sorry, it seems I might not be qualified to join this after all.

It doesnt need to be the same ringtone but just any random audio cue, for instance if you hear anorher person's phone. You can also put your clock to ring randomly for instance. Or you can also just forget the daytime RC- and report as zero when you haven't applied. It would be important too to understand the importante of no daytime practice, so you would qualify as a control

If you want to join and help me with valid data be sure to have strong motivation as the study is admitedly tough, and one single night might be enough to throw all the data away.

Ugh, no pressure, lol.. I don't know how to set my clock/phone to ring randomly, I don't have an option/app for that. And I cannot afford to give up RCing, frequent RCing as been part of my routine for the last 3 weeks.
Sorry, I have many other techniques to try out and projects to work on, I don't think I can be part of such a rigorous program on top of all that. I hope people with more free time and less techniques join in, though.

It is indeed a rigorous program, although i hope it wont be as difficult as it seems.

Thanks for the interest anyway!

I haven't read the entire tread, but I can say I've tried the DEILD alarm thing before (only at night, no daytime RC's). The intention was to be woken up slightly be the alarm at intervals throughout the night. I made a sound file which was 2 hours of silence followed by a beep, which I began to play on a loop at the beginning of the night.

What happened was interesting. I did become lucid from a "beep", but as I later found out, the actual beep didn't sound, I dreamt that it did, dreamt that I DEILDed, and thus became lucid! I know I dreamt it because about 3 minutes into the LD the actual alarm went off and woke me up. So I think it was ultimately my expectation which induced the lucidity.

How's the practice going for you, VagalTone?
I've tried it 4 times so far, thinking it was only a matter of adjusting the alarm settings, but I think I've come to a different realization today. I've had no DEILDs, or WILDs, only a DILD today, which was after all the alarms have went off, after I was supposed to get up, I accidentally fell asleep after becoming fairly aware, and had a DILD, so I'm pretty sure it had next to nothing to do with this DEILD business.

Now the thing with DEILD, at least in my case, is that it requires two things: complete relaxation, i.e. the relaxation you actually wake up with from sleep, and the very, very close to sleep, low awareness. Alarms take both of these things away from me. Every time an alarm went off, no matter how low I set the volume (but high enough to be able to hear it and be woken up), it would jolt me awake, suddenly spiking my awareness and ruining my initial complete relaxation. I did try to DEILD anyway, but to me, if it doesn't happen within seconds, it's certain that it's not gonna happen at all, I fell asleep unconsciously while trying every time. On the other hand, when I did have my few (amazing) DEILDs, they all happened when I managed to wake up by myself, without any alarms, and remember to remain relaxed and lay still.

So that's my trouble with alarms. Perhaps I should try a different sound, something more gentle, even though what I'm currently using is far from loud and annoying like a typical buzzer would be. I will give it a few more tries with a different alarm, if a miracle happens, that'll be great, but if not, I'll just go back to teaching myself to wake up naturally and remember not to move, I find that much more appealing because of the lack of dependence on technology, which imo is ideal for good lucid dreaming.