Playing-Dead Induction of Lucid Dreams?

So I've been trying this quite sporadically. I would say I've had some success. The best case being a night I went to bed at 10:45 and fell to sleep within 15-25 minutes while the previous night I went to bed around 2-3 am. Usually when I try to pull something like that my sleep cycle gets screwed up and I end up laying in bed for an hour and a half (significantly longer in many cases) before falling to sleep.

This method is a lot like meditating. Except in meditation the goal is to pick a mantra to focus one's mind and also keep the mind awake and alert. With this, you have to make a mantra out of not making anything a mantra.

I've tried focusing on my body and making all my muscles relax, and even though I achieved this I didn't fall asleep because my mind was still very active. I don't know if you guys have ever listened to one of those relaxation recordings with a guy's voice telling you to feel the warm feeling slowly move up your arm or something like that, but the voice on these recordings becomes the object of focus which makes the process of relaxation easier. With SKA's method there is no external tool so the process is superior (since you can do it any time any place) but also harder.

What SKA is doing here sounds relatively straight forward (don't think, don't move), but it is actually more complicated in a way that I cannot quite explain. It's almost like training your mind and body to make an effort to go to sleep with very little thought.

What I am sure of is that it helps one get to sleep and some nights I did have more vivid dreams than usual. Though I'm going to have to put in more consistent efforts to confirm that it has at least some effect on dream recall/vividness of dreams. I am one of those people who has never experienced SP but has had his most consistent lucid dreams through WBTB. They all fell along the lines of this seamless transition SKA described. I'm going to continue on with this method and try to build on it as I do believe there is something to it.

Hey take it easy! It doesn't seem like many people have even seen the thread!

I think i understand what you are doing but isn't it difficult to remain mentally awake (while just playing mentally dead) and follow through into a dream? It sounds hard! And also are you tired or just like, grand when you do this?

Sorry if i misinterpreted what you were trying to say at any point (I think im going to make that my signature! :))

hey SKA! :)

i had sometimes a similar experience...
it was very exciting watching his own body "dying" and the mind keeps on working.
nevertheless i didn´t make the effort to get some lucids of it - i used it to fall asleep very quickly :P

but now i know what i shall do, thanx!

i will join your research on comming Friday/Saturday if you don´t mind

keep on dyin´ :banana:

:D

It helps alot if you're tired to begin with, but it works without being tired too.
A Calm Mind and Body is highly desirable to begin with. In a calm state your chance of succeeding is much higher, so do some things that calm you down before going to bed will help. Think of positive things that make you feel calm and content and also try to fully relax physically.

It is hard to communicate the desired state of being more clearly than I've already done. I think it is a matter of trying and analysing your experiences with it if you want to fully understand the passively alert, non-responsive state I mean.

I don't understand the method.

The dream that served as inspiration for it was this one:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SKA

I was lying on my right side, turned around and saw it was very dark in my room. This gave me the creeps. An eerie feeling. So I sat up and tried to switch on a lamp next to my bed; It didn't work.

I first thought: "oh no, power must be out" And then immediately, memorising a previous dream in which the lights failed to work and I had reason the same power-out, I thought "wait a minute...am I dreaming?" So to test it finally I jumped out of bed into my room to test the gravity.
As I hovered down to the ground I noticed Gravity had severely changed and concluded I was dreaming. I wanted to stabilise myself to get ready to travel around in my dream clearminded when, for no appearant reason my eyes opened again and I was awake.

---

But it sounds like you were already asleep when turning around to see that it was dark in the room.

Quote:

---

The transition is seemless.

I have spent well over an hour awake on my many previous attempts using Conscious/Focus-ILD methods and no signs of a Dream. Now serveral times I got into a Dream Lucid, pretty much within 15 minutes after hitting the pillow, while just dozing off to sleep not focussing on anything at all.
So the whole point of this is to let yourself just fall asleep, off guard and totally unaware of the Transition phase. To me it seems: The lower my awareness, the sooner I am in a Dream.
Bottomline:To be off guard all the time you're falling asleep and to suddenly regain consciousness when you are just in the beginning of a dream.

To regain Consciousness suddenly you need a trigger of some sort.

---

Now I understand why the transition is seamless. You don't notice any transition because you had no lucidity to notice it, there was a black-out in-between.

Perhaps the one experience above was of the same nature. You didn't even notice SP coming, after all, so I conclude that there was a brief stage of blacking-out, after which you dreamt of lying in your bed.

And I always thought that in order for that to happen all you need is greater desire to be lucid than normal, it will serve as a sort of mental trigger then and will "wake" you quick. But how it can be made into a method is beyond me. How do you make having greater desire into a method...

Wait, I know! About the first dream.

Quote:

---

turned around and saw it was very dark in my room. This gave me the creeps. An eerie feeling.

---

That must have been where SP came in and a transition happened.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Arutad

Now I understand why the transition is seamless. You don't notice any transition because you had no lucidity to notice it, there was a black-out in-between.

---

Nope. He means what he means. I have experienced the same thing in a brief half-hour period of sleep. The difference being I did in fact go through about 5 hours of sleep beforehand

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Arutad

Now I understand why the transition is seamless. You don't notice any transition because you had no lucidity to notice it, there was a black-out in-between.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

Nope. He means what he means. I have experienced the same thing in a brief half-hour period of sleep. The difference being I did in fact go through about 5 hours of sleep beforehand

---

---

Please read carefully what he writes:

Quote:

---

To regain Consciousness suddenly you need a trigger of some sort

---

Quote:

---

let yourself just fall asleep, off guard and totally unaware of the Transition phase

---

Quote:

---

To be off guard all the time you're falling asleep and to suddenly regain consciousness

---

It was the first dream he described that seemed different, and I was surprised why he brought it into this thread and made an example of it. But upon examination I think he did experience SP in that dream without noticing it, so there was a non-lucid transition phase, too, and so it makes sense to make it an example for "regaining consciousness" thread.

BUMP!

Hi fellas,

I've been inactive on DV and in the field of Lucid dreaming for a while. Had some issues to take care of.

But Now I'm in shape again and I will resume this method as it has been very reliable and effective for me.

I will not only keep trying this at night time as a WILD method, but will also be meditating uppon this Apathic, Play-dead state of mind in day time. I will do this to practice this non-responsiveness so I can become better at it.

Anyone here care to join me?
I was thinking: First to meditate on this apathic state for 10 minutes every day, then when ready, increase it to 2 sessions of 10 minutes a day. And eventually 3 sessions..etc And off course every night as we go to sleep.

Anyone?

Does anybody feel like joining me in this method and help me improving and finetuning it?
Rome wasn't built in a day you know.

I really feel like developping and improving this method further and further, using the information gathered from our collective experiences with this techniques, Trial and Error-style.

mmm It's like Dream Yoga, don't you think? have ever heard of it?
also, your method give me an idea.
what if we make a game? like..
go and lie in bed, now imagine you are completely paralized, like in a coma, and you can't move anything, even your eyes. like a game. imagine you are playing to the paralized person. the objetive is just lie there ....
would this work?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mariano

mmm It's like Dream Yoga, don't you think? have ever heard of it?
also, your method give me an idea.
what if we make a game? like..
go and lie in bed, now imagine you are completely paralized, like in a coma, and you can't move anything, even your eyes. like a game. imagine you are playing to the paralized person. the objetive is just lie there ....
would this work?

---

Sounds like it could help with inducing this non-responsive state.

I just remembered a good thing to compair this hard to describe "non-responsive" state: Remember when you were a kid and pretending to be asleep when someone said something to you? And then they would try to wake you up, but you stand firm and continue pretending to be asleep. Even when they start tickeling you to prove you are awake. It's very much like that.

Your game sounds like it could work. It would allow Sleep Paralysis to start alot sooner. You could imagine some kind of Energy decrease, that starts by numbing your body and then your mind.
Perhaps you could imagine that your bed is a Gate, that once you've closed your eyes, starts transporting your Spirit gradually out of your body(SP), then it "launches" your spirit/awareness through a huge Void(helps emphasise the Passive, empty awareness state one should stay in during this phase) and eventually your spirit/awareness will arrive in a world made out of Light and Awareness/Spirit(Onset of Dreams). In fact this in reality pretty much is what happens as we fall asleep, but this envisioned fantasy-imagination of it seems to help the process.

However try not to consciously focus on this Visualisation, but instead just have it in the back of your mind, more like a feeling than a thought. This to ensure your mind is as empty as possible while Playing dead, cause dead mean don't think remember?

I will try this tonight.
Anyone here who wants to try this as well and report back results?

PS: You can use my visualisation of being transported to the dreamworld if you like it, but you may also make up a visualisation of your own if that one works better.

Hello im going to try this tonight and report back tomorow to see if it worked. im pretty much a novice so i might not have enough experience but ill give it a shot. ::banana:

hello i tried this last nigt, it didnt give me a lucid dream but i did have a pretty clear dream. im going to try this again today

Somehow this is the first time I read this. It sounds like something I've experienced before. Going from lying on the couch to a dream without transition. But I've always thought it was because of smoking weed. Now I'm not smoking for at least the whole of december and I'm going to try it tonight. And the nights after that. I'll keep you updated SKA.