Coming Back to Practice After 15 Years

Quest for Lucidity
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From age 18 to 20 I was really into lucid dreaming and, I guess, reached some meaningful results. I had more than 350 lucid dreams, and around 20–40 of them could be called “super-lucid” to different degrees. Altogether I recorded more than 3,000 dreams of various quality in my journals. But then adult life, career, and everything else took over, and I let the practice go.

Now that my life has become more stable and calm, I thought: why not return to this hobby? It should be simple - I already have such a huge background of dream memory.
I don’t even need to look into my old journals; I remember a huge number of those dreams by heart. But it turned out they don’t give me any real effect anymore.
When I recall them now, it feels like I’m imagining someone else’s stories, not mine. The dreams I’m writing down again this week - 2-3 per night - feel like my stories, my world. But the old ones lost that feeling.

So I’ve basically become a beginner again, with only one advantage: I know the practices that worked for me, and I understand that patience and discipline are really all you need to get results - and the results will come.

Below is the setup of habits that gave me stable progress just a month into practice. I’m writing this to remind myself, and maybe discuss some details with other forum members.

1. A journal is good, but two journals are better.

I keep one journal under my pillow so I can jot down quick notes during the night without trying to hold memories until morning. Usually it’s barely readable scribbles - just a few lines about the location and scenario. That’s enough to sit down later that same day and pull the full dream from memory into a clean, detailed entry in the main journal.

2. Location matters more than storyline.

Once you get close to even 50 recorded dreams - let alone 100 - you realize they fall into groups based on one question: “Where?”
Then you notice that locations repeat, while the scenarios and “decorations” change, like movie sets.
Back then I tried to define them by objects and architecture, even tried to connect everything together - basically mapping pieces of dreams into one large world. I had a huge A1 sheet map; by mentally “walking” through it I could easily recall dreams. It was incredibly effective, even better than journals. It was like a reversed journal: instead of reading stories to remember visuals, you look at visuals and remember the stories.

But environments and architecture change over time, and a rigid map eventually collapses. You start forcing things, and eventually have to redraw the whole map. Some dreams you just know belong in a certain place, but you can’t attach them neatly to a fixed map.
Locations are more like principles - little micro-worlds with their own feelings and rules. This time I’m thinking of using a more flexible approach, not a strict map.

3. Don’t expect to lucid dream all night.

Your body is tired, your brain is tired, everything needs rest. Going to bed after a workday and trying to “enter the dream” right away is possible, but the results (at least for me) were pretty bad.
Sleep becomes shallow, you spend the whole night waiting for “the moment,” and end up exhausted with a few messy fragments of low-quality dreams.

I need 8 hours of sleep total, and for the first 5 hours I give myself the task to simply rest. I even intentionally set the mindset not to remember dreams (sounds absurd, I know). I take magnesium with tryptophan to deepen sleep and let the body restore itself.
Then I have 3 hours left. I wake up with an alarm, use the bathroom so nothing distracts me, switch the mindset back - now I’m dreaming - review my reality checks, actually do them while awake, and go back to sleep.

Three hours equals two full sleep cycles for a rested body and refreshed brain. That means at least two good-quality dreams that don’t fall apart and are easy to remember and write down. I can try WILD, or catch myself during phase shifts - it all works much better this way.

4. Get up when the alarm rings.

The alarm will either cut off a dream or kill the chance of another one. It’s especially painful when it interrupts a lucid dream. The temptation to stop it and fall back asleep is huge. It helps when you have work - but when you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur like me, that temptation is even bigger.

Even though I’ve stepped on this rake many times, I still sometimes fall back asleep hoping to return to the dream. It almost never works. Worse - you break your sleep schedule, sleep longer than needed, lose daytime hours, and make your sleep the next night worse.
Discipline is crucial here.

5. Don’t sleep more than you need.

Sure, if you sleep 10 instead of 8 hours, you can get more dream content and fill your journal faster. I did this for a while.
But it’s unhealthy - both physically and mentally. Your waking time becomes scattered, the day feels shorter, and the dreams themselves become choppy and less deep.
It’s quantity at the cost of quality - not just dream quality, but life quality. I’m not doing that again.

6. Wake up at the same time every day.

This is secondary for lucid dreaming but primary for health.
Workday, weekend, holiday - 6 AM means 6 AM. No “just 15 more minutes.”

This trains the brain to finish a cycle by around 5:50-5:55. No abrupt interruptions in the middle of REM, and your brain wakes up naturally, which makes recalling dreams much easier.

7. One type of reality check per day.

If you read about all the possible reality checks, you might think you should do all of them and success will be quick.
In reality, you’ll forget most of them, get irritated, and maybe drop the practice altogether.

It’s better to choose one check - and stick to it for the day.
Today I look at my hands every time I’m at a doorway.
Tomorrow I check whether I’m dreaming whenever I see a red car or pink sneakers.
Another day I check electronics to see if they work.
It’s easier to keep focus, and the training still works. Consistency is more important than quantity or intensity.

Honestly, even without any checks - just with regular journaling - several of my friends who thought they “never dream” had their first lucid dream in 2-3 months.

8. No plan = no results.

This applies to real life and dreams.
If I don’t know what I’m going to do once I become lucid, there’s almost no point. Rational thinking and decision-making inside a dream is extremely hard, especially early on.

So you must always know: “What will I do when I become lucid?”
It might sound absurd - like it’s not really “lucid” if you’re just following a plan. But try it first. In the beginning it’s incredibly hard. Only when this becomes easy - when you feel with your whole being when the dream is trying to pull you into its script and you can resist - then you can start making decisions directly inside the dream. Step by step.
You don’t lift 200 kg before you’ve learned to lift 40.

9. Know in advance that some nights will be “empty.”

This depends on many factors. Even during the most advanced period of my old practice, when I had a lucid dream almost every night, there were still nights with absolutely nothing - not even messy fragments.
At first these nights made me anxious. Over time, I just accepted them.
It happens, and it will keep happening.

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I finally had my first real moment where it hit me that I needed to become aware in a dream, and I caught myself in that half-awake phase. It took five days of practice, but unfortunately that was my last dream of the night — 5:55 a.m. Not a big deal.

What’s more important is my new discovery — a pillow you put between your legs while sleeping. My lower back had been hurting, so I bought one. I used to sleep with my back twisted, and it started causing real discomfort. Not only did my back feel noticeably better, but I also had way more dreams. I even had something to write in my dream journal in the first half of the night. When my lower back isn’t tense, my body is more relaxed overall — which gives me a lot more potential for dreaming.

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One problem is being a “night person” or “night owl” wherein some people are more naturally awake and active at night and prefer to sleep during the day. Thus in order to sleep at night they then need to stay awake all night and all day, but then their natural way will want to return to the way it was before.

Dealing with available jobs and daylight activities, especially in Winter when there isn’t much daylight available, conflicts with this way. Or perhaps being forced to sleep and wake in an unnatural way might actually help with lucid dreaming, since it requires being somewhat awake and active while also being asleep. Hmmmm…

…Another issue is the idea that humans are not supposed to have one long sleep per day but instead two shorter sleeps, one at night and one in the afternoon. In China and Spain this is understood and part of the culture but elsewhere isn’t.

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Here are a few points, and I think it’s important to go through them one by one.

  1. There are night owls and early birds — those patterns are largely genetic. It really helps to wake up at a time that fits your body’s natural rhythm. If your ideal wake-up time is 6 AM, then let it be 6. If you’re a night owl and 10 AM works better, then stick to 10.
    The key is consistency — weekdays, weekends, holidays.
    When your schedule is stable, your brain quickly learns to wake up with the alarm, and your sleep cycle will end more smoothly.
    Some people say, “I’m a night owl, I have to wake up at 6, so at least I’ll catch up on sleep on the weekend.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t work — and it’s even worse for your health. It’s better to find a job that fits your schedule, or adjust your habits and evening stimulants.
    In reality, people who truly can’t fall asleep before 3–4 AM are extremely rare. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle and can adapt to earlier wake-ups through habits, diet, and discipline — like not getting stuck on social media at night.

  2. Changing the clock by an hour, like in some countries, isn’t actually that hard on the body. You can shift your wake-up time by one hour twice a year, and your brain will adapt pretty quickly.

  3. An unusual sleep schedule, discomfort, stimulants, stress, or various enhancers can fragment your sleep and make it shallow. When you extend your sleep to 9–11 hours under those conditions, you may end up with many short REM cycles — which gives you more chances to slip into a lucid dream.
    It might seem like an advantage, but it’s a slippery slope. People usually quit lucid dreaming for this reason — because they’re simply not sleeping well. There are tons of examples of this on the forum.
    You want your sleep to be deep and natural.

  4. About cultural sleep patterns: in some countries people split their sleep into two roughly equal parts and stay awake for a while during the night. Reasons vary — religious, social, safety, or personal.
    Scientifically, the body still prefers consolidated sleep. It can adapt to a split schedule, and it’s not necessarily harmful, but that doesn’t make it beneficial.
    Most research shows a reduction in total REM time with this approach, which means it isn’t ideal for our hobby.

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Nah, waking up at 10AM is normal for someone who sleeps at night. For a “night person” this is the kind of time they would go to bed late, and waking up at 10PM would be considered as “oversleeping”.

For the purposes of remembering dreams and being aware in dreams I have learned that deep sleep is a problem and blanks out all knowledge of dreams. If I want to have memory of dreams and lucid dreams the sleep needs to be very light, being close to wakefulness while being asleep. So either shorter interrupted sleep is required or else oversleeping so the phase of deep sleep passes and sleep becomes lighter. Of course I am different to most people so others might not have the same experience as me. If you say this is unhealthy, then healthy sleep is incompatible with lucid dreaming!

For me a “normal” sleep period which is natural and satisfying varies between 5 hours and 16 hours, so there is no consistency at all. Sleep is just as random as dreams: To say sleep should be 8 hours every single day at the same time every single day is like saying you are supposed to have the exact same dream each time, or that dreams should be regular predictable things, and you can force nightmares by watching horror films, or force reality checks in dreams by doing them in reality. This may be normal for most people, but I am not like them at all.

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You’re saying some pretty alarming things. Of course the practices are compatible — and more than that, you need good overall health and stable body rhythms for long, high-quality lucid dreams.

I get what you’re aiming for: maximizing REM frequency at any cost. But that’s exactly what I was talking about — you’re trading quality for quantity. If you push yourself into light, fragmented sleep by extending sleep sessions and constantly disrupting your schedule, then that’s exactly what you’ll end up with. And when you become lucid, that sleep will still be light and unstable, and it’ll fall apart quickly. Your body doesn’t care whether a dream is lucid or not — it adapts to the overall pattern.

I went down that path too, until I realized I was exhausting myself and not getting truly meaningful results. I did get a lot of dreams — I used to record about ten a day on average, had tons of transition phases to practice with, and had frequent spontaneous lucid moments. But I could only pull that off because I was young, and even then it didn’t last. Eventually my mental state started slipping, and the quality of my real life took a serious hit.

So what’s the purpose of pushing for higher numbers? What’s the actual goal? In the long run, a simple dream journal and regular reality checks produce better results anyway — you just need patience and discipline.

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The “higher numbers” I am pushing for is higher than zero. As I said, deep sleep results in NO MEMORY AT ALL OF ANY DREAMS. So if I even want to have any dream whether lucid or not I need to not get into a deep sleep. The goal is to have memory of dreams and have lucid dreams, which require being awake to some degree while asleep. Everyone is different and what is natural is healthy and what is unnatural is unhealthy. My ways are natural for me.

So I must do what is natural, such as going barefoot and being grounded, which is natural for all humans. Most people go through their lives wearing shoes all day that insulate them from the ground, which makes their bodies not work correctly, and the unnatural shoes mean they also don’t walk correctly, constantly causing damaging impacts to their knees, hips and spine and so I am much healthier than them.

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I don’t really have a natural knack for lucid dreaming, but the approaches I’ve developed actually work for me — and it turned out they’re pretty simple and straightforward.

Before that, I tried experimenting with different sleep schedules, taking all kinds of substances to boost awareness, and basically over-motivating myself to become lucid.

But the thing that ended up working was not turning lucid dreaming into some big, coveted goal. Instead, I just consistently practiced a few ordinary techniques without attaching any heavy emotional pressure to them, and I took care of my health. And it’s definitely not a short-term practice — with the right approach, the results build up like a snowball over time without draining you physically or emotionally, but they also don’t show up right away.

What I’m getting at is this: if the way you’re trying now—cutting deep sleep—isn’t giving you results beyond basically zero, why not try a two-week experiment and let your body actually get deep sleep without oversleeping?

For me, the next deep-sleep cycle usually wipes the memory of the previous dream too, so I just jot the dream down briefly in the middle of the night. That way I have something to hold onto later. And I think that’s how it works for most people — it’s not some rare trait.

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I have been getting a regular deep sleep most of the time, which is how I learned that this was the problem, since the only time I had conscious experience and memory of dreams was the few times when the sleep was lighter. Concerning medications I learned that anything that causes drowsiness results in deep sleep, and things that cause the mind to be more awake and alert have the opposite effect. The desire to urinate, being too hot in bed and loud sounds have interfered with sleep, preventing the deep sleep and allowing me to wake up enough to have knowledge of dreams, but they may also result in awakening completely eventually.

My last sleep experience is a perfect example. During the first portion I was regularly awakened and I had clear memory and conscious experience of being in the dreams. And in one of the dreams I was so awake I became fully lucid. Then in the second portion I fell into a long deep sleep and then awakened with the knowledge that something WONDERFUL had happened. But I have absolutely no knowledge of what it was that happened. Because the sleep was too deep I missed whatever it was and this is a TRAGEDY!

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Oh, I’ve had the same thing happen many times. I’ve had long, vivid dreams and even lucid dreams — and that’s all I remember about them. I just remember that they existed.

It was obviously because I was too lazy to write even a couple of sentences in my journal during the transition between sleep phases.

By the way, one more important note — it really helps to do a reality check when you’re writing a dream down in your journal. The more often you make entries, the more often you start dreaming about writing them. That can be helpful if it becomes automatic, but it can also be risky because you might lose the actual memory of the dream.

So don’t worry — this is normal, it happens. Just a few days ago I lost the memory of a very long and vivid dream the same way.

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What’s really funny is that I often get this thought: “There’s no way I’ll forget this — how could anyone forget something like that?”
And then that’s literally all I remember in the morning.

As soon as you catch yourself having that thought, you have to make an extra effort to write the dream down — even just a couple of lines. Otherwise, in a way, it’s a tragedy :slightly_smiling_face:

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Writing down my dreams on my phone during the night turned out not to be the best idea.

At first, I thought it was great — no handwriting issues, and autocorrect helps you quickly type a couple of sentences.

But what happened was that when I unlocked my phone, I saw a message from someone I know. After that, I spent the last phase of my sleep just tossing and turning, thinking about the message and what to reply.

Paper and a pen are still the better solution.

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I had clear memory of the dreams I had before the first awakening, because I was very close to being awake in the dreams, but the WONDERFUL dream that I have no memory of occurred during the long phase of deep sleep, since I was not in any way whatsoever awake and my conscious experience during this time was close to zero. It’s not that I forgot it but rather that I had no conscious awareness of it in the first place, it was a subconscious thing which affected me emotionally beyond my knowledge

I have found it isn’t really necessary to write down dreams after an awakening followed by sleep. They just need to be brought out into conscious thought and focused on for a little while. If I remember a previous awakening then I also remember what I did after awakening, which was think about the dream. But if I only thought of it once then I will probably forget it. The same is true of a memorable dream: If you think about it a lot then you remember it, since it’s now a clear part of waking experience.

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A good likeness of what I am talking about is the subliminal image in the Coca-Cola logo. It has always been there, you have always seen it and it has always been affecting you. But not consciously. If you are not aware of it then all you think you have ever seen is the name “Coca-Cola” with fancy lettering…

But originally it contained cocaine and attracts you subconsciously to it by showing a picture of two doped up men, one of whom is eating a tablet and the other is sticking a straw up his nose. Your brain is designed to recognise faces so it is virtually impossible to miss, but most people have no knowledge that it is there and never will unless it is plainly shown to them! They did not forget that they saw it, they were simply never aware in the first place that they saw it. So it is with the mystery dreams.

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Thanks for sharing your experience! I like your emphasis on making sure to get a baseline of sleep during the night before messing with techniques. I feel like there’s not enough discussion on the impact of LD practice on sleep hygiene.

I’ve also experienced the “no plan = no results”. I’m still very much in the baby steps phase of this, but it rings true.

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