How did YOU learn to LD?

I’ve learned it here too :smile:

I’m going to post my experience and then read the topic and comment.

I was at a website called “GameFAQs” reading the message boards there. Someone on a secret board called LUE linked to the paranormal board, I went to the paranormal board and a topic about lucid dreaming was there. I had no idea what it was at the time and became intrigued(sp?).

A link in that topic brought me to ld4all.com, I read the whole entire site. This was April of 04. To be honest I was quite skeptical.

While on the paranormal board I was reading about Alien abductions and cryptozoology and I decided to look at the stars and wonder if extra terestrials were real and what it must be like to get abducted. It was a school night and the time was 2:00AM and I was extremely tired. I took down my telescope and decided to try an LD, I chose the WILD method.

I kept my mind active by thinking about Extra Terrestrials and Alien abductions. A really silly subject, but then something hit me and scared me more then anything in my life. I had SP and I didn’t know it, I expected just to go into a dream, I never counted on SP. I started to FREAK, mainly because I was thinking about aliens and abductions and thought I was being abducted. It sounds really stupid now but think about it. You just did hours worth of research on alien abductions, go to sleep, try to WILD the first night you hear about LD’s and then you hit SP and not know what it is.

To be honest I was scared beyond my wildest imagination, I slept with the light on for a week and never came back to ld4all.com

I have never shared this information with anyone, and it’s been almost a year. I needed to get that off of my chest.

Well, then comes the summer and I decide to clean out my favorites folder and this site was there, I decided to read up again. I found out what SP was and came to this forum, when I found out what SP was I was so happy to find out nothing abnormal happened to me and decided to try to wild. Well, I hit SP again but got kind of freaked because I wasn’t expecting it. So I scratched the plan and bought a notbook for a DJ the next day.

I read the forums and hear about the OLD HAG for the first time and nearly wet my pants by listening to the person who started the thread. I had a new fear when I went to sleep at night and that was the hag. I went to sleep to WILD that night and the one thing that was on my mind was the Hag and the thread creators vivd description. Well, sadly I’m a natural at hitting SP because it happened again, and I freaked out and left it but I kept my eyes tightly shut because I expected the hag to be up on my chest. I went back to sleep, hit SP again, and again and again, this process happened 4 times each resulting with the same action of my keeping my eyes closed. I opened them 5 minutes after the last SP and nothing was there but it was light out.

The next day I don’t try to WILD but subconsiously I did. I hit SP and freaked but didn’t let it awake me, I wanted to see how long it would take to pass. I could hear my heart beating and my blood flowing through my body, it sounded like a waterfall. I was scared. Then the SP suddenly stopped and I was all by my self in a black void, I couldn’t feel my legs or arms, all of a sudden I heard a soothing voice say “open your eyes”

[size=150]AND THEN ON MY CHEST WAS!!![/size]

my dad crying, he had thought I had died in my sleep. It was so real. He left my room and I went back to sleep. I woke up at 11:00AM and went to talk to my dad about the night before… little did I know he had no idea of what I was talking about and it turns out that the whole thing was a dream. It just seemed to real to be a dream, it was definatlly a surreal experience.

Ever since that day I’ve had loads of LD’s, I have lost count of how many. I got them all using the WBTB/WILD method. And also I never feared the hag again, but I would like to see her just to see what I was so scared about. I’ve been trying but no success.[/b]

at least until now, not

At first I was only interested in what my dreams meant. I’ve always been able to recall my dream every morning and some signs seemed completely absurd, so that’s why I started looking on the internet for sites about what dreaming is and what my dreams mean.
In my search I read about lucid dreaming. I ended up on pasQuale’s website (the Dutch one) and read all of it. I talked about lucid dreaming with a friend of mine and we both got interested. We shared the normal dreams we had and after some training (especially RC’s) I had my first real LD’s. I’d had some light LD’s before I even knew about lucid dreaming, but I got more of them when I started to get interested.

I had a spontaneous LD when I was 7 and a very emotional one when I was 20. Will post this in the “The bIg “My First LD” collection” later. I had read before about LDing, but the second one got me really interested. However, it would take three years before I seriously started practicing, after reading a little Dutch book about LDs from the library. I had a lot of time because it was after my studies and before my first job. I started with RCs, and it took three weeks to get a short LD. I went to the library searching on internet (didn’t have internet myself), and I found lucidity.com. I discovered an article about WBTB there, a study that proved its amazing effectiveness compared to other methods. I was very happy to see it worked well for me too. I had a lot of LDs then. In 2001 I finally got a job but I suddenly had to wake up very early every morning and kinda gave up on LDing :grin: Then I moved away from my parents, finally got internet, discovered ld4all and started practicing again :cool:

I first heard about LDing in a TV-show, and I thought it sounded interesting, so I checked it out. I came across this site, and many others. The first time I had a LD I realized I was dreaming in the dream, my only “technique” was that I knew one could have LDs.
However, there were many things that didn’t go my way in my first lucid dream. For example, people didn’t look as I remebered them, and they wouldn’t always do what I told them to do. And, also, when I went outside there was a huge thunderstorm, and I couldn’t get it to stop. In the dream I panicked and ran back in.
Despite the problems I was excited that I had succeeded.

After my first LD it took a long time for another one to come along. I had the next LD with the help of a technique from this site; The one where you look at your hands repetedly during the days and ask yourself: “Am I dreaming?” After about three weeks I dreamt I looked at my hands and asked myself if I was dreaming. The answer came to me in a flash:Yes!
I’ve also used the technique where you trace back how you got to where you are. If one does it often enough, chances are you’ll do it in a dream, and then you won’t remeber what you did to get where you are.

So techniques can be a great way to to have an LD, but personally I have actually experienced most of my LDs without techniques. Just the other night I was lucid in all my dreams but one, wich also made me aware to the fact that you can have a huge amount of dreams in one night.

When I’m LDing I hardly ever do anything useful. I fly sometimes, and sometimes I walk around talking to the people created by my mind. Once I tried to contact a guide, or “fylgia” as I call them, but none of my guides felt like appearing, instead they showed me a swedish (I’m swedish) instrument called “nyckelharpa”, translated it means “key harp”. I don’t know what they were trying to tell me, but I suppose I’ll figure it out sooner or later.

I hope I’ve been of help. Good luck with your dreaming!

/Tove, Sweden

I found out about Lucid Dreams, after I became interested in self-hypnosis, and one of the books that i bought had a chapter on dreams. So I did a google search about five months ago and found Lucid Bird Mans Lucid site then I found this one.

I’m not entirely sure where i first learned about Lucid Dreaming. The dutch version of ld4all inspired me to start keeping a dream journal, so i did for about a month. Then i suddenly had a spontaneous DILD, probably because i was focussing on my dreamsigns a lot more than normal now i was keeping a DJ. My first LD was a rather long and very vivid one, with all the fireworks they talk about on here (senses feel more real than in real life, total control over everything, full lucidity). I haven’t had a LD like that since… but it’s on it’s way :wink:

I was learning how to whistle with your hands on wannalearn.com and I saw something about lucid dreaming so I looked into the website(not this one but cant remember the name) and I at first thought it was impossible but then I remebered that me and one of my coworkers had talked about controlling your dreams some weeks earlier.because he can do it and made it sound great . so I decided that if other people could do it I want to give it a try as well so I started doing RC ALOT and i and reading the forums ALOT and three days later BAM! LD 4 ME! now I mainly use MILD and WBTB which gets me a LD about every 4 days or so and this is great but now i am want to learn WILD because I think that sounds like a way that I can get an LD atleast every other day. My hardest problem though has been writing down my dreams in my dream journal but I talk about them alot and I can still remember dreams from 3 days ago that I still havent written down. Lucid dreaming has opened my eyes to many other things that in my earlier years would have dismissed as “Impossible” but now I know that before you judge anything, try it.

Well said! :smile:

My father has lucid dreamt (or, what he calls Astral projection) for years, and has always told me about his experiences. I developed a growing interest, bought books on the topic, and actually had my own experience when I was around seventeen or eighteen.
I finally stumbled across the lucidity institute website about a year ago. I then discovered LD4All, Stephen LaBerge, etc and ordered ETWOLD through my local esoteric bookstore (I had to get it ordered in from overseas!) and started applying techniques for inducing lucid dreams.

Haven’t looked back since :content:

I’ve been lucid dreaming since I was 5 years old. I’d be having nightmares and think to myself, wait a minute vampires aren’t real and then I developed this technique to wake myself up by crouching down then jumping as high as i could and i’d bolt right up in the bed.

I kept getting lucid when having nightmares but eventually lost the ability to wake myself up.

After I stopped getting nightmares I only had lucid dreams very rarely, probably around 3 or 4 a year.

Then when i started using drugs I had around 1 a month.

Then this summer i googled “lucid dream” and found out there were ways to induce this. I tried RCs for awhile but now I basically just smile to myself as I’m going to sleep and think “here it comes”.

I now get LDs about every 4th night. And they almost always come in groups.

I just got lucky as far as Lucid dreaming genetics I guess. Some sort of serotonin imbalance I’d assume.

I think the most effective way to induce lucid dreams is just to know about them and believe rather than hope that you will lucid dream every night before you go to sleep.

Well, I know this website had something to do with it, but to this day I’m not sure what. I had three lucid dreams in one week (maybe a fortnight, but a very short time frame nevertheless), shortly after I first started my dream journal on this site, but I have no idea what happened in order for me to have them. They were the first LDs I’d ever had, though, and after that one week I haven’t had any others, so I’m still in the dark about it.

Learning how to control those dreams was something different, however. The main problem I faced was a tendency for my vision to black out (and in doing so ‘wake up’) when I focused on something too closely, but I figured out how to solve this during the third lucid dream by thinking back on the patterns I’d noticed from the previous two. Everything else worked with simple persistence - if it didn’t work the first time, I tried again and it did. :smile:

Well…i first learned about LDing about 3ish years ago. When I first disovered it I thought it was a load of rubbish, but I kept coming across stuff about it so I finally decided it was worth a try.
I checked out Stephen LaBerge’s “Exploring The Of Lucid Dreams” and read it and decided the MILD technique would probably be the most effictive for me. But he said in his book that you first have to be able to remember your dreams, at least one per night. So I spent about a month until I remembered at least 1-2 dreams each night without thinking about it before I went to bed. During this time I had also been working on one of his excerises where you have to remeber certain things on certain days the first time you see them which helps with MILD.
I then vigourisly began trying to use MILD to have LD’s but had little of success even waking up in the middle of the night and trying then. After a while I kinda gave up and put it off for a while. Shortly after stopping my effort I had a very vivid lucid dream and was hooked. Thus I started trying again but when I started I once again had no luck. Eventually I read several articles that talked about how lucid dreaming is nearly impossible if you think it is tough to do, which at that time I most defiantly did.
After that I really worked to convince myself that lucid dreaming wasn’t all that hard to do, it took a while but once I convinced myself that it was easy and that any old fool could do it things sort of clicked into place. I finally had an lucid dream on demand which was a huge confidence booster. A few night later I had three on demand and I was firmly convinced that lucid dreaming is easy. After that I started telling myself that I can have them when I choose and due to my confidence succeeded quite well.
After a week of having them pretty much at will it was ingrained into me and I realized that I could have them at will.

 My big recommedation is that if you are struggling to LD make yourself understand that lucid dreaming isn't hard to do because honestly it isn't

‘How did you learn to LD?’ I started doing it naturally in my dreams, always fascinated by them anyway it became natural that i’d realise it wasn’t reality then i’d set off to do what i pleased though a lot of the time i’d lose lucidity and wake up. I found out about AP later and that tied in with LD and here i am now

I’m a natural LDer, but I learnt to induce LDs when I was 14, during a very uncomfortable nightmare+insomnia season. I found out autosuggestion worked really well—if I gave myself reson enough to want an LD that night, then I would get an LD for sure. MILD and WBTB worked well if used with autosuggestion, but I simply couldn’t get WILD through. My first succesful WILD was in 2004 (I was 15), and it had taken me over four months to accomplish WILDing. The second took me some time too, and the next ones came more easily. I have almost no recall of HH at all; most of the time, when I try WILDing, I just recall the dream from the middle.

I had Lucid Dreams every night when I was 2-6 years old. I could even decide what I wanted to dream about. I just thought about something, and dreamt about it, totally aware! I fell asleep after only fifteen minutes to :content:

Not so easy anymore, though…I had my “first” one a while ago, think I was eigth. I realised that it was a dream, stole some candy and was very pleased with it. The next one came later, my “RC” was pinching my arm (For those of you that’ve tried it, you know how it is…), but it felt like reality, but I knew it was a dream afterall.

Now it happens 3-4 times a month and growing.

My LDs seem to come spontaneously, but more often when I’m thinking about it. Usually something will happen, and out of nowhere I’ll think, “Oh, that’s odd, how did that… oh, right.” The strange thing is that it’s usually the little things, like the doorknob being right in the center of the door, rather than things like giant pink cats or being chased by giraffes. :wink: My first LD was back before I had even heard of it, and I was annoyed in the dream, so I woke myself up. Lately I’ve been getting lucid more frequently, maybe two or three times a week since the middle of January. My only problem is keeping it long enough for anything to happen.

I just “learned” to do it, though I used to have LDs when I was young and somehow lost them. Found this site about a week ago.

Getting to the point of recognizing I’m dreaming was easy, and I’ve always had superb dream recall and know my dream signs well. The tough part was staying there, because every time I realized it - whether just knowing or by a dream sign, (never have done a reality check while dreaming - though often while awake!) I would wake right up. Frustrating!

I was just napping - literally just woke up and am typing this immediately after. I was in a normal dream, involved in a crowded situation with my (much younger) mother and an elevator. I got outside and realized for whatever reason that I was dreaming - and immediately the dream started to fade. I looked down and saw my hands, then stuck them out and spun HARD and fast. It made me very dizzy - i’m still dizzy! - but when I opened my eyes, I was in a field with my dog, who was very happy to see me. So we ran and played a while… I did a couple cartwheels, then she started morphing into a panda.

That’s it… it was short but delicious, except for the dizzy part. I got up - the dog is here sleeping. Wonder if she was sharing the dream with me!

Does that really tell how I did it? It was sort of an accident last week, but I’ve been thinking about and reading about it ever since. It happened during a lot of noise in the house, so I was waking and going back to sleep, each time awake RCing and then trying to WILD but failing.

Cool stuff. I want more!

edited 15 Feb
And got more. Just wanted to mention this one. I wasn’t trying to do anything… just dreaming a not so pleasant dream, and thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if this were a dream?” I pinched my nose - and was able to breathe.

What to do? I flew! It took three tries, with two gentle landings. And it went on from there, and was really quite incredible.

I wanted to post this here because the reality checking in RL paid off!

Hey everyone :grin:

I learnt how to LD by doing loads of Research i mean loads and going on websites like this. Printing guides off and looking at them right before going to bed.

ConstantDreamer :grin: