Maybe Not Wanting to sleep is an easy way to achieve LD's?

I tried many methods and can’t achieve lucidity, now.

When I was younger (when i was 7ish, and i’m almost 21 now), I used to have to reoccurring nightmare. And One day, when I came running to my mother during the night, she just told me to say out loud, “that I don’t want this dream”.

The next night, the nightmare reoccurred, and I said that statement, and woke up. Following this incident, I had lucid dreams for a very long time, around 5 years or so, maybe 10 (like i said, very long time). All of a sudden, after I stopped paying attention to that fact that I had the lucid dreams, they stopped happening, and now I get about one a year.

So, naturally, now when I became reinterested in LD’s, I tried to remember what could have allowed me to so easily LD.

For one thing, I haven’t had nightmares ever since I can remember + an overwhelming majority of my dreams could as well be passed as real life situations (no talking rocks, giant monsters, or strange worlds). Everything seems to follow all common sense. So there isn’t anything to give away that I’m dreaming.
There doesn’t seem to be anything out there to force nightmares onto people (even though a recent study said something about bad smells causing nightmares)

I remembered something… I once tried to explain to my parents how I controlled my dreams (since they thought it was impossible). I remember saying something along the lines of: ~~"When I am in a dream, I feel it. Something like, the peripherals of my vision seems fuzzy and warm, as opposed to how they are supposed to look like when i’m awake. But it really feels as though I can feel it in my gut that i’m dreaming, without there having to be anything unusual about my dream.

That doesn’t help now, since that just explains what i felt, and not how to achieve LDs :smile:

However, another little tidbit I have remembered is this: When I was young, i hating sleeping. I hated having to go to bed, and just lying there until you go to sleep, only to, dream or not dream, wake up next morning. Seems like a waste of time for me. I remember, that when I was told to go to nap, I just went to my room and played random make believe games with my toys in my bed. At night, when I was told to go to sleep, my mind was rushing with thoughts all the time- i didn’t want to go to sleep. I remember actually lying in my bed, looking at the ceiling, which was almost pitch black, and not trying to go to sleep at all by closing my eyes(as I would today when, earlier to bed, means earlier to wake up and go to college). This makes good sense, at least for me.
Even nowadays, when I don’t have lucid dreams, but have dreams that i remember easily every night, I notice something related: When I am in school, or on the train, or in some other place where falling asleep isn’t exactly good/safe, I wake up right away - most of the time because I start vividly visualizing my thoughts, and know that i’m dreaming, and force myself to wake up. I would imagine that if I try to stay awake in bed, but being sufficiently exhausted, that maybe I’d fall asleep and instantly realize that i’m dreaming, but, won’t wake up because I’d understand that I won’t have to.

Any thoughts?

I find that stress/ not wanting to fall asleep sometimes increases my dream recall, probably because of the heightened awareness that I’m struggling to achieve. That’s actually how I ended up having my first LD; I had a late night study session and fell asleep working on some Geometry, and ended up dreaming about falling asleep in class! (gah, strangest framework dream I’ve ever had).

Maybe it has to do with trying
next time you want to LD
convince yourself you dont care
and just sleep witht he thought that either way is fine with you
see what happens…

I had my last ld 4 days ago and I hope it will not end. 4 Days ago I had no idea what to do with lucid dream, i had no idea how to leave the body, but now i have and I very need lucid dream…or a couple of lds :happy:
This night I will try to just go sleep with no thinking ;] maybe it will work ;]